{"id":39040,"date":"2016-01-16T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=39040"},"modified":"2016-01-16T20:31:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T00:31:19","slug":"wit-life-294-%e6%98%8e%e3%81%91%e3%81%be%e3%81%97%e3%81%a6%e3%81%8a%e3%82%81%e3%81%a7%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%94%e3%81%96%e3%81%84%e3%81%be%e3%81%99%ef%bc%81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/16\/wit-life-294-%e6%98%8e%e3%81%91%e3%81%be%e3%81%97%e3%81%a6%e3%81%8a%e3%82%81%e3%81%a7%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%94%e3%81%96%e3%81%84%e3%81%be%e3%81%99%ef%bc%81\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #294: \u660e\u3051\u307e\u3057\u3066\u304a\u3081\u3067\u3068\u3046\u3054\u3056\u3044\u307e\u3059\uff01"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/a> (Kumamo<\/a>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with h<\/strong><\/em>er own obse<\/strong><\/em>rv<\/strong><\/em>ations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Happy New Year to all readers!\u00a0 Hope the year of the monkey has been treating you well so far.\u00a0 I am enjoying some time at home before my interpreting travel schedule begins at the end of this month.\u00a0 My first State Department trip of the year will start in DC and finish in Hawaii, so I am very much looking forward to that!\u00a0 After that I will be heading further east to Tokyo to work with a client over there, so many adventures on the road surely await…<\/p>\n

Here are two Japan articles I recently read that I thought would be worth sharing.\u00a0 The first from the Wall Street Journal<\/a> talks about the aging of the Japanese population (\u9ad8\u9f62\u5316 or koureika<\/em>) and how companies are targeting this older generation.\u00a0 The article highlights the business buzzword “end of life activities” (\u7d42\u6d3b or shuukatsu<\/em>) being u\"\"sed to pitch products to the elderly.<\/p>\n

There is even a costumed mascot known as Shu-Cat-su (\u30b7\u30e5\u30a6\u30ad\u30e3\u30c3\u30c4\uff09, who has been attending trade fairs encouraging the elderly to purchase various services allowing them to better enjoy their golden years.\u00a0 Pictured here, his headband reads “Be Alive!” and his profile explains that he is actually over 100 years old and also known as cat wi<\/span>zard<\/span> (\u732b\u4ed9\u4eba or <\/span>n<\/em>eko-sennin<\/em>).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The second article is from the New York Times<\/a> and takes a look at such Japanese mascots.\u00a0 It profiles Miyazaki-based costume maker Hiromi Kano, who created one of Japan’s most popular creatures, Kumamon, the mascot for my JET home prefecture of Kumamoto.\u00a0 He didn’t exist when I lived there about 15 years ago, but since that time his popularity has spread across the country like wildfire and he got to meet the Emperor in 2013!\u00a0 These mascots (\u3086\u308b\u30ad\u30e3\u30e9 or yura-kyara<\/em>, a combination of yurui,<\/em> meaning loose or laid-back, and kyara<\/em>, for character) are a booming business, one foreign entities looking to make inroads into Japan can’t ignore.\u00a0 Ms. Kano gave an interesting read on why yuru-kyara are necessary: \u201cJapanese people have this desire to take the sharp edges off things, to take hard things and make them soft.\u201d\u00a0 Sounds like these mascots play a large role in preserving the harmony (\u548c or wa<\/em>) favored in Japanese society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. Happy New Year to all readers!\u00a0 Hope the year of the monkey has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-a9G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39040"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39054,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39040\/revisions\/39054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}