Japan Is Doomed » Sheffield University

Soran Bushi @ Sheffield Japan Day 2009

Mike — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:14:36 +0000

Yes, it’s finally here! I’m sorry it took so long – thanks to whoever borrowed Elena’s camera to film this! There are credits in the video but I’d just like to say a huge thanks to everyone involved. So click the image above to watch our performance of Soran Bushi at Sheffield University 2009 (ビデオには日本語の訳が書いてあります。)

The Final Exams Before Japan

Mike — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:47:16 +0000

Alright, for those hoping for an exciting and dynamic post, look elsewhere. Today I’m talking about exams, oh yes. In this particular round of exams, I have 3 three hour long papers to sit;

Contemporary Japanese Society
Postwar Japanese Politics
Japanese Language

I thought I’d break down each one, hopefully you guys might find it interesting, and potential future Sheffield students might think ‘Hey, I want to answer questions on the effect of the bureaucracy on Japanese politics, I should go to Sheffield!’

Contemporary Japanese Society is a mandatory module for Japanese studies students, and it’s not hugely popular with the students, because we took a very similar module (‘Understanding Japan’) last year. Still, it covers a wide range of topics so it’s a useful subject to study. Still, I have to admit I wouldn’t jump at choosing it. The exam was three essays, I answered one question on the toll on society the economic drive of the 1970’s and 1980’s took (looking at suicide, homelessness and 過労死 or death from overwork), one question on Japan’s homogeneity (not the first time I’ve answered that question!) and one question on how article 9 has changed Japan’s outlooks. It wasn’t too challenging an exam as it’s all stuff I studied last year. Hopefully I actually remembered some of it. (Probably not)

The second exam, Postwar Japanese Politics, is coming on Tuesday. The range of potential questions is pretty huge, but any questions on the relationship of politicians, bureaucrats and business would be superb. Questions on the media’s role in politics, the role of women or how the LDP works would all be fine too. As long as I don’t have to answer about how Japan’s electoral system, I’m ok. That thing is so confusing, I don’t think anyone actually knows how it works.

The big one, Japanese Language happens on Thursday. It’s broken down, as are the other two exams, into one translation piece, this time a passage of Japanese literature, one piece comprehension, which will be a newspaper article on an issue facing Japan today, and one part composition, which this time will be writing an article based on statistics. Yes, it’s as horribly dull as it sounds, and I’m currently in the process of memorizing sentences such as ‘At 94.7%, the rate was overwhelmingly high’ (９４．７％と、圧倒的に高かった I think!) To be honest, although this is probably the hardest exam I’ve ever sat in my life, I’m not hugely scared because I know what the format is going to be. In the first semester exam I was freaking out because it was so different to the first year exams. Still, I should really be sleeping now, I need to get a full day’s revision in tomorrow.

As usual I’ll wrap up by telling you what’s coming up. As you may have noticed, I lost the cool theme I was using due to a mistake on my part, so I’ve gone for this very minimal, very readable design. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the long term but this will suffice for now. I’m also working hard on getting a Japanese video on Youtube, although talking into a camera without bursting out into laughter is proving hard. Still, stay tuned for that. In fact, stay tuned for everything!

Also, although Sophia haven’t emailed me yet, my guess as to when I’m going abroad is September 16th. So only about three and a half months to go! Eek!

Japan Day 2009 – The Big Recap

Mike — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:56:42 +0000

After months of planning, many thousands of pounds being spent, a few mental breakdowns and a two hour incident involving 40 Aikido mats, Japan Day finally happened on May 10th at Sheffield University. As I was pretty involved in the day I didn’t take photos, but luckily we had photographer Adam Harley on hand to take some photos. Enjoy!

The event was held in the Sheffield University Octagon, and due to it’s size we were able to have a load of stalls set up around the edge of the auditorium. People were able to try on Kimonos, try tea ceremony, have a go at Japanese calligraphy, check out some Anime and so on. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any photos, but thanks a lot to everyone who helped on those stalls, you guys kept the spirit of the day going even when we stage-workers were falling off the stage and so on!

The photos for the day are at the bottom of this post!

The day’s performances started with the Sheffield University Aikido team doing a performance to show off some of their skills. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to catch most of the performance as I was running around backstage trying to locate missing dancers, props and so on. But from what I saw it looked both cool and dangerous, a mixture I am a big fan of, so I enjoyed what I saw

After that came one of my performances – Soran Bushi. Long time readers / those who attended Japan Day2008 will know that this was not my first time performing Soran. But due tothe nature of university we had lost all but 3 of our previous dancers, so it fell to myself, other Mike and Mo to teach 12 budding dancers to become graceful Soran masters. Personally I feel we did a great job – the performance was tight and the crowd loved it. Due to my height I was situated at the back of the dance so the photos don’t have me in them, but then you may see that as a good thing! There were videos taken but they haven’t been processed yet, once they’re available I’ll post them

Aside from Soran there was plenty of singing and dancing to enjoy. Students Jamie and Koyuki sang some Japanese songs, both traditional Enka and more modern songs (like the theme to Ponyo!) and some students did some modern dance to a song by j-hip hop group Teriyaki Boyz.

