WIT Life #203: Super Cool Biz/Cool Share
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WIT Life 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.
As early summer heats up in Japan, the country is trying to figure out how it will satisfy its energy needs now that all 50 of its nuclear reactors have been taken offline to be checked. With expected cutbacks in electricity consumption, some supermarkets have adjusted their operating hours to open two hours early for consumers who want to shop in the cooler morning hours.
Another idea is the implementation of Super Cool Biz, building on Japan’s previous Cool Biz boom. This fashion trend was created in response to the decreased use of air conditioning in Japanese offices for the purpose of energy conservation, and enabled employees to eschew ties and jackets. However, Super Cool Biz takes it a step further and also allows them to wear things like polo and Hawaiian shirts, chino pants and sneakers. The icon on the right also suggests beating the heat with things like fans and sun umbrellas.
Building on this concept is Cool Share, an idea that took shape in Saitama. “Share” refers to Read More
Justin’s Japan: New York Mets Present Third Annual Japanese Heritage Night
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By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02) for Examiner.com. Visit his Japanese culture page here for related stories.
After two successful runs, the New York Mets are prepping the third annual edition of its Japanese Heritage Night at Citi Field, featuring pre-game entertainment that celebrates both the traditional performing arts and the enduring spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun a year after the devastation of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The festivities kick off the evening of Friday, June 15 when the Mets play the Cincinnati Reds. Appearing in the pre-game show this year are the New York Suwa Taiko Association (also known as Taiko Masala) and the Japanese Folk Dance Institute of New York. Following the entertainment, patrons will be treated to the presentation of Mets Community Spirit Awards to New York City Japanese organizations that have been instrumental to the ongoing relief efforts.
The only taiko group based in Brooklyn, Taiko Masala was founded by Hiro Kurashima. A Lincoln Center Teaching Artist from 2004 to 2005, Kurashima has sought to bring the influences of various types of music into the art of Japanese music while at the same time preserving the rich tradition of taiko. The 10-member troupe, whose drummers hail from all over the world, have played such high profile New York events like last year’s Japan Arts Matsuri, and will make their Citi Field debut on game day.
For the complete story, click here.
This year, The JET Alumni Association of New York will be purchasing a block of tickets in the Promenade Reserved area for $20 each. If they buy 25 tickets, their name will be displayed on the scoreboard! Sign up here to reserve your tickets.
This year’s Tampa Natsu Matsuri will be held June 9 at St. Francis of Assisi Church.
By John McGee (Nagano-ken, 2004-05) for JQ magazine. John is the Tampa Regional Representative for the Florida JET Alumni Association, and the founder of Tampa Natsu Matsuri, a free annual event organized by local residents with an interest in Japan.
It’s a familiar story: apply to JET for one of several reasons, go to Japan and find a second home, return to the U.S., and…well, that’s where it all falls apart, right? Most of us come back intent to keep our newfound hybrid culture alive, but few areas in the U.S. have profound Japanese cultural presence. So we sigh with natsukashii pangs when we can’t take our beer out of the bar, we hang out with JETs on occasion, download the odd drama, and let the rest of our lives go back to American normal, like it or not.
That was certainly the case for me here in Tampa. There’s a bit of Asian presence: restaurants, markets, a festival, even a karaoke place, mostly all Korean or Chinese. But I’ve never been content with the status quo. (I know; how did I survive in we-do-it-this-way-because-that’s-how-it’s-done Japan, right?) So I started probing some contacts at the university, searching the Internet for related local topics; I even knew some Japanese nationals living here.
I discovered that the area actually has quite a bit of Japanese culture…it’s just hiding. Turns out the people are hiding, too. There’s a whole thriving subculture in the region made up mostly of Japanese women who have married American men. But there’s also martial and cultural arts, anime clubs, language groups, and we even have a pack of strangely elusive diehard Loli girls. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t have the culture; it was that it was so diffuse and cloistered.
About the time I was figuring all this out, a JET friend suggested we have a natsu matsuri party, just to reminisce and eat some suika in the sweltering Florida heat. That’s when a light bulb came on and I realized, “what better way to draw those groups together than to have a real natsu matsuri?” Everyone I ever met who lived in Japan, Japanese and foreign, loved natsu matsuri. So it just might work! If nothing else, I missed them myself.
JQ Magazine: Japan Day @ Central Park Reels in the Crowds
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Volunteers from JETAANY helped make this year's yo-yo fishing game a big success.
By Alma Jennings (Fukushima-ken, 2008-10) for JQ magazine. Alma works at Japan Society in New York as a development assistant in foundation and government relations.
