What does it mean to become Japanese? Can a foreigner or ‘gaijin’ ever fully integrate into Japanese society such that they blend in and are treated ‘normally’? A recent video foray into this tricky topic.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff to watch, so fix up dinner, plonk yourself down in front of the computer ]]>

What does it mean to become Japanese? Can a foreigner or ‘gaijin’ ever fully integrate into Japanese society such that they blend in and are treated ‘normally’? A recent video foray into this tricky topic.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff to watch, so fix up dinner, plonk yourself down in front of the computer and get stuck into the wide variety of opinions and ideas brought up by several different foreigners in Japan. My thoughts are right at the end of this post. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s go back right to the start…

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BobbyJudo brings up the issue:

‘If you master Japanese language and culture and started living in Japan in a real way, you will be recognised as a Japanese citizen.’

There were many great responses to Bobby’s video, but the real drama began when popular Japanese vlogger Hiroko over at HirokoChannel said:

‘In Japan you are a foreigner, and that’s okay’, seemingly implying that foreigners won’t be fully accepted and that they should not take issue with that.

Tokyo Zeplin took issue with Hiroko’s video and particularly that statement she made and responds by saying that he ‘wants Japanese people to treat him equally’.

Hiroko responds to clarify her position and misunderstanding about foreigners accepting themselves for who they are and in an attempt to quell the uprising of ‘racist’ comments being left on her video.

Gimmeabreakman pitches in and defends Hiroko, adding his own learned advice from many years living in Japan.

Hikosaemon gives us an impromptu and highly detailed account of his attempt to become a Japanese salaryman and explains his own wise views on becoming Japanese.

Finally, I decide to give my two socio-evolutionary pennies on the subject in response to Hikosaemon. Basically musings about there not being enough mixed ethnicities in Japan for foreigners to blend in at this point in time, but that as Japan opens up more and more foreigners find themselves embracing Japanese values and living there permanently that this will – hopefully – begin to change.

Also, how is it best for Japan to internationalise in such a way that it does not lose its culture and traditions, but also so that it may better interact with other countries on a global scale?

But this is certainly not the end of this debate! I would love to hear your opinions on whether foreigners can ever become Japanese and be fully accepted into Japanese society. What do you reckon? Is it possible and how can it be achieved?

This announcement is a little later than I had planned, so ]]> Here are the winners to the review and contest I held recently. Philip has supplied me with two copies of his nifty little flash game that helps you learn Japanese to give away, so without further ado, let me announce the lucky people to win!

This announcement is a little later than I had planned, so sorry about the wait! Entries were closed last week Friday as I stated, however. I was really surprised by all the re-tweets and excellent comments posted by eager students of Japanese, and it pains me to only be able to to give two copies away. As well as that, this competition was done by a random draw, so no preference was given to those who perhaps would benefit from the game more than others. Definitely something I hope to change in future competitions though! :)

Well, here we go – the two lucky winners picked by Random.org:

YoyoKirby

Diego Dan

Well done to the both of you! Please contact me via Direct Message on Twitter with your email address and I will have Philip contact you :)

For those of you who didn’t win, I will be holding more competitions in the future for cool stuff from Japan, so stay tuned! ^_^

If you’re as smitten with the ocean as me, you might appreciate this little projector unit I discovered for this week’s Interesting Item (Omoshiro Zakka). It brings the soothing comfort of the deep blue to your bedroom, bathroom or wherever you choose to put it.

Dubbed the ‘Relaxing Ocean Projector Pot’, this waterproof device ]]>

If you’re as smitten with the ocean as me, you might appreciate this little projector unit I discovered for this week’s Interesting Item (Omoshiro Zakka). It brings the soothing comfort of the deep blue to your bedroom, bathroom or wherever you choose to put it.

Dubbed the ‘Relaxing Ocean Projector Pot’, this waterproof device allows you to project the splendour of the ocean surface onto the walls or ceiling of your home, giving you that cool blue under the sea effect.

Personally, I would be inclined to have in my bedroom as I drift off to sleep, giving me that 癒される (iyasareru) – healing – feeling of an aquarium. It has a one hour timer to automatically turn it off in case you drift off to sleep and they suggest it might be put to good use if you plan on inviting your boyfriend or girlfriend over for the evening.

As you can see from the above image, it has exchangeable batteries, timer, angle adjustment and moving filter to give that wavy flow of water you’d expect from the sea. It weighs in at about half a kilogram and costs just over 3000 yen. Maybe a gift to consider for this year’s upcoming Valentine’s Day perhaps? Let me know if it brings results ;)

Source: Rakuten

Ii Naomasa is known as the Red Demon. A historic figure and one of the Four Guardians of the Tokugawa in Japanese history. He is best known for his fearsome blood-red samurai armour and nasty habit of killing people over mistakes. That’s the guy I’m set to become in this year’s Spring parade.

Naomasa distinguished ]]>

Ii Naomasa is known as the Red Demon. A historic figure and one of the Four Guardians of the Tokugawa in Japanese history. He is best known for his fearsome blood-red samurai armour and nasty habit of killing people over mistakes. That’s the guy I’m set to become in this year’s Spring parade.

