JET-Popp: Yokohama Children`s Book Conference
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Laura Popp (Mie-ken, 2009-Present) is a current JET who writes fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults, and is an occasional playwright/film maker. Her short work includes a short story titled “In theShadow Realm” and a documentary she made in Malawi. To read about her amazing adventures all over Japan, go to her blog at laurajanepopp.blogspot.com. (And check out the Authors/Books section of the JetWit Library for a list of more writers in the JET-o-sphere.)
Hello again! This week I would like to report on the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference in Yokohama. It actually occurred on November 14th, but, alas, I have been ill with swine flu and other “opportunistic infections” so I was unable to report. But now you get to hear all about it!
For those of you who don`t know, SCBWI is a great group to get involved with if you write for kids. They have lots of events, critique groups, contests, and resources. Here is their website: http://www.scbwi.jp/
A note on transportation. There are many events for writers and translators in Japan, but most are confined to the big cities. For those of you who live in a small town like me, you may be wondering how you will ever get to this wonderful career-building opportunities and still stay within your tight school-teacher budget. Fear not!
There is a wonderful, often overlooked form of transportation in Japan called the night bus. It may seem like a pain, but the bus I took from my home in Nabari to Yokohama was very comfortable. The bus ride was about eight hours, so if I were more accustomed to sleeping on a bus, I probably could have been well rested when we arrived very early in the morning. The earliness gave me plenty of time for sightseeing before the conference, and since my bus home didn`t leave until 11:00pm. Plus it cost less than half than taking the shinkansen, and there`s no need to pay for a hotel!
That said, I was very tired when I arrived back in Nabari at 7:00am. Fortunately it was Sunday, but I would not recommend taking the night bus if you have to go to work the next day. Also, be warned, not all night buses are created equal. Check to see if the bus you want to ride has reclining seats or not, and if there is a bathroom on board or if they stop ever few hours, turn on the lights, and have people jostling past you trying to get in and out constantly. If you are interested in taking a night bus somewhere, I would recommend contacting the main bus station in your town. Most of them don’t speak English, but a Japanese friend helped me get the information and make reservations over the phone. You may be surprised how many places offer night buses to common destinations such as Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, etc.
(FYI, Yokohama is famous for its Read More
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Translator/Interpreter/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
政権交代 (seiken koutai) or “change of government,” was announced to be the winner of Japan’s 2009 Buzzword Award on December 1 (Incidentally, last year the title was won by 「アラフォー」 or “around 40 years old”). This phrase of course refers to the rise to power by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), overturning over 50 years of Liberal Democratic Party rule. Other contenders for the buzzword title were 新型インフルエンザ (shingata influenza) or “new flu” and 草食男子 (soushoku danshi) or “herbivorous men.”
Since the change in administration, Hatoyama has been dealing with 3Ks. However, this is not referring to the typical usage regarding undesirable 3K jobs that are kitsui (difficult), kitanai (dirty) and kiken (dangerous). Hatoyama’s very own 3 K’s are kenkin (contribution), keizai (economics), and kichi (military base).
The first K is in regard to a donation scandal plaguing the new Prime Minister. Prosecutors have traced Read More
Sake World e-Newsletter by John Gauntner (November 2009 #2)
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The November 2009 (#2) issue of the Sake World E-mail Newsletter by JET alum and leading sake expert John Gauntner (aka “The Sake Guy”) is now available online. In this issue:
Tasting with Mr. T
Did You Know? Sake Brand Name Characters
New Section: Sake Basics – Junmai-shu
Guided Sakagura Tours
Sake Professional Courses in Japan: Last Call!
Holiday Gift Idea: Announcing The Sake Dictionary!!!
Odds-n-Ends
Additional links:
Sake World Website
More About Us
Archive
Roland Kelts article in “Psychology Today”
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Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, wrote this story about Japan’s unique generation gap for Psychology Today. According to Roland, “things keep changing, but the fundamentals remain the same. Japanese youth are enacting a kind of Bartelby Rebeillion–checking out, passively, to check in.”