The sixth annual Japan Day @ Central Park took place on a warm Sunday May 13. Over 40,000 people attended the event, which featured live performances, Japanese games and language lessons, and the four-mile “Japan Run.” This year also marked the triumphant return of food tents, where volunteers dished out free sushi, udon, Pocky, and other Japanese vittles to hungry visitors.
According to their homepage, the goals of Japan Day are to build bridges of understanding between the people of Japan and the U.S., showcase the local Japanese community’s appreciation toward New York, and facilitate stronger grassroots connections within the local Japanese community. This year, the JET Alumni Association of New York (JETAANY) teamed up with Japan Society, a New York City-based organization that deepens understanding between the U.S. and Japan, to offer traditional Japanese “yo-yo fishing.” In this addictive game, participants try to win a colorful balloon by using a paper hook to lift it from a pool of water. Volunteers from the Japan Local Government Center, Mitsubishi, K Line Logistics, Mirai IT International, and the Bronx Science Key Club also provided much appreciated help at the tent.
The cute yo-yos look deceptively easy to make. In fact, they are tricky to make and can get messy. Volunteers showed up hours before the event began to blow up the balloons, which tend to deflate over a few days and thus couldn’t be made in advance. Japan Society’s director of special events and JET alum Christy Jones (Nagasaki-ken, 1995-98) served as the yo-yo activity organizer on behalf of the Society, encouraging Japan Society’s staff and JET alums to prepare thousands of paper hooks before the big day.
Tom Baker (Chiba-ken, 1989-91) is a, coauthor of The Sushi Lover’s Cookbook and Tokyo Chic and contributor to Time Out Tokyo and Time Out Shortlist Tokyo. He blogs as “Tokyo Tom Baker.”
A few minutes ago, I went outside and tested my fancy new eclipse-viewing glasses. Forty-eight hours from now, on the morning of May 21, I’ll be among millions of people in Japan and the western United States taking the rare opportunity to view a “kinkan nisshoku,” or “annular eclipse.”
An annular eclipse is one that occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun at a point in the moon’s orbit when it is far from the Earth and thus appears relatively small – the exact opposite of the effect seen in the recent “supermoon.” In an annular eclipse, this small moon appears superimposed in front of the sun rather than completely blocking it out. The visible portions of the sun form a fiery ring around the moon’s black silhouette.
One positive effect of this event is that it has expanded my vocabulary in two languages. The English word “annular,” which comes from Latin via French, means “ring-shaped.” The Japanese term is even more straightforward and easy to remember, as it is written with a string of kanji characters that literally mean “gold-ring sun-eating.”
The moon’s shadow will fall across a large swath of the Earth, but the full annular effect will be visible only in a narrow band that goes through nearly all of Japan’s major cities (what luck!) Monday morning before moving out to sea in a long arc across the northern Pacific Ocean, where it will slip back to late Sunday as it crosses the International Date Line, after which it will come ashore in northern California, pass over Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, and finally fade out over the border of Texas and New Mexico.
Justin’s Japan: Roland Kelts Makes New ‘Monkey Business’ at Japan Night @ Joe’s Pub
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JET alum and ‘Monkey Business’ editor Roland Kelts will appear at Japan Night @ Joe’s Pub in New York May 6. (Kaz)
By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02) for Examiner.com. Visit his Japanese culture page here for related stories.
Regular visitors to NoHo’s St. Mark’s Place are known to enjoy many of the Japanese pubs and eateries that dot the street down to Avenue A. This Sunday (May 6), neighbor Joe’s Pub will host live music and the latest English release of a notable Nippon-centric literary anthology.
Japan Night @ Joe’s Pub, held at the eponymous nightclub a stone’s throw below Astor Place, promises an unforgettable night of transcultural readings, music and live performances. On tap for Sunday: revered Japanese writers Masatsugu Ono, Tomoko Shibasaki, and award-winning author and translator Motoyuki Shibata will arrive from Tokyo to share the stage with American authors Stuart Dybek, Kelly Link, and Canadian translator, scholar and editor Ted Goossen.
The scriveners’ summit will celebrate the second Issue of Monkey Business International, the latest English-language edition of the acclaimed Japanese literary magazine that Pulitzer-winning author Junot Díaz calls “one of the year’s best publications” and Luna Park Review dubbed “one of the seven best literary magazines of 2011.”
Emceeing is JET alum (Osaka-shi, 1998-99), Japanamerica author and Monkey Business contributing editor Roland Kelts (click here for an exclusive interview conducted with Kelts last year), who describes the literary project as “all about dear friends calling upon me to be a bridge between the worlds I inhabit, write about and know best—giving me an enormous opportunity to feel a momentary spurt of self-worth.”
