Topic: Japan Discussion

@RR529 "RPG" was a very good song, I must say. Going straight into my Youtube folder. Though I should note that it's a Sekai No Owari song, and it's deffinitely different from the first two songs. Too much synth in those.

@FadingEuphoria, ah, Time Travelers I see! Didn't know that was released on PSP.

@CanisWolfred, yeah, I liked that one too (especially since it didn't have the dark undertowns). If my iPod was working, I'd probably download it.

Journeys in Japan was on today! Today they went to Naha, Okinawa.

They visited the reconstructed Shuri Castle, the home of the former Okinawan royalty. It was it's own nation (known as the RyuKyu Kingdom) for around 450 years. Due to being surrounded by more powerful nations, they focused on diplomacy, rather than military might.

They then visited a studio, where traditional Okinawan dance is still passed down to this day. They also interviewed the head of the establishment. It is believed traditional dance originated as part of an old religious ritual. The host was given a quick lesson.

Instead of building shrines or temples, traditional Okinawan religious practices designate certain natural elements as sacred, and the host visited one such tree.

The host then visited a facility where traditional Bingata textiling is practiced. It is an honored facility, that has been around long enough to have produced clothing for the island's royalty. Everything is done by hand. The intricate designs are inspired by Chinese stencil dyeing. The tradition almost died out during WWII, when many anchient works were destroyed during the fighting, and artists didn't have materials to work with.

They then ventured to a modern fashion studio, where traditional Bingata patterns are worked into modern clothing styles.

It takes a flight around 2 and a half hours to reach Naha from Tokyo. Monorail is a good way for tourists to get around the city.

I'm part Japanese "1/128th " so I do love the culture, but I'm sad that the scars from the huge Japanese quake and tsunami are still noticeable in the natural landscape of the region.

Imagine-Nation was on tonight! It was a repeat (I covered it in comment #618).

Had to miss Tokyo Eye today, sorry.

BEGIN Japanology was on today! They covered the world of Parcel Delivery.

It's big business in Japan, where private companies (not unlike UPS) pick up and deliver parcels across Japan. Cost is determined by the size of your particular package (measured by color coded tape), and they will deliver anything from normal packages, to frozen or fresh goods, all within a day.

The idea started up in 1935, when the railroad ministry started up a delivery service for parcels, but the fledgeling idea was cancelled during the war. During the 1970's a private company took the challenge, when they discovered they could make more profit by delivering 1 ton worth of smaller goods, rather than a singular 1 ton package. To this day, they are still the largest parcel delivery service in Japan (They've even branched out to other parts of Asia, with plans to internationalize all of their branches).

Depending on where the package is being delivered, it will be moved by dolly, bicycle, van, train, or even plane. There are over 9,000 logistics centers in Japan, where parcels are sorted (if a package is going particularly far, it will go to one of the many logistics terminals, which each serve around 60 logistics centers). Drivers are particularly courteous, and will go as far as delivering packages to a particular part of the home (as opposed to on the doorstep/hall), and will thank the person whom they're delivering to (a custom which foreign drivers, in their other Asian operations, had a hard time adapting).

The first van specialized for parcel delivery was unveiled in 1981 (allowing easy acess to the cargo from the front), and all these years later, nothing much has changed other than more space, and hybrid engines. Each driver has a small kit of tools, such as a portable printer, and a terminal which they use to manage their deliveries, and it meows when they get a new job (a cat is their mascot).

They even have a senior care service, which in addition to delivering daily goods to the recipients, checks up on their health. This service is a joint venture between parcel delivery services & supermarkets, and took off after the earthquake disaster in 2011.

Smaller companies are trying to offset environmental & traffic pollution, by using smaller vehicles which run on natural gas (rather than petroleum), express trains which run at night (can cut van trips down by 16,000 a year), and are starting to employ three wheeled electric vehicles.

Next week, the topic will be Pro Wrestling.

On YouTube, Gamespot has a 30 minute video entitled Lost Between Levels: Japan Beyond Tokyo.

The video sees them interviewing devs from Osaka & Kyoto (Such as Platinum, Dimps, Nintendo, and Comcept), and they discuss how these companies are combating the recent lack of creativity found in Tokyo based developers. Also discussed is why Japan hasn't experienced an indie revolution, and how they can change that.

They do have it split up into 6 easier to digest videos, but I suggest watching the full thing (as you'll miss out on the Miyamoto interview otherwise).

BTW, I was going to mention this in the Universal YouTube Recommendations Thread, but I think it'd be a better fit here.

I really do wonder about this "indie revolution" issue. There's a lot of good stuff that comes from the Japanese doujinshi scene, Touhou being the prime example, but they don't really rack up the sales as much as western indie games do.

Maybe we just need a few more people like Carpe Fulgur.