After which came the scariest event of the day! The Japan Day 2009 Quiz, hosted by yours truly! I’m waiting on the video so I can post one of the rounds on Youtube for you guys to enjoy, but the idea was to get across some stuff about Japanese culture and so on in a fun way. I think we succeeded – we got good feedback, and I got my flatmate to dress as a woman. Success!

This all lead up to the big one : a taiko drumming performance by Joji Hirota. I can’t really express how awesome it was so you will have to wait for the video, but I will say after seeing Koenji’s Awaodori last year I was sure I wanted to join an Awaodori group. Now I want to join a Taiko one! It was a mind blowing performance from musicians who clearly love what they’re doing, and I would urge anyone to try to witness a Taiko performance.

So that’s Japan Day. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved; the performers, the organisers, especially Katrina and Laura, those who worked tirelessly all day on the various stalls, to the Octagon and the university for allowing us to hold the event, and of course to everyone who came!

Photo Gallery (Thanks Photographers!)

So start counting down the days until Japan Day 2010, I guess… Oh, and stay tuned for videos. Just as soon as I can get hold of them.

Sheffield Japan Day 2009

Mike — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:43:43 +0000

Sheffield University’s Japan Day was held on May 10th this year. Here’s the press release for the event.

Sheffield Japan Society is holding Japan Day 2009 on May 10th this year. I thought I’d post about it since I’m quite involved with the event, so if you’re in the UK or even if you’re not, you can send this blog post all over the world and help us get more people.

Basically for 5-6 hours we are invading The Octagon Centre and having a load of Japanese performances, food and so on. Here’s the big list;

As you can see we are going to be performing Soran Bushi again, with a brand new line up of dancers and a few familiar faces mixed in. Some amazing Taiko Drummers will be coming to give a performance, and then there will be little stalls and games all over the place. The aim is for the general public as well as students, so it’s all very accessible.

If you’re interested, tickets are available from the Sheffield University box office, phone (UK) 0114 222 8777. For more information check out the Japan Day website.

Hope to see you there!

Sheffield Japan Day 2009 – Promo Photoshoot

Mike — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:43:46 +0000

This year, Sheffield University is putting on Japan Day 2009, a whole day dedicated to people learning about and enjoying Japanese dance, food, culture and so on. If you cast your mind back a year ago you may remember I was part of the Soran Bushi dance team (video here) that performed at the 2008 event.

Well I’m involved this year too, and one of my jobs was to produce some promotional posters for the event. Since this year is (apparently) 150 years of Japan & the UK being linked and working together, we decided to go for a ‘Japan meets England’ theme. So these photos are exactly that; see if you can spot where Japan comes in to each one! (Hint: If you can’t, seek medical attention).

I’ll post the posters when they have been done, so you can all fly over to the UK to join us! Click on any of the images for huge versions!

So as you can see (hopefully) we decided to get one of our exchange students to dress up in a Yukata to take some photos around the university. About half of them are ones of her standing and waving or smiling, and half of them are her doing ’studenty things’ like waiting at a bus stop.

Here’s one outside the Arts Tower, our biggest building!

I hope these photos are making you think ‘Wow, I really want to go to Sheffield Japan Day 2009!’ They should be. I’m going to be posting some promotional info all over the place, including this blog, in the near future, so please look out for that!

Year 2 Semester 1 Exam Thoughts

Mike — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:10:07 +0000

Finally! No more exams! Feels good! I thought today I’d write about how each part of it went, then let you get on with your lives. So get comfortable and don’t move. Unless you’re in some sort of peril.

Japanese Exam
The exam was three hours long and consisted of three parts. The first was a translation from Japanese to English about dating for old people. Yeah, a weird topic but the idea is we’ll encounter Kanji and vocab we don’t know, and then we’re to either facilitate this in the translation or guess the meaning. In reality this doesn’t work, although I don’t think I went too off the mark. I did however at one point guess a translation as ‘Women leave their husbands, be it because their children leave home, or their husbands die’ and it was a good few seconds before I realised that’s impossible.

Part two was comprehension questions about eco-tourism and the effects of tourism on the countryside. Nothing much to say here, but next time you go to a mountain don’t pick the flora! Otherwise I’ll have to answer questions about you and it’s HARD!

The final part was writing in Japanese. This time we were asked to write about the recycling system of the UK, which as you can imagine was MIND BLOWINGLY interesting.

All in all I think the exam was pretty hard. There was quite a few things in there we’d never seen before and the grammar and Kanji we had learned were used in pretty sneaky ways. I honestly have no idea how it went, but results come out in a few weeks so we’ll find out then!