For the complete story, click here.
JQ Magazine: Petals Underfoot at Brooklyn’s Sakura Matsuri
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The view from Sakura Matsuri at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, April 2012. (Preston Hatfield)
By Preston Hatfield (Yamanashi-ken, 2009-10) for JQ magazine. Preston moved from San Francisco to New York City in January 2012 and is now accepting submissions from people who want to be his friend. Abduct him from his house in the middle of the night, or find him on Facebook and ask about his JET blog in which he details his exploits and misadventures in that crazy Land of the Rising Sun we all love.
In the end I find myself in Cherry Esplanade, sinking to the ground, my back comfortable against the broad face of a cherry tree whose gnarled and mostly barren branches still sported a few late blossoms flitting in the breeze, the petals of those that had come before it strewn across the grounds, specking the meadow in gentle shades of pink. It’s an act of defeat, really; an act of resignation.
I never did find that damn press table.
* * *
I arrived early, as planned, eager to take in the 31st Annual Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was my first matsuri since moving to New York in January, my first trip to the Garden. I was stoked.
As instructed, I went to the entrance designated for performers, event staff and press and told the man at the front desk who I was. After consulting his clipboard and giving me a skeptical look, he let me in and gave me directions to the tent where I could pick up my press kit and thank the publicist for giving JQ magazine and myself the opportunity to cover the event. I set off, and once inside was instantly struck by how large the Brooklyn Botanic Garden really is. Droves of people had shown up for the event, a fair number of them in costume, though conspicuously, from where I stood just outside the visitor center, it was not readily apparent where the main event was being held. As I continued walking down the path, I was growing more and more sure that either the guy at the front desk either gave me poor instructions, or I was poor at following them (and this would not surprise most people who know me, least of all my mom or some of my elementary school arts and crafts teachers).
Leave it to me to let this bother me, to knock impatiently at the door of my mind so loudly that I was unable to really take in and appreciate my surroundings. Find the press table. That is the first priority. Enjoying myself can come later.
Justin’s Japan: Kota Yamazaki and Sakura Matsuri Return to New York
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Dance performance Kota Yamazaki/’Fluid hug-hug (glowing)’ will be held at New York's Japan Society April 27-28. (Ryutaro Mishima)
By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02). Visit his Examiner.com page here for related stories.
Following a month of concerts from all types of Japanese musicians, New York City bids sayonara to April this weekend with an exciting pair of performances from a Bessie Award-winning performance artist, followed by the 31st edition of one of Brooklyn’s finest annual events.
Kicking things off tonight (April 27) and tomorrow at Japan Society is the performance of Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug (glowing), the Society’s newest commissioned work by the butoh-trained choreographer. In this new work that will appeal to fans of dance, Yamazaki re-examines the fundamentals of butoh, the form in which he received his training, as six dancers hailing from Senegal, Ethiopia, Japan, and the U.S., perform within a set constructed to evoke the soft lighting and dim interior of a traditional Japanese house, where shadows contribute to a visual atmosphere.
The performance, which made successful stops earlier this month at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia, draws its inspiration from the world-renowned essay In’ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows) by the great modern Japanese novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki. First published in 1933 and in English in 1977, it has itself been praised the world over, with the Guardian calling it a “hymn to nuance.”
For the complete story, click here.
WIT Life 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.
I’m down in DC to begin a new business trip, and was thrilled when I found out my assignment would coincide with the famous Sakura Matsuri. This year is extra special as it marks the 100th anniversary since the 3000+ trees were gifted from Japan to the U.S. Even the Metro gets into the spirit, as you can see with their turnstile decorations. Due to the warm weather it is doubtful that the blossoms will last until the conclusion of the festival at the end of the month, but I’m hoping to do some hanami while I’m here.
On another Japa
n-related note, today I went to see an interesting exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery entitled “Asian American Portraits of Encounter.” It features several different Asian American artists, including three Japanese. One is Satomi Shirai based in New York, the second is Shizu Saldamando based in California, and the last is Roger Shimomura based in Read More
WIT Life #194: L’Arc en Ciel MSG Debut!
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WIT Life 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.
Last night I had fun rocking out at the concert of L’Arc en Ciel, one of Japan’s most popular bands. They were the first Japanese group to perform at Madison Square Garden, and they put on an amazing show! For me it was largely natsukashii, as I discovered L’Arc (or ラルク) as an exchange student in Kyoto my first time in Japan. During the weekly karaoke outings that I used to work on my kanji, ラルク soon became a regular part of my repertoire and for a while their song Honey was my #18 (specialty or favorite).
