JET alums who work on “human trafficking” issues?
Career, Networking 
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Are there any JET alums out there who work on or are somehow involved in dealing with or researching or reporting on the issue of human trafficking?
I’ve received an inquiry from a current JET who is interested in working in this field and would appreciate the opportunity to talk or email with any JET alums currently working on this issue.
You can just send an email to jetwit @ jetwit .com if you’re willing to be contacted.
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.
-Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94)
Event: Entrepreneurship in Japan – The 11th Annual Mitsui USA Symposium – Tues, April 6 (NYC)
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Thanks to former JETAA NY President Jennifer Olayon of the Center on Japanese Economy & Business at Columbia Business School:
Entrepreneurship in Japan — The 11th Annual Mitsui USA Symposium
http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/entrepreneurship/events/entrepinjapan
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 6:00-7:30 pm (reception to follow)
Uris 301, Columbia Business School
Speakers include:
- Ernest Higa, MBA ’76, Chairman and CEO of Higa International Co., Ltd.
- Atsushi Imuta, Founder and CEO of RISA Partners
- Kohei Nishiyama, Founder and CEO of elephant design co., ltd.
RSVP: http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/entrepreneurship/events/entrepinjapan
Roland Kelts to speak at “Anime Boston” – Sat., April 3
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Hey JETAA New England! Join Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, at Anime Boston this coming weekend for a Japanamerica talk and book-signing session Saturday, April 3, @ 1:30 p.m. in the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston.
JETAA DC elects new officers
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Here are the JETAA DC officers for the upcoming year:
President – *Mac Maloney*
VP – *Nick Harling*
Treasurer – *Noah Kohan*
Secretary – *Amanda Morken*
Outreach Chair – *Leigh Ann Mastrini*
Returnee Handbook Chair – *Susan Leszewski*
Newsletter – *Shannon Hosmer*
Online Chair – *Vanessa Young*
Social – *Becky Solem*
Social – *Rachel Tuil*
Job: US-Japan Council – Manager/Administrative Assistant Position Opening (D.C.)
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Via Saki Takasu of The U.S.-Japan Council (usjapancouncil.org):
Employer: The U.S.-Japan Council
Title: Office Manager/Administrative Assistant
Responsibilities: The Office Manager/Administrative Assistant will be an integral part of a small staff team in a new nonprofit membership organization focused on U.S.-Japan relations. The position will have primary responsibility for Council office administrative operations including bookkeeping, office management, organizational support for the President and Board members and some program support. The position requires an individual who is flexible, able to multi-task and prioritize, proactive, well-organized, able to plan and meet deadlines and comfortable working independently and as part of a team. The duties include but are not limited to the following: Read More
Elementary ALTs sought by RCS (Matsumoto)
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Via the Naganojet Yahoo group:
Real Communication Solution (RCS) is looking for full-time ALTs for elementary schools.
Job Details:
*Monday to Friday 8:30 to 4:30
*Contract period from April 2010 to March 2011
*Salary to be determined based on experience 210,000~240,000
Chauffeur needed at Consulate General of Japan (SF)
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Via the JETAANC Yahoo group:
The Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco has an opening for a Chauffeur that will begin from May 2010. Please note that the Consulate is unable to provide visa support for prospective employees, and as such all applicants are required to have the appropriate legal permission to work in the United States.
Duties include:
* Driving official car
* Taking care of official cars
* Assisting various administrative tasks
Read More
Via the Iwateminions Yahoo group:
NPO Zenrinkan, one of the older English conversation schools in Morioka is in need of a new teacher from June/July! It’s a great place to work, and well established, having been around for 60 years. You get a lot of control over your classes, and classes are fairly small, around 4 students on average.
The salary starts at 250,000 yen per month, and then deductions are taken out for taxes and national health insurance. You get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year, and can take it nearly any time, although they do encourage you to take it during breaks from classes. Zenrinkan will also sponsor any new hire that needs a visa. The typical week is 38 hours of office time, which includes 22 class hours. Those classes are about 1/2 kids classes, and 1/2 adult conversation classes, with a couple college classes and yochien lessons included a few times a month.
If you are interested, please feel free to e-mail a cover letter and resume to Nobuko Sano at class@zenrinkan.com or to Alicia Ferong at aferong@gmail.com.
