Click Here to find out more information about the show.

Posted by Sam Frank, an ALT who taught English in Hiraizumi-Cho, Iwate Prefecture from 2002-2004 and worked in Shirahama-cho, Wakayama Prefecture as a JET from 2004-2006. He currently manages the New York Division of UnRated Magazine and works as a Project Manager/Web Producer at Arrow Root Media.

Lee-Sean on the process of making the “Party Girl” music video:

For the “Party Girl” video, Xelle raised funds on Kickstarter, and got their friends to appear in the video. JC Cassis, one of the members of Xelle with whom I have collaborated before on other musical projects (including the remix and music video for her song “Can’t Stop,” where I also dance), approached me and asked me to be in the video. The cast spent over 20 hours together going over the moves and logistics of the video, both in dance studios, and on a moving train. Then we shot the video all in one go late one night on the N train in Astoria, Queens. It was hard work, but a real blast to make. It really was as fun as it looks in the final video.

Can’t Stop (Remix) from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Are you a JET alum who has done something cool lately and caught it on video?  Drop us a line in the comments.

Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules.  He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States.  He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill.  For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.

Take a break, and listen to some Rock & Roll, primate!

Here’s a radio interview Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, did in Tokyo this past weekend with Tyler Brule, founder and editor of the UK-based Monocle magazine, about manga in Japan and overseas, and Japanamerica:

http://www.monocle.com/The-Monocle-Weekly

The Japanamerica segment is introduced at 1:00 and starts at 22:00

Check out this interview on Australian radio (ABC) with Roland Kelts (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, about the anime industry in Japan, financial foibles and hentai habits.

Roland recently finished a speaking tour in  Australia where made several appearances.

• July 13-16th, Sydney, AU, JSAA Conference, University of Sydney
• July 17th, Sydney, AU, The Japan Foundation: Panel w/Susan Napier and Rebecca Suter
• July 20th, Brisbane, AU, The University of Queensland:  Panel w/ Susan Napier and Rebecca Suter
• July 22nd, Melbourne, AU, The University of Melbourne: Panel w/Susan Napier and Rebecca Suter

He also hosted a talk with Hayao Miyazaki in Berkely, CA on July 25.  Click here to see video clips of Roland speaking at the JETAA NY Alumni Author Showcase event held back in March 2009, here for photos from the event and here to read a review of the event.

Listen to one of Bankruptcy Bill’s haiku read on the “Haiku-ing It To The Man” feature on NPR’s Studio360.  (Starts with about 1:31 left in the feature.)

Here’s the story lead from the Studio360 website:

Haiku-ing It to the Man

A few weeks ago we asked listeners to submit original haiku inspired by the state of the economy. Dozens poured in: our own unscientific proof that the financial crisis is a boon for creativity. Here are some of our favorites. (http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2009/02/13)

Have a listen! It’s fun, and you’ll feel younger too.

When you’ve finished hearing ’bout Zorgamazoo!

(Sorry, Rob.  I couldn’t resist. :-)

A sampling of what’s to air on NPR’s Studio 360 Goes to Japan on Saturday at 10 am, featuring Roland Kelts (Osaka, 1998-99):

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JetWit just received the official press release from WNYC’s Studio 360 regarding their exclusive Studio 360 Goes to Japan program, featuring a segment written and hosted by Roland Kelts (Osaka, 1998-99), which will air this Saturday on NPR stations nationwide. Content, including video, will go live on the Studio 360 web site (http://www.studio360.org/) starting at 6 p.m. today  (See the full press release below.)

The segment Roland wrote and hosted is focused on Japan’s Youth Culture and its various pathologies, especially the struggles of haken, or temporary workers, amid the imploding global economy.

Additionally, JetWit has learned that Roland is booked for an interview tomorrow afternoon with Nippon Television for their nightly news and entertainment program, News Zero.  He will be interviewed by pop idol and actor Sho Sakurai of the band Arashi, and director Takashi Miike, both of whom are in town to promote the latter’s forthcoming live action film version of the 70s anime series, Yatterman.  The interview will be about the Japanese pop culture juggernaut.

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PRI’s Studio 360 from WNYC presents

Studio 360 Goes to Japan
An Hour of Contemporary Japanese Design + Culture

Airs Saturday, February 7 on WNYC 93.9 FM at 10am

Audio Features, Videos, Blog, and Photos Available Online at www.studio360.org/japan on Friday, February 6

(February 6, 2009, New York, NY) – You eat sushi, you play Wii, you keep a novel by Haruki Murakami in your purse designed by Takashi Murakami (shh-it’s a knockoff!). But certainly there’s more to Japanese culture than what manages to permeate the American consumer consciousness.

Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen and his producers toured Japan in search of the cutting edge of Japanese culture.

Kurt hears from cultural expert Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica; Japanese pop culture blogger Lisa Katayama (tokyomango.com); and leading visual artists, poets and designers to explore Japan’s headlong dive into the 21st Century.   They discuss their work, trace their influences, and evaluate Japan’s struggle to embrace the future without abandoning its honored past.