So I was super excited when I heard ラルク front man Hyde belt out the first 「ずっと」 that begins the song, and was happy to find that I still remembered most of the lyrics. I enjoyed other old favorites like Read More
JET alum keynotes Japan ICU Foundation Sake Tasting and Japan Relief Fundraiser in New York
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GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE RELIEF SAKE TASTING & FUNDRAISER in New York City
By JET alum Mark Flanigan
JET alum Mark Flanigan (center) with colleagues from the Japan ICU Foundation at the March 5 Fundraising event (Photo: Lawrence Tsuyuki)
The Japan ICU Foundation (JICUF) hosted a special Sake Tasting & Fundraiser at the Penn Club in New York City on Monday, March 5 to help raise funds for International Christian University’s (ICU) ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts after the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.
Over 100 esteemed guests from the US, Japan and many other countries came for the evening in support of this charitable event, which was organized by JICUF Program Director Tara DeWorsop. JET Alumnus Mark Flanigan, a current ICU Rotary International Peace Fellow, gave a short keynote presentation describing the variety of ways in which ICU has been supporting the recovery efforts. These include a new joint-psychological relief program in Sendai, continuing student volunteer efforts and the Earthquake Tuition Waiver Fund. Read More
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Thanks to Lindsay Tsuji for this write-up and thanks to Nadine Bukhman for the photos.
A chilly Toronto’s eve didn’t stop friends and fans of one artistically inclined JET alum from dropping by the Goodfellas Gallery in Toronto to celebrate the launch of his new book Life After the B.O.E. JETAA Toronto’s David Namisato (Aomori-ken CIR, 2002-04) was the cause of some serious hurrah on February 8.
Most JETs are no stranger to David’s comics. Started back in 2005, they chronicle the ins and outs of what life is like as a foreigner on the JET Programme. The enkais, the onsens, the team teaching…it’s all in there. Read More
Embassy of Japan in the UK Webmagazine (March 2012)
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Embassy of Japan in the UK Webmagazine round-up. Posted by JET alum and current editor of the webmagazine, Dipika Soni (Ishikawa-ken, 2003-06). To subscribe to the Embassy of Japan’s monthly webmagazine, email webmagazine@ld.mofa.go.jp with the subject ‘subscribe’.
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Embassy of Japan in the UK Webmagazine: March 2012
Ambassador’s blog
One year on
Featured article
ONE YEAR ON: SCENES OF RECONSTRUCTION & PICTURES DRAWN BY THE CHILDREN OF TOHOKU
Other articles:
Events around the country as the UK remembers “One year on…”
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom
One year on: A JET perspective
Films at the Embassy: Bloom in the Moonlight
Films at the Embassy: Tohoku Special Film Show
JAPAN-UK Events Calendar
Japan Fix London: Hyper Japan is back!
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Posted by Dipika Soni (Ishikawa-ken, 2003-06). Dipika lives in London but is interested in hearing about any Japan-related opportunities across the globe.
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Last year I spoke to former JET Mary Moreton about her experiences in Japan and her current role working for one of the largest Japan-related events in the UK, HYPER JAPAN! After a hugely successful run last summer, HYPER JAPAN is back this week for more culture, cuisine and cool!
Starting tomorrow (Friday 24th February) and running till Sunday 26th, HYPER JAPAN promises to chase away all those winter blues!
Highlights this year include:
Sushi Awards 2012: UK Sushi Roll Championship
Eat-Japan SAKE AWARDS: Top Brewery Taste-Off
Natsuko Aso Live
Olympic Judo Champion Maki Tsukada
Cosplay, Street fashion, UK Kawaii star of the year and much much more!
For more details please check out the official website at http://hyperjapan.co.uk/
Taylor Anderson/Japan Foundation Lecture to be hosted by Randolph-Macon College on 3/11
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Thanks to Andy Anderson for sharing the following:
“Randolph-Macon College will host the Taylor Anderson/Japan Foundation Lecture, “Postscripts from Japan: Stories that Endure After the Earthquake and Tsunami,” on Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. in Blackwell Auditorium, R-MC Center for the Performing Arts. This lecture will commemorate the one year anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake which took the life of R-MC alumna Taylor Anderson ’08.”
Taylor’s father Andy Anderson will be speaking, as will NPR’s Yuki Noguchi and Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki. Andy said it would be great to see lots of JET alumni at the event.
More details here: http://www.rmc.edu/News/12-02-10%20-%20Japan%20Commemoration%203,-d-,11.aspx