They said that why Japan hasn't had an indie revolution, isn't because their aren't talented indie devs out there, but due to cultural differences, they don't really release their games online.

Unlike western indie devs who have easy ways of getting their content on the marketplace, it's awfully tough for a Japanese indie dev to get their game out, unless they have the backing of a big name compamy (like Namco Bandai, Tecmo Koei, ect). Furthermore, there due to the doujinshi culture, many Japanese indie devs are just happy distributing their games to their friends, and leaving it at that (meaning we're probably missing out on some revolutionary stuff).

They did highlight a new convention though, that's aiming to bring Japanese indie games to the spotlight, and make indie devs more comfortable sharing their ideas.

Well with Japanese indie-titles such as Cave Story or more recently La-Mulana having a global audience, It sure does not look like there going in another direction. Though I have no idea how profitable those have been compared to western indie-titles.

Also, seeing that some in this thread are studying Japanese, I have a question to ask. What kind of practice/learning system have you people developed to learn Kanji at a regular basis? As I'm soon to hit my summer-vacation, I would like to learn as much as possible during that time.

I'm not learning Japanese atm, but I know that with Kanji it really depends on what you're having trouble with. Do you find writing harder, or do you find assigning the pronunciations to the characters harder? With writing, the best way to do it is just to keep tracing out the characters and to notice the little quirks in each character. Quite a few will also look like what they describe. With pronunciations, it'll generally help to keep a vocabulary list, maybe through flash cards, and just keep constantly practicing.

Personally I'm just using the book 'Remembering the Kanji' coupled with Anki for revision and stuff. So far it seems to be working reasonably well; 300 kanji completed in about 3 weeks with an hour-or-so of study a day. :3

@Magikarp I guess that's mainly writing I need to focus on, as I've only gone trough how to read Kanji when practicing vocabulary. So far it's not been too difficult to memorize the pronunciations that depends on the context. But I'm curious on how many characters or how many times a day would be appropriate if I want to study in a stable, daily level.
And where to start, really. If someone are aware of a ''most frequently used Kanji'' list, or something similar.

@Blaze Might check that one up, thanks! ^^

Well, really you need to learn the 2200 Joyo kanji to be able to read Japanse material. Those are the kanji which the Japanese themselves learn. Apparently knowing all 2200 show enable you to read a Japanese newspaper, but many less and you'll probably just end up reading fragmented sentences which isn't great. :/

@Blaze Yeah, can't see that working out very well. Thanks for sharing your strategy though, didn't thought of books for some reason.

No problem~ :3

@Skogur: Not only do you need to learn the 2200 Joyo kanji, but you'll also need to be fairly versed as far as grammar and vocabulary goes to be able to read something like video games, manga, and newspapers.
For kanji, I've been using WaniKani.com. It's nice because they use mnemonics and a spaced repetition system so the kanji get into your long-term memory rather than staying in your short term memory. The first two "levels" are free, and after that, there's a small ($6.00 or something) monthly fee. Because it's in beta, there are currently only 1700 or so kanji/vocab you can learn, but I hear that Koichi (the creator of the site) is planning on having all 2200 Joyo kanji, and possibly more, by the time it's out of beta.
Aside from their unique approach to kanji, the community is great, so I suggest making an account there even if you don't want to use it for learning kanji.

For grammar, you could use something free, like http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar, or you could pay for something like textfugu.

If you haven't learned hiragana/katakana yet, I'd learn that before trying to learn any kanji, because many kanji have okurigana (hiragana attached to kanji).

Im not sure how much kanji/vocab/grammar you know already, so if you already know a fairly good amount, you should definitely get some reading material in Japanese for you to practice on. I've found a few good sites for reading material.
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/betu/
http://life.ou.edu/stories/
These two sites only have short stories, but you could also read Japanese blogs, gaming sites, etc. for reading practice.
Also, depending on how confident you are, you could make a lang-8 account and have people fluent in Japanese correct journal entries that you write in Japanese.

@FadingEuphoria That was some useful links you provided, thanks! Being that I've studied Japanese for almost a year now (through japanesepod101) I do know Hiragana and Katakana, along with some grammar and vocab.
So far I've learned Kanji through looking up those I stumbled upon in games or on the internet, using http://wwwjdic.org/.
Reading Manga that makes use of Furigana (Hiragana that shows the pronunciation of the Kanji) has also proven to be quite helpful. Just like games in Japanese makes great reading practice. I do however feel that I'm in a big need of practice, because I'm not nearly as good in writing them, as in reading them.

The ability to write kanji is slowly becoming more and more unnecessary, because nowadays people mostly use keyboards rather than handwriting everything. I haven't really been learning the proper stroke orders, because I'd much rather put that effort into something like grammar, vocab, or reading kanji.
If a time comes when I need to learn how to write, I'd much rather learn the stroke order rules that apply to almost every kanji than learn the stroke order for each character individually.