Here’s the link to the post: http://japanamerica.blogspot.com/2009/12/psychology-today.html
Hiroshima-ken JET Gail Meadows is Editor of Hiroshima JET webzine the Wide Island View and a regular JetWit contributor who writes the Japan America Society Roundup.
This Thanksgiving I’d like to share with you a story about an experience that one Hiroshima JET was very grateful to have during his time in Japan. This story made headlines in Japanese newspapers in Hiroshima and Niigata prefectures in the summer of 2008, and now we’ve published it in the Wide Island View. My eyes well up every time I read it! I believe that this is one extraordinary example of a JET reaching out and connecting with the Japanese community. So without further ado, let’s begin…
By Aaron Sponseller
As I exited Nagaoka Station, I had no idea what would happen over the course of the next several hours. After taking an all-night bus trip from Hiroshima to Tokyo and then hopping on a train for another couple hours to reach this city in Niigata Prefecture, my wife, Tomoko, and I were tired yet enthusiastic to see how this day I had long-awaited would turn out.
We had come to Nagaoka to finish something that was long overdue. My grandfather served in the United States Army for the entire duration of World War II. In the spring of 1945, in the Philippines, he came into possession of a Japanese war flag.
When enemy soldiers were captured, they were stripped of all their gear and military issued clothing. It was not unusual for their captors to take these objects and keep them as souvenirs. Allied soldiers would take Nazi paraphernalia back to their home countries in the European Theatre; they did the same thing with Japanese paraphernalia in the Pacific. Japanese swords, katana, were prized as souvenirs. However, getting a sword back to the U.S. may have proven difficult, so many soldiers looked for smaller or more easily smuggled items. Less conspicuous items. One of the most common items to smuggle home was a Japanese flag.
Before heading to war, most Japanese soldiers took part in a ceremony of some kind that marked their departure. These ceremonies were typically held at Shinto shrines around Japan, with each ceremony marking the departure of several soldiers. During the ceremony, most soldiers were presented with a medium-sized Japanese flag (just the traditional white flag with a red “sun” in the middle). The flags were usually written on, however. The top of the flag read 「武運長久」(pronounced bu-un cho-kyu). This translates to something along the lines of “continued luck in battle.” The flag would also have the name of the soldier on it in large characters, as well as the name of the person at the ceremony who presented that flag to the soldier. The presenter was typically someone important to the soldier such as a boss or a good friend. Around the red sun were the hand-written names of the soldier’s friends or family or otherwise important people. The soldiers carried these flags with them throughout the war as reminders of who they were fighting for.
So, in the spring of 1945, in the Philippines, my grandfather found himself in possession of one such flag. Another soldier had quite a few flags and just gave one to my grandfather. Before I moved to Japan, my grandfather told me “I’ve wanted, for some time, to try to return the flag to the family to which it belongs. But I have no idea how you go about doing anything like that.”
Click here for the rest of the article…
Roland Kelts Daily Yomiuri column: Soft power evolution from Perry’s day to Obama’s
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http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/20091120TDY13001.htm
FYI, images below are 1) Commodore Perry’s bow, 2) Obama’s bow and 3) Political commentary from Perry’s day.
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WIT Life #57: Teleworking in Japan
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Translator/Interpreter/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
My only time traveling one-on-one as an interpreter for the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program was a year ago with a female entrepreneur from Hokkaido named Yuri Tazawa. No one epitomizes the “Yes We Can” spirit more than Yuri, so it was appropriate that we were able to celebrate Obama’s victory together while in DC. She began a company in a town called Kitami 11 years ago after being raised in Nara, going to university in Tokyo, and starting a family. You might wonder what kind of business one could have being located so far away from a metropolis, but Yuri heads a company called Y’s Staff (taking the Y from her name as well as being a homonym with “wise”).