WIT Life #84: 国勢調査
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
We are rapidly coming up on the deadline for the 国勢調査 (kokusei chousa) or national census, so I hope everyone has already filled in and returned their forms. Every morning during the Japanese news there are advertisements running in Japanese advocating participation in the census as one’s civic duty. Also, I have come across some interesting Japanese language print ads that I would like to share.
The one on the right shows Read More
Job: Copywriting & Bloggers for Japanese tech blog
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Want to write for a Japanese electronics/gadgets retailer? Read on for some freelancing opportunities:
We at CScout Japan are currently looking to recruit some new copywriters for one of our clients, an online retailer based in Japan. This is a great opportunity to hone your copywriting skills editing content in several areas.
Job 1
Japan Trend Shop sells select Japanese gadgets, cool designer accessories, wacky toys and more to customers all around the world. Your job would be to write copy that accurately describes products in an exciting way. Sometimes these products might be hard to understand for non-Japanese audiences, so part of your job would be using words to traverse those cultural gaps. You would also be preparing images and video links to accompany the text.Job 2
As above you would be writing copy for products, but this time for Kanojo Toys, a specialist adult online store. We are also looking for people who can write for the shop’s blog, in which you will report on the seedy Tokyo underworld, covering unique stories, idol news, and JAV gossip.Who
We want you if you are based in Japan (preferably Tokyo) and are enthusiastic about Japanese products. You may be a geek, a design fan or just adore hi-tech gadgets. Whatever you are into, you will love writing about it. You are a web-savvy person who likes blogging and image editing. As you will be researching in Japanese, your language skills should also be good.Requirements
You need to have a valid working visa and be based in Tokyo (or least Japan). Equally important, though, is having a good ear (and eye) for how to sell cool Japanese stuff to an overseas market.Payment
You’re not going to get rich, but payment will be per piece. Strong experience and skills will be rewarded with higher reimbursement. Further, there may be opportunities to expand into working with us in other projects from research to marketing.Apply
Please email your information to contact (at) cscoutjapan.com, with “Copywriter application” in the subject line. We look forward to hearing from you!
Jobs: Sales Associates at Japanese Firms (Los Angeles, San Francisco)
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In Japan, the month of April means the start of corporate recruiting, 就職活動, especially for college graduates. For those interested in traditional Japanese trading companies like Mitsui or Itochu, for the large international Japanese firms like Sony, or American companies like Abercrombie & Fitch that are opening new branches in Japan, Career Forum is your best source for job listings and events.
Here are two U.S.-based positions for entry-level, full-time sales representatives:
Bilingual Japanese Sales Associate for NISHIMOTO TRADING in Los Angeles (and others)
Sales Representative for TRUE WORLD FOODS in San Francisco
For more information on qualifications, salary bases and how to apply, please click those two links above. Registration is required to apply.
Bankruptcy Man vs. Mortgantua, Part 7 – by Steven Horowitz
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Bankruptcy Man and Bankruptcy Bill are cartoons created by Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94) and Gideon Kendall. For more cartoons, original bankruptcy haiku and even a bankruptcy country song, go to bankruptcybill.us.
Do you work in bankruptcy or restructuring? Now you can join the JET Alumni Restructuring & Bankruptcy Group on LinkedIn.
Additionally, if anyone would like to take a stab at translating the cartoon into Japanese for JetWit’s Japanese fans out there, feel free to post in the comments section of this post. Some cultural explanation might be helpful as well, given that Japanese bankruptcy laws are very different than the U.S.
WIT Life #83: Japan in the news and in film
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
The Wall Street Journal had some interesting Japan coverage this week. One article from earlier in the week discusses tactics being employed to get the Japanese populace turned on to fish again, as its popularity has declined due to factors such as smell, price and preparation. It has gotten to the point where fishery officials have started sending instructors to schools in order to teach children how to eat fish with chopsticks, and fish is being promoted in pop culture by characters such as Sakana-kun (on right saying “Let’s eat delicious fish with Sakana-kun!”).
Another article focuses on Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII, and how they got through this ordeal by forming swing bands. This legacy is being preserved through a tribute band called Minidoka Swing Band, with members who were internees as well as others who have no ties to the camps (check out the video, they’re talented!).
Speaking of the internment, this weekend was the 3rd annual New York Peace Film Festival which featured Read More
Tom Baker reviews “Cirque du Freak” manga
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Tom Baker (Chiba-ken, 1989-91) is a staff writer for The Daily Yomiuri. He usually writes for DYWeekend, the paper’s arts and leisure section. You can follow Tom’s blog at tokyotombaker.wordpress.com.
