Maybe it’s the language barrier, perhaps it’s misguided preconceptions, but I suspect my own limited exposure to and familiarity with Japanese music reflects the experience of a lot of us. Not content with this state of affairs, I used some of our recent free time to conduct a deep dive into the music scene here, past and present, mainstream and beyond. With deference to Spotify, YouTube and various blogs, what follows is a non-exhaustive, multi-genre introduction to a selection of contemporary Japanese acts deserving of your ears.
About a week ago the Mikan blog reached out to Shikoku ALTs in an effort to accumulate photo submissions of personal art, creative projects for work or pleasure, or anything for that matter. Here are some awesome submissions from ALTs around Shikoku. If you are interested in submitting your photos or interesting work showcasing how you are spending your time during the current pandemic please email Joshua Hill, hillj18@hanover.edu to share with ALTs far and wide.
Sakura in the time of Koro-chan
by Christian Dane, Matsuyama
So with the lurking COVID-19 (or as I like to affectionately call it, Koro-chan) sweeping the nation and by extension, the world, many of us ALTs (at least in the land of Mikans) are still reporting to work at our base schools.
When people study Japanese as a second language, the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) is often seen as a main goal to achieve. An exam that is often overlooked is the Kanji Kentei (漢字検定). This exam is aimed at native Japanese speakers and primary school, middle school and high school students take this exam to see how their kanji knowledge is progressing. The JLPT does not test Japanese learners on their writing abilities, so the Kanji Kentei makes up for a knowledge gap that the JLPT leaves out. So, I believe that this exam is also beneficial for Japanese learners and not just native speakers.
I ran the first and personally dubbed Ehime ALT Half Marathon on June 29th of this year with two other ALTs in Ozu, Ehime. This was to be my fifth official half marathon. It was to be their first.
We were three total. Women. English teachers. Independent. Strong. Sore. Thirsty. Determined. We finished.
A fundamental part of this blog is, and always has been, reviews. Shaping our own experiences in such a way that others can get something out of them is a powerful way to communicate with audiences, and when that experience is something someone else can also take part in, a review is the most direct way to express that. Nowadays, the pop culture idea of what a review is still has this idea of being connected to a star rating or a number out of 100, but the reviews I’ve seen published in the last year are nothing like that. Take Joshua Hill’s review of his experience at Matsuyama castle, or Niall Magee’s experiences with VR in Tokyo. Both are very different ways of approaching very different materials, but both are essentially reviews.
Every three years, a contemporary art festival draws thousands of Japanese tourists and foreign visitors into the sparsely populated islands resting in the sea between Honshu and Shikoku. The Setouchi Triennale, also known as the Setouchi International Art Festival, began just nine years ago in 2010, but it has already garnered acclaim as a top destination in the contemporary art world and as one of the most unique events to take place in Japan. Whether you’re an art lover or an island adventurer (or both!), the Setouchi Triennale offers something for every kind of Shikoku explorer. As JETs in Ehime, we are extremely lucky that the Setouchi Triennale happens in our backyard. Here’s a short guide to the festival, general background and visiting information, and a brief snippet on one of my favorite islands of the area.
For a cloudy day in January, it is strikingly warm in Matsuyama city. Matsuyama is the largest city on Shikoku, Japan’s smallest main island. Usually the coldest month of the year, Matsuyama is today enjoying a very mild 14 degrees C.
The warmer winter days are only one sign of the increasing grasp of climate change in south Japan. Regional typhoon patterns are also changing, and the combination of rising temperatures and increasing typhoon damage poses new threats to the region.
I woke up this Christmas Eve with a new anticipation. Instead of performing the traditional caroling and cookie decorating with my family, back in America, I would be traveling to Matsuyama Castle as a Samurai.
Last December I went to VR Zone Shinjuku, a virtual reality park in Tokyo, for the second time. It opened in July 2017 and will be closing in March of this year, but another location, VR Zone Osaka, opened last year on floors 8 and 9 of the Umeda HEP Five building. These theme parks are a part of “VR ZONE Project i Can” which is an initiative headed by game/toy company Bandai Namco to popularize virtual reality. It all started with a pop-up VR park that ran from April to October 2016 in Tokyo’s Odaiba district, near the famous giant Gundam statue.