Y’s has offices in both Hokkaido and Nara, but its actual structure is virtual. Through her company, Yuri is a promoter of teleworking. This concept is often confused with telemarketing, but is essentially the idea of doing work in a place other than a fixed office. This could be your home, the local Starbucks or any other location. Yuri also advocates Read More
JET alum and technical writer David Kowalsky has a nice book review on the book Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods in the latest edition of Sound Views, the newsletter for the Puget Sound Chapter of the Society for Technical Writers.
Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/3hix5A.
Have a look and feel free to share your thoughts on Twitter as well. Also, you can follow JetWit via Twitter at http://twitter.com/jetwit.
JET alum Liz Sheffield interviews “American Fuji” author Sara Backer
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Writers and blogger Liz Sheffield (Hokkaio-ken, Sapporo-shi, 1993-95) has a great post on her blog Motherlogue about a new book out titled America Fuji by Sara Backer along with a separate post in which she interviews Backer.
A few weeks ago I finished reading American Fuji by Sara Backer. From the moment I saw this book on the shelf of my local, independent bookstore, I knew I had to read it. It’s about an American woman, Gaby Stanton, who is living in Shizuoka, Japan and teaching university-level English…that is until she gets fired and begins working for a fantasy funeral company, Gone With the Wind. Stanton meets Alex Thorn, a father who comes to Japan to answer questions about his son’s death while he was a student at the university where Gaby was employed. Gaby and Alex are just two of the wonderful, creative cast of characters that Backer weaves into this compelling story.
- Read the rest of Liz Sheffield’s post on the book “American Fuji.”
- Read Liz’s interview with “American Fuji” author Sara Backer.
- Read Liz’s interview with fellow JET alum Suzanne Kamata about Suzanne’s book Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering.
- Follow Liz’s blog here: http://motherlogue.wordpress.com
Liz has also written the following essays:
- Co-Sleeping Quandary, Seattle Woman (February 2009)
- Dinner Table, The Sun (Readers Write, March 2009)
- What Is The Kanji For Brother, Honorary Mention, JET Essay Contest (August 2009) Note: essay is on page 182
- Harmony at Home, Wilmington Parent (August 2009)
- Stage Fright, YOUMaga (September 2009)
and short fiction:
- Broken Mug, Literary Mama (May 2008)
Popp, Laura (Mie-ken, 2008-Present) is a current JET who writes fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults, and is an occasional playwright/film maker. Her short work includes a short story titled “In theShadow Realm” and a documentary she made in Malawi. To read about her amazing adventures all over Japan, go to her blog at laurajanepopp.livejournal.com. (And check out the Authors/Books section of the JetWit Library for a list of more writers in the JET-o-sphere.)
Hello, everyone! I`m new to Japan and the JetWit blog, so allow me to introduce myself! I`m a sci-fi/fantasy young adult writer from Oklahoma in the U.S. I love to travel, as you can probably tell from my blog, so most of my posts will be about my wonderful adventures all over Asia and any writing news I learn about.
This week I`ll be reporting on two writers` events I attended last weekend, a critique meeting in Osaka and a conference in Kyoto! For those of you who don`t know, there is an excellent group called English Writers and Readers that meets every Saturday in Osaka from 2:30 to however long people want to stay. It’s not just for writers; if you love to read there is also a book club and various other discussion boards and events. But if you are a writer, of any genre or form, you can email your work to group members and have it critiqued the following Saturday. For me it was very productive. They tore apart (figuratively) my story “Tapestry of Time,” but now I know how to make it better. I will warn you that the turnout for meetings tends to be very low (there were only four of us), so if it`s quite a trek for you, I suggest getting a general idea of how many will be there before you go all that way.
