One observation I’ve made about Japan in the 15+ years I’ve spent there is, they pay a little more attention to music-related culture than we generally do in the States. It’s quite common for Japanese kids to take piano lessons as they go through school, and my own kids went beyond this stage, becoming quite proficient at the clarinet and flute.
Whereas I picked up virtually all my knowledge of the great composers of Europe from Peanuts comics (just 153 days til Beethoven’s birthday!), most Japanese kids I’ve seen know Bach from Beethoven from Brahms.
One of our favorite TV shows each week was called “The Titleless Concert” which aired on Sunday mornings. The host was Kentaro Haneda, a kindly old conductor whose mission was to bring classical music to people in a form that everyone could enjoy — kind of a Carl Sagan of the concerthall.
Maestro Haneda was also a composer who, among many other achievements, wrote virtually all the music for the Macross animated series and movie. Sadly, he passed away last month due to liver cancer. He will be missed by many.
OK, at first this story from Kanagawa reads quite simple:
According to the board of education, the teacher, who is in his 20s, attached the note to the student’s back as punishment after a female student complained that some boys were trying to sneak into their changing room. Without confirming the facts, the teacher accused the boy and made him wear the note which read: “I am an idiot. I tried but failed to sneak into the girls’ changing room.”
Teacher punished for pinning humiliating note on student’s back, yes, I can see why he might merit being disciplined.
However, at no point in the article is there any comment on the fact that the said teacher pulled the student up about his failure to spy on girls getting nekkid. We can only assume had he succeeded then teacher would have given him a gold star.
The teaching of eikaiwa, or English conversation, is quite an industry in Japan, and there are many schools where people of all ages can learn the language, usually for around $100 a month for four weekly lessons.
Although there are many small schools offering ESL, usually also operating after-hours tutoring schools (juku) on the side, the market tends to be dominated by the chains of English schools like Aeon, Geos, ECC, and the largest, Nova. These large schools promise “a study-abroad experience right in front of your local train station,” a tempting proposition for the estimated 1 million Japanese wanting to practice speaking English with a native speaker.
Although I’ve had teacher friends who had good experiences working for companies like Nova, when people ask me for information on teaching in Japan I generally steer them away from these “McEnglish” chains. The business practices of the schools often leave a lot to be desired, including overworking teachers and keeping them on short-term contracts unnecessarily, and structuring “discounts” for students that result in them signing unbreakable contracts for 2-3 years of lessons.
Now it seems the bad karma of the school is coming back to bite Nova on its pink rabbit ears, as the government has ordered them to stop signing up new customers for six months as a penalty for such misdeeds.
Another government is taking issue with Japanese revision of World War II history, but this time it’s not Korea or China, but the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly. Okinawa is opposing the national government’s orders to textbook publishers to delete references to the fact that the Japanese Imperial Army forced Okinawan civilians to commit suicide during the closing days of WWII.
The prefectural assembly’s move is in response to an earlier Education Ministry decision that ordered publishers to revise textbook references about the mass suicide of Okinawans during World War II battles.
The assembly also plans to ask the government to allow publishers to reinstate in textbooks descriptions of the mass suicide.
Several assembly members from the prefecture plan to directly inform Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Bunmei Ibuki.
A recent story in Kyodo News says elementary school student attendance will be taken at school gates with IC tags embedded in their nameplates, according to a far-seeing education ministry projection of life in 2015:
In science class, children will take pictures of flowers using digital cameras during field work and directly ask curators about the flowers via TV monitors eight years later. Student computers will automatically show them the correct answers to their computation problems and students will be able to appreciate paintings on large, high-definition elevisions in the classroom. After going home, they will receive study materials on their computers or mobile phones for their homework, according to the panel.
That’s supposed to be something like science fiction, but isn’t that about how things are right now anyway? Haven’t those IC tags been used in department stores and libraries for eons to stop people from stealing things?
And I recall a friend telling me way back in 1982 (that’s 25 years ago) when his brother had to go to the Falkland Islands War that they all had barcodes on their sleeves so that everyone could just be scanned when they got on airplanes or had to be buried or whatever.
But maybe not everyone is as wired as we generally think even now? And according to the education ministry, for the same old reason: “It remains difficult to realize such future visions as deployment of computers at schools. It is behind schedule due mainly to financial problems in promoting the government’s information technology strategy.”
And I think I read somewhere that when civil servants say something is “difficult” it means that they can’t or won’t do it?
There are many theories out there concerning the origins of mankind, some more plausible than others. And I don’t know which one you were taught, but I bet it wasn’t this one.
A dance studio in Taiwan is teaching housewives and other women the art of stripping to music. The purpose of the classes is to: “help women appreciate their bodies, discover their ’sexy charms’ and boost their self-confidence.”