Highlights include:

• Andersen’s search for his inner “beautiful girl” in a Japanese sticker picture booth
• Writer Pico Iyer explains what Japan has taught him about how to speak and listen
• Architects Atelier Bow Wow and Shigeru Ban join textile artist Reiko Sudo to determine what exactly constitutes the “Japanese aesthetic”
• Lisa Katayama introduces us to a new generation of female art stars who are taking Japanese pop iconography into their own hands
• And an octogenarian tea master finds a new use for an ancient tradition: he serves tea in conflict zones all over the world

Beginning FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, listeners can visit www.studio360.org/japan for a multiplatform immersion in Japanese culture.  Audio segments, original web exclusive content, including videos and the Studio 360 travel blog, will be posted at www.studio360.org, where the radio program is also available on-demand.

Studio 360 can be heard in the New York City area on WNYC 93.9 FM Saturdays, 10-11am, with a repeat on WNYC AM 820 on Sundays, 7-8pm. It can also be streamed live or downloaded for podcasting at www.wnyc.org.  Studio 360 is distributed nationally to other public radio stations-check local listings for broadcast details.

Studio 360 in Japan is supported, in part, by the Freeman Foundation and the United States-Japan Foundation.

PRI’s Studio 360 from WNYC is the Peabody Award-winning, smart and surprising guide to what’s happening in pop culture and the arts. Each week, Kurt Andersen introduces you to the people who are creating and shaping our culture. Life is busy – so let “Studio 360″ steer you to the must-see movie this weekend, the next book for your nightstand, or the song that will change your life.
WNYC Radio is New York’s premier public radio station, comprising WNYC 93.9 FM and WNYC AM 820. As America’s most listened-to public radio stations, reaching more than one million listeners every week, WNYC FM and AM extend New York City’s cultural riches to the entire country and air the best national offerings from affiliate networks National Public Radio and Public Radio International. WNYC 93.9 FM broadcasts a wide range of daily news, talk, cultural and classical music programming, while WNYC AM 820 maintains a stronger focus on breaking news and international news reporting. For more information, visit www.wnyc.org.

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Roland Kelts (Osaka, 1998-99), author of Japanamerica, will be at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Wednesday, February 11 for a screening + discussion of the animated film Grave of the Fireflies.  More details here.  (Side note:  Lyle Sylvander (Yokohama-shi, 2001-02) wrote an excellent and succinct review of Grave of the Fireflies for the Spring 2008 JETAAA NY Newsletter.)

BONUS:  Roland’s story on Japanese Youth Pathologies for WNYC’s Studio 360 will air on NPR nationwide as part of this coming weekend’s special Japan edition of the show.  (See the recent JetWit post on last week’s Studio360 Japan feature.)

Correction:  This post previously listed the date of the MFA event as February 9, but it has now been corrected to February 11.  Apologies for any confusion.

Below are the summaries taken from the Studio 360 website:

Pico Iyer: Outside Man

Travel writer Pico Iyer has lived in Japan for 20 years. And while he knows the locals still see him as an outsider, he told Kurt that this status helps him pay attention to his surroundings. Iyer says Japan is like a “2000-year-old person wearing a micro-skirt, with an artificial tan and carrying a surfboard.” Special thanks to Matthew Cavnar.

No Time for Tea

The tea ceremony is a 400-year-old ritual for making and presenting green tea. But in Japan’s fast-paced techno-centric society – one increasingly fueled by coffee – we wondered how the tea ceremony can survive. Studio 360′s Jenny Lawton talked with tea masters, old and young, to find out.

Suicide Forest

Aokigahara is the name of the forest at the foot of Mount Fuji. It’s been mythologized in Japanese literature as a sacred place for people to end their lives – and every year close to a hundred suicides are committed there. Studio 360′s Pejk Malinovski went to the forest to uncover its haunting allure and how the place lingers in the Japanese psyche.

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2009/01/book_notes_jame_2.html

Interviewed in New York, Aired in Tokyo, on Tokyo FM

The interview is in English, but the DJ translates in Japanese over Roland’s voice when he speaks and then expounds on her own at times.  (I think it’s a little easier to hear the English in Part 2.)

It would be great if someone out there would post an English-version summary of the interview in the comments section below.  Or perhaps one person could do a small portion and then others could add to it.

Click here for Part 1

And here for Part 2

As a global power, Japan is fading, but increasing numbers of people outside the country are opting to learn Japanese. What’s fueling the new interest is a growing obsession with Japanese Manga comics and Japanese animation. The World’s Patrick Cox has the story.

http://groups.google.com/group/jetaa-ongaku-connection

Go to the link above to sign up.  (FYI, you’ll need to have (or create) a google or gmail account to sign up for a google group.)

Want to hear the full interview?  Click here to get the podcast.