One of the girls in the writers` club, Rianna, was really sweet and let me stay with her Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I headed off to the writers’ conference in Kyoto. I was a little disappointed. Good luck trying to publish an English fiction book in Japan, they said, because no publishers here accept them. There are English printers here, however, and a strong potential market of foreign readers. So if you have a book already published elsewhere and would like to promote it in Japan, there are several resources available to you, including Printed Matter Press. Here is their website: http://www.printedmatterpress.com/. And of course, if you want to go the self-publishing route, these guys can help with that too.
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Other than that, the “Revising Your Novel” seminar, presented by Holly Thompson, was most helpful. Her basic strategy was to systematically go through your novel and create a detailed spreadsheet of necessary revisions in character, setting, theme, etc. and mark these various “threads” wherever they appear with colored sticky notes. Then, read through the novel with only one of these threads in mind. That way you can stay focused and not get bogged down by the sheer size of the project. Here’s a picture of her session:
During lunch, I happened to run into the right people at the right time. I was looking for a place to eat my bento and sat with three ladies outside. We got to talking, and one of the three happened to be Suzanne Kamata (Tokushima-ken, 1988-90) who I`d been trying to get a hold of for some time. She’s an American published young adult writer living in Japan who’s involved in the SCBWI (Society of Children`s Book Writers and Illustrators). She invited me to go to their major conference in Yokohama on November 28th that`s going to host Alvina Ling, a Senior Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. What an amazing opportunity! For those who are interested, the registration deadline is November 4th. You can sign up at their website, http://www.scbwi.jp/.
To hear more about the Kyoto conference and my other adventures in Japan, visit my full blog at laurajanepopp.livejournal.com!
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends togeth
er with her own observations.
Last night I was able to attend a private screening of the intriguing documentary Samurai Umpires in the U.S.A. Executive producer/director Takayuki Tanaka is a Japanese native who conceptualized the idea for his film while studying at the New York Film Academy. His work focuses on six Japanese baseball umpires working in the minor leagues with dreams of making it to the Majors.
This all-male group ranges in age and umpiring experience, and the movie delves into Read More
Roland Kelts on Japanese pop music in Daily Yomiuri column
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Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, has another SOFT POWER/HARD TRUTHS column in The Daily Yomiuri (and also re-printed in 3:AM Magazine) about J-Pop music in America, featuring interviews with Miho Hatori, formerly of Cibo Mato, and Reni-chan, a recent NYC transplant from Tokyo, plus reflections on AKB48.
- Daily Yomiuri SOFT POWER/HARD TRUTHS: Japan’s Music Makers in America
- Link to 3:AM Magazine post of the column: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/3am-asia-soft-power-hard-truths-japans-music-makers-in-america/
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Last night at Japan Society I had the chance to catch a sneak preview of the American movie version of the Japanese manga series “Testuwan Atomu,”
known here in the States as Astro Boy. This wide-eyed, spiky haired superhero has a huge following both here and at home, and his Hollywood debut was greatly anticipated. Though I had never seen the original series, which based on a manga became an anime first in Japan and then here in 1963, I truly enjoyed the Western interpretation of the life of this legendary icon.
The voices were provided by a star-studded cast including Read More
Roland Kelts article in Adbusters: Private Worlds
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Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, has a good article out in Adbusters magazine.
Private Worlds: Lives spent lurking too long in the shadows of the virtual
Also, Roland is traveling to Korea soon to do give some talks there. If you’re a JET alum living in Korea and you go, make sure to go up and introduce yourself and invite him out for some sho-chu.
WIT Life #52: Manifesto Woes
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
The Manifesto is the imposing name of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)’s platform for its new government, one that promises to “put people’s lives first.” In order to accomplish this, its five pledges are the end of wasteful spending, childrearing and education, pension and medical care, regional sovereignty and employment and the economy. Although great in theory, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is realizing that these goals are easier to state than actually carry out. Japanese ministries and agencies asked to spend a record 95.04 trillion yen ($1 trillion) next fiscal year, risking expansion of the world’s largest public debt.
This creates the issue of whether the DPJ can fulfill its election pledges without worsening an already significant debt burden. In response to this, Fujisankai carried out Read More