He recently reviewed manga series “Cirque du Freak” by manga artist Takahiro Arai, comparing it to the series of novels on which it is based, and also commenting on the recent Hollywood movie version, which opened in Japan this month. Here is an excerpt:
Mangaka Takahiro Arai probably doesn’t look like a frog in real life, but he draws himself as one in the autobiographical bonus pages at the end of each volume of his manga series Cirque du Freak.
The manga is based on a series of kids novels by Darren Shan (the pen name of Irish author Darren O’Shaughnessy), and the poor little frog is shown sweating bullets at the thought of adapting the popular works–especially at such length. “I had only drawn self-contained short stories before this,” the Arai-frog confesses.
The material he had to work with is the story of a boy, also named Darren Shan, who gets mixed up with a traveling freak show that includes a vampire named Mr. Crepsley. Darren is basically a good kid, but he engages in a bit of juvenile delinquency that includes stealing the vampire’s pet spider–a life-changing mistake. It leads to his indenture as the vampire’s assistant, a position that takes some getting used to.
Reading the manga also takes some getting used to, as the big-eyed cuteness of the characters, and the silliness of Mr. Crepsley’s stage outfit, which makes him look like a cross between a flamboyant X-Man and the Cat in the Hat, initially neutralize the story’s darker elements.
Darren has to become a “half-vampire” to work with Mr. Crepsley, an arrangement he agrees to only to get the vampire’s help in saving the life of a friend whom Darren has accidentally allowed the venomous stolen spider to bite.
In the first novel of Shan’s series, the scene in which Darren is transformed by Mr. Crepsley is slowly drawn out. The reader has plenty of time to reflect that a strange man coercing a barely adolescent boy into exchanging bodily fluids and then running away from home is seriously creepy on more than one level. But the same scene is quick and perfunctory in the manga.
Fortunately, Arai more than hits his stride as the series continues.
Some of Shan’s humor is very black, such as in a scene when a misguided animal-rights activist named R.V. lets a wolf-man out of its cage and is dismembered for his efforts. Arai’s pacing here is much improved: He builds tension over several pages as Darren tries to stop R.V., and then lets the reader turn one more page to see the scene suddenly climax in a spectacular eruption of gore.
But later the escaped beast kills one of Darren’s friends, an event that the book and the manga treat as not funny at all. Here those big eyes that Arai has been drawing finally find their purpose, brimming over with tears in a scene that really is touching.
Arai shows the monster grabbing his victim by the ankle in a frame that visually echoes an earlier one in which the doomed boy had grabbed Darren in the very same way as part of a practical joke.
And as Darren loses consciousness, exhausted by his failed fight to save his friend, we see his view of the world fade out in a series of tilted frames that get smaller and darker as they literally tumble off the bottom of the page, in a highly effective example of the frame-manipulating techniques that Osamu Tezuka was also known for.
Many scenes, such as Darren’s first date with a girl, are made more believable by Arai’s well-drawn facial expressions than by Shan’s bare-bones prose.
Read the rest of the article here.
Doing Business with China / Asian Networking (03/29)
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Jon Hills runs JETAANY’s Nihongo Dake Dinner. It’s one of the few regular Japanese events in New York City designed to bring both Japanese and non-native Japanese speakers together. He’s also the founder of Hills Learning (http://www.hillslearning.com), a language school based in Grand Central, New York City, that runs Asian Networking Events monthly.
On March 29 2010, Hills Learning will host an Asian Networking Event called “Doing Business with China.” This is to promote the exchange between people who are interested in Asian languages and cultures. Hills Learning is a language school that teaches Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English.
To RSVP, please send an email to events@hillslearning.com. For more information, please visit Doing Business with China
The guest speaker is the CEO of US China Partners, a company that has advised Fortune 500 companies on entering the Chinese market. His commentary will include the recent experiences with Google and China, and past experiences of what has worked when building US / China strategic partnerships.
Co-sponsor, Two Rivers Associates, was established in 2008 to assist small- and medium-size business owners grow their businesses between Asia and North America. “Two Rivers” represents not only our location, in Manhattan between the East River and Hudson River, but also our client and our staff, the convergence of creative ideas and actions, and the resulting synergy that is generated toward the creation of a better future.
