Japan Seeks Changes in Education (video)

Japan is still a place where education is respected, and most people here understand the path to a good future begins here in elementary and secondary schools.  But after teaching here for 3 years now, I think there's some room for improvement....

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WWE in TKO!!

This is WWE a Ryogoku gikan!!

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Facebook×日本

Looks like Facebook is making it's push into JapanLand in earnest now...  

If you want the most attention as an internet site in Japan, you NEED a mobile presence.  Twitter didn't gain traction until they got with the program....  

Who would have thought that Twitter would have become such a huge hit in Japan – well it has and this is evident from the millions who mumble online. The reason why people are shocked at Twitter’s popularity in this country is because another social networking site already tried its luck there – Facebook.

It is no secret that Japanese are busy people, so it was no wonder that Twitter would become a hit. Twitter offered its Japanese service back in 2008 and since then has become popular with the younger generation. Then it was October 2009 when Twitter released its mobile version in Japan, this opened the micro-blogging site up to a much bigger market.

Twitter has become a huge part of Japanese life, being used on TV shows, in schools where students are taught how to tweet, and all the latest Celebes in the country are also tweeting. According to Yuri Kageyama from the Canadian Press, 16.3 percent of Internet users in Japan are said to be using Twitter – that’s compared to 9.8 percent in the U.S.

Twitter has managed to do what Facebook could not, but the micro-blogging site now has to battle Mixi. However, both social networking services are running neck-and-neck.

From Product Reviews Net-- http://j.mp/9fXU3A

So now it seems Facebook is throwing its weight into the mobile space.  Can it work?  Well 6 months ago Twitted got with the Japanese Mobile Consortium and overhauled it's mobile site... 80% of Japanese twitter users are using a mobile to tweet, y'know.  Let's see if Facebook can hook it up...  They already support emoji BTW! ♥☀☁

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Another excuse to look at teen girls in sailor suits: Japan's Idol Groups

OK, so I'm guilty of thinking that Japanese girls wearing sailor suit school uniforms, running along the Japanese streetscape are cute...
Whatever lolita complex claims you have against me aside, this is a catchy tune about summertime from the Nagoya branch of AKB48, called SKE48.

SKE48 Team KII performing at the World Cosplay Summit 2010

SKE48 is an all-female Japanese theater/idol group produced by Yasushi Akimoto. The audition was held during the summer and debuted in October 2008. SKE48 performs in the newly built studio in the renovated Sunshine Sakae in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, every Saturday. The first SKE48 stage was a revival of Team A's Party ga Hajimaru yo.
Akimoto was offered the chance to start a production in Nagoya along with the renewal of the Sunshine Sakae, when he was thinking of making his "48 project" a nationwide project. He had a couple of offers even from outside of Japan, so he decided to use Nagoya as the place to move on with the project. Akimoto has said that selected members from both AKB48 and SKE48 may release a single, rather than releasing two different singles.^[1] But they released their first single in 2009.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a song by their sister group from Tokyo, AKB48...  あたしいの制服はジャマをする, or "My School Uniform is Getting in the Way"

Before you start flaming me, remember what it was like to be in high school yourself?  I was the only one of my friends with a car and not-so-strict parents, so I could hang out even on a school night...  But my friends usually couldn't, and ESPECIALLY girls I was dating, so I ended up going home early anyway...  Again Japanese teenagers are just like teens everywhere else--in a hurry to be adults. What I didn't understand then though is that becoming an adult meant more crap I gotta do...  I wish I was a damn teenager or younger again now!!

Some info about AKB48...

AKB48 performing in Osaka, Japan, 2009.

AKB48 is an all-female Japanese theater/idol group produced by Yasushi Akimoto. Unlike other idol groups in Japan, AKB48 is theater-based and have their own theater in Akihabara (a district in Tokyo) where they perform once every weekday, and more than once on both Saturday and Sunday. The theater is set up on the 8th floor of Don Quijote. Some of the title songs released as a single have been made a tie-in song for a television show or a television advertisement. The name derives from a shortened, Romanized representation of 'Akihabara'.
AKB48 is divided into three teams: Team A, Team K and Team B. Currently, there are 16 members in Team A, 16 members in Team K, and 16 members in Team B, getting to the total of 48 members in AKB48. Minami Takahashi is the captain of Team A, Sayaka Akimoto is the captain of Team K, and Yuki Kashiwagi is the captain of Team B.
Again, from Wikipedia

All this aside, what are your feelings about Japan teen idol groups?  When I first moved here, there was Morning Musume...  They've grown now to covering China!  I never did understand that one, but I have lots of friends that had posters, CDs and DVDs of them...  Whether you're Japanese or Gaijin, tell me what you think about this!

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African American Vernacular English, AKA "Ebonics"

AAVE grammatical Aspects

Aspect	Example	SE Meaning
Habitual/continuative aspect[54]	He be workin' Tuesdays.	He works frequently or habitually.
Intensified continuative (habitual)	He stay workin'.	He is always working.
Intensified continuative (not habitual)[55]	He steady workin'.	He keeps on working.
Perfect progressive	He been workin'.	He has been working.
Irrealis	He finna go to work.	He is about to go to work.a

via en.wikipedia.org

I get asked a ton of questions from Japanese learning English like, "Why is African-American English so much harder to understand than 'normal' English?"

Well I could go into the whole slavery-creole-no-real-education-for-blacks-at-that-time thing, but I think there's a more studied answer that I can give my students... Hence me looking on Wikipedia...

After reading this, I'm convinced--There must be at least 100 linguists that got their PhDs from hanging out in a North St. Louis liquor store...

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Documentary time -> Zeitgeist: Addendum

Along the lines of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, this film examines the interglobal economic system and how it's designed to subjugate and subvert.
Makes it that much easier to understand how we're all screwed just for being consumers in this system... and how 90% of the world's economy is nonexistent.
Thanx @dshype3 for this eye-opening tweet.

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2010 World Cosplay Summit (PIX)

I coverered the 2010 World Cosplay Summit for RAN magazine and The Japan Times. 

 

This past weekend, the biggest event for lovers of anime and manga hit Nagoya, the 2010 World Cosplay Summit, sponsored by TV Aichi.

The "World Cosplay Summit" was created to promote international exchange through the Japanese youth culture of manga and anime.
The free and dynamic nature of manga was instrumental in the birth of cosplay. Nowadays youth from around the world find this as a common language and a dynamic new form of global interaction. The World Cosplay Summit began in Osu, Nagoya and has grown to include 15 countries from around the world. If you count audience and participants at each preliminary event, the number of people involved is now in the 100s of thousands.

For youth who have discovered Japan through manga and experienced Japanese culture through the medium of the World Cosplay Summit, we endeavor to continue the development of this new form of international exchange.

Expect a full write up in RANmagazine next issue, but we've got pix and vid right here for you, starting with the pix I took at the events.  Check the goods below... 

 Coming next-- VIDEO of the competition!

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Easiest way to #jailbreak #iPhones

Www.jailbreakme.com
----
It's real, and it works! 〓

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