“All women want to feel sexy, charming and attractive. I tell my students that they are dancing for themselves because they like themselves and they are confident in themselves,” [says Nina Chen, who runs the school].
“In the process of stripping they can re-examine their bodies and explore the sexy sides in them. I think a woman regardless of her figure can be sexy if she wants to be,” she said.
According to Chen, some of the women attend the classes just for fun, while others hope to spice up relationships or marriages.
According to one student:
“I used to worry too much about how people think of me and I was not satisfied with the way I looked. At this class I learn to appreciate the curves of my body from different angles and I am more at ease.”
Since the day Nintendo showcased the features of the DS, I was expecting such a thing to happen in Japanese schools. The DS will be used in junior high schools in Yawata, Kyoto, during English courses to help students improve their lexicon. I’d say it is rather an intelligent move to introduce new ways of learning , boosting hence students motivation and disposition to learn a foreign language.
When Nintendo DS consoles were handed to third-year junior high school students as part of an experiment using English vocabulary training software, the students’ English vocabulary increased by an average of about 40 percent over five months.
Indeed the Nintendo DS can be an excellent learning tool,but then schools should make sure that kids aren’t hiding a Pokemon cartridge in their pockets, as this wouldn’t be really what the board of education wants!
The All Japan High School Athletic Federation has decided to ban students from other countries from the first leg of the national high school ekiden marathon relay. The ban is most likely aimed at a number of schools who have students from Kenya, which is known for its strength in long-distance running events.
Teams are already limited to one foreign student per team, but until now teams normally had their foreign entries running the longest leg of each race, allegedly giving such teams an advantage.
At a New York policy research institute in 1997, Seiko Yamazaki, a chief researcher of Dentsu Communication Institute, lectured on why irreligious Japanese were able to keep high moral standards.
“[For instance,] Japanese people believe that you will certainly feel a backlash if you spit or throw a stone at something,” she told the audience there.
Japanese developed such self-discipline in a society where everybody had similar values and lifestyles and shared a give-and-take attitude, according to Yamazaki.
Ten years have passed since that speech. In 2005-07, Yamazaki and her colleagues conducted an international survey on values and found that the percentage of Japanese who said it was important to help one another was the second lowest among the 18 countries surveyed.
“What kind of people are we Japanese becoming?” Yamazaki lamented.
Got a note from Rich, over at the International University of Japan in Niigata, informing us that he and his classmates have unofficially (pending certification) smashed the world record for simultaneously packing people of the most nationalities into a sauna.
Marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of IUJ, 12 women and 38 men representing 50 different countries, from Argentina to Zambia, spent at least five minutes in a sauna to break the previous record of 38 nationalities, which was set in October 2004 in Kobe.
Japan is a country that’s very focused on education, and I’ve always observed that parents seem to put more energy and thought into educating children than I’ve generally seen in the U.S. To improve the communication between parents and the school, teachers always make a visit at the beginning of the school year, to see what the child’s home environment is like and talk over any concerns with parents, and our daughter’s teacher came by yesterday.
Our daughter is haafu (half), but with a very expressive and individualistic American side, which can sometimes present challenges in the otherwise homogenous classroom, including minor ijime (bullying) by the other kids who say things like “Sorry, I don’t understand English” when she talks to them in Japanese. (Kids will be kids, and I got the same treatment when I lived in New Zealand for a year at the age of six.)
This year we have an extra problem, as the fifth graders will be taking a school trip to the Sea of Japan during the summer break in August, but our kids will be in the U.S. doing fun things and learning English instead. If my daughter is the only one in her class who doesn’t go, it’ll make her nakama-hazure, or a person outside the group, and her teacher was putting pressure on us to change our plans for the summer.
It’s a difficult decision, and probably only one that could only come up in a country that values harmony as much as Japan does.
I know if it were me, I would absolutly hate to participate in one of these. Talk about stress! If you fail, you’re making your country look bad. Or at least that’s a possible mindset one could reasonably have … Click here to check out the Japan Times story.
Here is a portion of the article:
The education ministry Tuesday will conduct its first National Assessment of Academic Ability in 43 years. The nationwide test is designed to check academic achievement in elementary school sixth-graders and third-year junior high school students.
The results will give the ministry vital information on academic performance and will pressure both schools and students to improve. Some experts, however, are concerned that the results may allow the public to rank the schools and that the resulting competition will become excessive and produce negative effects.
Tokyo metropolitan board of education has punished a total of 35 school teachers for refusing to stand up and sing the national anthem (called Kimigayo) while the national flag (Hinomaru) is present Kyodo News reported.
