{"id":3744,"date":"2009-02-23T15:53:36","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T15:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=3744"},"modified":"2009-03-03T16:08:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T16:08:27","slug":"wit-life-29-international-recognition-to-wipe-away-domestic-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/23\/wit-life-29-international-recognition-to-wipe-away-domestic-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #29: International Recognition to Wipe Away Domestic Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

WITLife<\/strong><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. <\/em><\/p>\n

For those of you who didn’t tune in to the Academy Awards last night, Japan cleaned up in all the categories in which it received nominations.\u00a0 Going against heavily favored Waltzing with Bashir<\/em><\/strong> from Israel, Director Yojiro Takita’s<\/strong> Okuribito (Departures)<\/strong><\/em> took the award for Best Foreign Language Film<\/strong>.\u00a0 Since the establishment of this award in \"\"1957, Japan has been nominated in this category 11 times but this was its first win.\u00a0 This movie grossed 3 billion yen in Japan and took the top price at the Montreal World Film Festival last year.\u00a0 It will have a limited release in North America theaters this May.\u00a0 Takita gathered on stage with his cast and after giving his thanks to the Academy asserted that they would be back on the Oscar stage again (“I hope”).<\/p>\n

In addition, Kunio Kato’s<\/strong> 12-minute fantasy film Tsuniki no Ie<\/strong><\/em> won for Best Animated Short<\/strong>.\u00a0 In halting English, Kato notably offered his appreciation to his pencil before thanking the Academy.\u00a0 These unexpected victories, Japan’s first since Spirited Away<\/strong><\/em> won in 2003 for Best Animated Feature Film, serve as a much needed boost to a country struggling with both a recession and political turmoil.<\/p>\n

Regarding the latter, Prime Minister Taro Aso’s<\/strong> current approval rating is 11.4%, a number that many joke is lower than his body fat percentage of 15.7%.\u00a0 In a recently conducted survey of who would be most appropriate to replace him, sadly enough the largest percentage of respondents, 26%, said that no suitable candidate existed.\u00a0 Coming in first with 13.4% was opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Ichiro Ozawa<\/strong>, and former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Prime Minister and still beloved Junichiro Koizimu<\/strong> ranked second with 7.9%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. For those of you who didn’t tune in to the Academy Awards last night, Japan cleaned up in all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,7,10,12,26,30,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-blogs","category-career","category-cartoonillustration","category-celebrity","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-Yo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3975,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions\/3975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}