Japanese Listening & Speaking
The listening was boring so I won’t write about it. For speaking we had to tell a story (yep, I know) about a guy who won the lottery, lost his ticket then found it again. I decided to talk about how he had run up huge gambling debts and winning the lottery was the only way out. When the girl came to his house to give it back, he thanked her, but at the last minute she kept the ticket and bought a boat. The teachers loved it even though I stumbled over a few tricky grammar points. But again I think it was alright.

Japan’s Minorities
Three questions, three hours. I won’t bore you with the details, but I gave mad props to the Okinawans throughout the exam. Those guys must be feeling pretty sweet right now. (At least if they read my essay, which I admit there is little chance of them doing).

Yeah, so this was a boring update. WHAT OF IT?

Japanese Essay & Exam Tomorrow!

Mike — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:05:24 +0000

HAPPY NEW PRESIDENT EVERYONE!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. So glad Obama is in and already making some nice changes.

Of course, it’s hard to think about that when you have an incredibly important exam tomorrow.

That’s right, from 9am until midday I will be in a three hour exam. It consists of an hour of writing an essay in Japanese, an hour of translating Japanese into English, and an hour of answering comprehension questions about a random text. After that I have a short listening exam and a speaking exam next week, plus a 3 hour exam about Japan’s minorities, then I am finished!

Well, until second semester starts on Feb 9th, that is…

In other news, if you enjoy reading essays in Japanese (and who doesn’t?!) then click the link below firmly and be magically transported to my latest Lang-8 essay;

FACEBOOKやエスエヌエス・サイトについて

I’ll be twittering as soon as I can after the exam so keep watching the ‘News…’ section to the right to see how terribly it went. Once I’m back in lectures and out of revision I can start posting again on a regular basis. I promise!

Sheffield’s Arts Tower

Mike — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:03:42 +0000

“In west Sheffield born and raised

In the arts tower is where I spent most of my days”

The Mighty Arts Tower (Click For Fullsize)

Some people have been wondering where I actually study Japanese, here’s your answer – about six to eight floors up, inside this monstrosity. Well, I say monstrosity, the truth is I love this thing, it’s really a shame we’re moving out after Christmas.

Still, it was a little boring heading up 18 floors on Monday mornings last year…

Sheffield University, Year 2

Mike — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 07:16:42 +0000

So I’m back in the UK! The journey itself wasn’t too bad, I watched some great films on the flight (21 & The Kite Runner were both excellent) and I’m reasonably well rested now, although going drinking with my old friends having got off the plane three hours ago was a poor choice, but it was definitely worth it in the end!

University looks great this year. Here’s my exciting timetable;

What I get up to every week

I wrote about exactly what each part of my course consists of here, so I won’t bother doing that again! I’m also working hard with Japan Society this year, as Vice-President, to produce something similar to both Japan Day and our Soran Bushi dance in 2009. I also joined Tae Kwon Do this year, and I’m planning to dedicate myself pretty intensely to it (four training sessions a week!) to vent my rage over complex grammar problems!

So it all kicks off, as you can see from my wonderful timetable up there, at 9am on Monday. Here’s to another good year! In other news, Translation Station 3 is due to appear before too long, stay tuned on Youtube and here!

2nd Year Japanese Studies At Sheffield

Mike — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:06:20 +0000

This entire post is based on things I’ve heard from current 2nd years, been told by various lecturers or read on my university email. I wanted to talk about it as it will give you guys an idea of what we can specialise in, and what I’m going to be waffling on about for the next year!

There are three mandatory modules I take next year. Two of them are core language modules, Japanese Language III (Autumn) and Japanese Language IV (Spring). The other one is similar to last semester’s Understanding Japan module. It’s called Contempary Japanese Society (Spring) and apparently prepares us for our year abroad. Exciting stuff.

What I’m more excited about are the optional modules I’ve chosen. The first, Postwar Japanese Politics, I chose partially because I enjoy writing about politics on this blog, and mainly because although I’ve never had an interest in politics, I think it might be beneficial to have one for the future. Plus, this way I can write even more stupid updates about building underwater trains or whatever.

The second is Japan’s Minorities, an interesting course considering until not long ago the Japanese government issued statements that there are no minorities in Japan. We do in-depth study on Koreans, Ainu and Burakumin amongst others. I really can’t express how excited I am about this module! Who knows, I may even be able to find a little humour somewhere and do an update someday.

I’ve saved the most interesting module for last – Understanding Japan Through Contemporary Texts. The idea is by translating novels, newspapers, journals and blogs, we can learn more about contemporary opinions and so forth. Rumour has it I may even have to swallow my pride and get my nerd hat on, as we will be translating a manga, too.

So there you go. A short and pretty boring update about my course. Why did I post this? Well, if anyone has any interest in how UK university works, or Japanese courses, or if anyone is thinking of coming to Sheffield, they can read this and all their deepest, darkest desires will be fulfilled

If on the other hand you found this boring, normal service resumes soon. See you then.