Out of the 35 teachers who were punished 3 of them were suspended from school for one, three and six months, respectively, and 12 others received pay cuts, while 20 of the teachers were given a slap on the wrist.
The teachers claim that they are refusing to do so because its too militaristic. The board of education however claims that its simply demonstrating pride and respect in one’s country. Here is a portion if the Kyodo News report:
The move has brought the total number of teachers in Tokyo reprimanded over the Kimigayo and Hinomaru issue to 381 since the education board in 2003 notified teachers at public schools that they could face punishment if they refuse to give respect to the flag and the anthem during school ceremonies.
Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, who took office in 1999 and is seeking a third four-year term in the April 8 gubernatorial election, declined to comment on the education board’s decision but sounded a supportive note at a press conference Friday.
“I’m not authorized to make objections to the education board” as it is an independent entity, he said, adding, “Public school teachers are public servants receiving salaries from taxpayers’ money. I doubt whether it’s right for a teacher, for example, to decline to play the piano (accompaniment for the anthem).”
Japan’s first internet-based university opened Sunday 1st April, kicking off with an opening ceremony in Fukuoka, transmitted in real time to students’ computers. Cyber University was established by a company called Japan Cyber Educational Institute , aiming to provide lessons to students via internet. Featuring two departements, information technology and world heritage, the four years university allow its students unparalleled flexibility, as they can take the lessons whenever and wherever they feel like doing so. I have never tried e-learning, but this definitely sounds cool and practical! (source: Kyodo news)
Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy in cooperation with Sapporo Higashi High School will be launching a new version of Licca (a kind of Japanese Barbie doll) dressed in the uniform of the Hokkaido high school.
Scheduled for release in May and priced at 2,500, the Sapporo High Licca will be sold only to past and current students, and individuals who are directly associated with the Hokkaido Prefectural Sapporo Higashi High School.
Reportedly, Licca’s skirt is so short that she probably would be sent home from school if she showed up wearing it at Sapporo Higashi High School.
“We thought that it would be a bit old-fashioned if we gave her a long skirt,” Yukiko Uchida, a member of the school’s PTA, said.
With PTA members like this whose top priority is fashionable, it should not come as a surprise that many Japanese schoolgirls run around dressed as if they have just walked out of a porn flick.
In a story that has been banging around in Tokyo for quite a while but just seems to be coming to a head (just in time for the election), a group of French, Canadian and Japanese people have decided to file suit against the Tokyo metropolitan government over Governor Shintaro Ishihara’s “official” remarks in 2004 the French language.
In the latest suit filed with the Tokyo District Court, the group of 74 plaintiffs is seeking 50,000 yen each in damages as well as an apology advertisement from the capital’s government over Ishihara’s remarks in October 2004 that “French is disqualified as an international language because it is a language which cannot count numbers.”
Ishihara also said, “Tokyo Metropolitan University had eight French lecturers but no student to take their courses,” according to the petition.
An advisory panel has recommended to Japan’s education minister that the central government should take a more active role in public education. The recommendations of the panel are basically in line with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s view that compulsory education should promote love for the homeland and instill patriotism.
As a majority opinion, the council proposed that the education minister be allowed to issue “redress orders” to local governments when there is a violation of the education administration law, but some council members opposed the idea, saying it would contradict the trend of decentralizing administrative powers.
The panel also considered a proposal to allow boards of education to “instruct, advise and support” private schools as well, but backed off a bit when faced with opposition from the private school industry. The final proposal said that boards of education should only “advise and support” private schools.
A U.S. listener of Japan Talk who teaches high school English and Drama teaches a film series twice a year. Currently he shows Kurosawa’s “Dreams” and the French film “Hiroshima, mon amour,” both of which are pretty serious films.
He asks if JAPUNDIT readers might be able to suggest some school-appropriate Japanese comedies to show for his film series.
Female members of a Japanese TV show called Gravure Idol Academy for Girls (broadcast on Fuji BS) recently held a press conference in Akihabara to announce the release of a set of five DVDs featuring the girls in various poses. During the press conference the ladies donned various costumes, including schoolgirl uniforms and bikinis.
On the Gravure Idol Academy for Girls program, which is hosted by Junji Takada who plays the headmaster of the school, the girls play the roles of students. The show features talk segments and fortune telling, along with behind-the-scene shots of gravure photo shots.
A recent 
Since the day Nintendo showcased the features of the DS, I was expecting 
Got a note from Rich, over at the 
Japan’s first internet-based university opened Sunday 1st April, kicking off with an opening ceremony in Fukuoka, transmitted in real time to students’ computers. 
Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy in cooperation with Sapporo Higashi High School will be launching a new version of 