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn native Anthony Bianchi (Aichi-ken, 1987-91), the first-ever North American to hold an elected position in Japan, is still going strong in his role as a city councilman in Inuyama-shi, Aichi-ken. Michael Glazer (Chiba-ken, 1995-97) recently did a recorded interview with Anthony to  discuss the hot local topics, learn more about politics in Japan and get a sense of how things look across the pond.  A podcast of the interview is available at http://jetaany.org/documents/JETAA-Bianchi-Interview.mp3.  Below are select excerpts from the interview.

Michael Glazer: You have a very interesting background. How does a JET program teacher become a city council member?

Anthony Bianchi: Well, I’ll try to make the story as short as possible. I studied filmmaking at New York University and I was interested in Kurasawa films and whatnot, and I was out in L.A. for a while. I came back to New York. I was working for New York City and I saw an ad in the paper about the Expo that was held in Gifu about 20 years ago. So I went over to Japan on a homestay program and decided it would be nice to try to live there for a year or so.  I joined the JET program, stayed for a couple years, and decided I wanted to stay longer.

I was teaching, working for the Board of Education in Inuyama, and I kind of got involved in the administrative aspects of it. I was banging my head against a lot of brick walls and finding that I had to get in touch with the mayor and the city council people to help back up what we were doing.  I finally got to a point where I got tired of complaining about things and needing other people’s help, so I decided to try and do something myself.  I ran in the election and somehow I got elected, believe it or not.

MG: Once you were elected into office, were there any things early on that struck you as unexpected?

AB: Yes, actually there were a few things in the beginning.  One was that the council sessions seemed to go a little bit too smoothly for my liking.  At first I thought I was missing something. That maybe people were somehow getting information through all the channels that I wasn’t quite in touch with yet.  But I started to realize there’s a tendency here where, once things get to the council session, the katachi, the form is more important than the content.

As long as the council session isn’t too rocky, everything is considered to be going well. Once proposals from the mayor or the city get to the council floor for a vote, by and large they get passed.  I just felt there wasn’t enough debate about certain things. It also took me a little while to learn the procedures and learn what I could do about that myself.

Lately I’ve been putting out more legislation and trying to cause more debate than usual. Actually, in the last council session, I caused a bit of a debate that some people didn’t care for, and it became sort of a hot topic.  But these are important things that need to be discussed and not just “rubber stamped.” Some people don’t like it.  But, you know, I’m from Brooklyn, so what are you going to do about it.  [Said in a humorous tone.]

MG:  So how does debate happen in Japan?

AB: In the U.S., there seems to be a little more debate and people giving their opinions as the legislative session goes on. Here, sometimes there’s a lot of back and forth, before the session starts.

But once it starts, what they do is try to drag things out.  Once it’s officially turned into a bill and it’s on the agenda, people don’t want to vote against it.

MG: You must have learned a whole lot in the process of running for office.

AB: Actually, we were fairly lucky. I had some people around us who were familiar with the process who gave us some hints.  We decided we should campaign by instinct.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with campaigning in Japan. It’s a lot of people out there with sound trucks repeating their name over and over again and annoying catch phrases, especially on this level.  We decided that we would just let people know what we wanted to do.  I say “we” because this is not something you really do on you own.  People who decided to support me had the same kind of ideas about what was wrong with the city and what needed to be done as I did.  So we just let people know what our ideas were, and we hoped that enough of them would write my name on a little piece of paper on election day and we would get a chance to do something about it.

MG: You mentioned a split in bunmei (civilizations) within the city council.

AB: It’s been really difficult to try and put our finger on how to deal with it.  I don’t think there’s anything devious about it. But they really believe that up until the administration decides on the agenda you can say whatever you want. But once it’s decided, it’s your job as a council person to make sure that things get implemented and move ahead smoothly.

But I think, if you don’t think it’s a good policy, you have to fight it until the end. And the difference is, they’re acting as a spokesman for the administration.  But that’s not really our job. Our job is to be a spokesman for the people.  And I think it’s better to judge every policy on its own merits all the time, every time, until the end.

MG: Are you seeing generational dynamics play out in Japanese politics?

AB: What I found that was surprising in the last city council election, seven new members were elected.  I used to think I was one of the younger guys when I first got elected, but I ain’t anymore.

But now I see even some of the younger guys still have what I like to call a kind of old fashioned way of thinking where everybody has to work in lock step, and to reach a final decision, we all have to look like we agreed on something.  The thing is some of the older members aren’t that strict about doing things that way. So it’s kind of strange. It’s not really based on age.

And yes, in Japan, it’s changing a little bit. Actually, the American election now is causing some interest here in the fact that, within the next month or so, they are probably going to dissolve the upper and lower house. And there’ll be an election here. And the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) is worried about the timing.

If in the American election, Obama gets elected, that represents change. The LDP has been in power for 50 years since the end of World War II and that wouldn’t bode well for them, so they’re trying to avoid that timing. That generational aspect– I don’t know if it’s generational aspect, or a cultural aspect — is kind of like a split in civilization. I would just say in our council we have a problem that is one of  bunmei.  We have two different civilizations in our city council.

Thanks Anthony, and thanks Michael!  To hear or download the full podcast, go to:  http://jetaany.org/documents/JETAA-Bianchi-Interview.mp3