Naomasa distinguished himself from other generals with his courage and also political ability, earning him the prestigious role as one of the Four Guardians serving and protecting the legendary Tokugawa Ieyasu, Shogun and one of the major unifiers of Japan.

However, it is said that he had a rather disagreeable personality and would often end up killing people, even over small mistakes. This included many of his subordinates, so it does not surprise me to hear that it earnt him the nickname ‘The Killing Machine’ (人斬り兵部) and that many of his followers defected to another of the Four Guardians, Honda Tadakatsu.

His crowning battle that he is remembered most for is the Battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600. It is arguably the most important battle in Japanese history with 160,000 men fighting and ended in a complete Tokugawa victory, beginning Tokugawa’s reign as Shogun. You can see his troops clearly standing out in the screen depiction below:

In the battle, Naomasa’s unit of Red Demons outpaced the enemy and drew first blood. He is said to have used the blood-red colour for psychological impact to unnerve his enemies, although it was not a tactic he devised himself, having learned it from a previous general.

Naomasa was also said to be extremely violent in battle, often breaking formation in a rush and not being present to command the troops, the role always falling back on his reluctant chief minister. Unfortunately, Naomasa was wounded in the very same battle that he is most remembered for, which ultimately led to his premature death. In the time of the Warring States, it was common for subordinates to commit suicide and martyr themselves after their master’s death, but in the case of Naomasa, not one person did so…

Which leads me to wonder if I’m really suited to play his part in the upcoming spring parade in my city. Should I even want to..?? He was a great warrior and well respected by Tokugawa Ieyasu, so I don’t doubt the fearlessness and tenacity of the man. But should his soul briefly overpower me, would I be likely to knock the guy in front off his horse? Might it spur some deep-rooted fit of rage? It would make a great excuse, anyway… ^^;

I shall of course be posting pictures and an account of the day when it finally comes in early April. Until then, I have 4 weeks of training to do to get ready for the role, including learning how to ride a horse. I’ll be sure to grow the customary moustache too!

Sources:
Wikipedia – Ii Naomasa (Eng)
Wikipedia – Ii Naomasa (Jp)
井伊直政 – Hatabo’s Homepage (Jp)
Top image source: Sengoku Gallery

This is my entry into this month’s JapanSoc Matsuri hosted by Loneleeplanet.

The second installment in Kotobukiya’s new series of themed chopsticks is none other than the classic Katakana ]]> It was only last week that I introduced Kotobukiya’s Power of the Force special Star Wars-themed chopsticks. Now they’ve gone and made chopsticks to make your feudal side salivate. Yes, you can become a Samurai at dinner time!

The second installment in Kotobukiya’s new series of themed chopsticks is none other than the classic Katakana sword. They reckon that if you pick a pair of these babys up, you’ll feel like an officer out of the Warring States period of Japanese history.

Not only have they modelled the swords of three famous warriors: Date Masamune, Sanada Yukimura and Maeda Keiji, they’ve spared no detail.

The guard portion of the replica 23cm swords are carefully coloured and patterned according to each warrior and there is a hand protector tsuba built in, small enough not to get in the way during mealtimes. You can even get the chopstick rests with the crest from each warrior’s clan!

Pick up a pair from Kotobukiya’s own website and store for just 1050 yen. They won’t be available until May this year though!

Hat tip to @dannychoo for the link.

This week’s Interesting Items from Japan (Omoshiro Zakka) are Star Wars chopsticks. Use the Power of the Force to fight your way through a bowl of rice or slice your salted fishy meal cleanly in two. Be you Jedi or Sith, rest assured that the Empire has you covered.

Is it me, or has Darth ]]>

This week’s Interesting Items from Japan (Omoshiro Zakka) are Star Wars chopsticks. Use the Power of the Force to fight your way through a bowl of rice or slice your salted fishy meal cleanly in two. Be you Jedi or Sith, rest assured that the Empire has you covered.

Is it me, or has Darth Vader switched sides and lost a heck of a lot of metallic body in that above picture..?

Anyway, as you can see from our superb model’s performance below, each luminescent* chopstick is held clasped closely together in one hand. We recommend the right hand, unless you happen to have lost it in a Father-Son duel.

*Chopsticks are not actually luminescent. Nor do they omit awesome lightsaber humming sounds or cut off Ewok legs.

Below, the fetching tweetbot R2-D2 shows us the product range. Yoda green to Maul red. And if you fancy prancing around as a Skywalker, we have a blue just for you.

The lightsaber chopsticks have been slightly distorted to fit the traditional Japanese chopstick size of 20-23cm. Apparently, not only can you increase your nutritional intake by using these special chopsticks, you can also boost your Midi-chlorian count. Evidently no Jedi should be without them! Last, but certainly not least, the chopsticks have cleared the Food Hygiene Law, so you can chomp and munch with peace of mind. Nice.

They are a steal at around 900 yen, or however much you reckon your Jedi bargining skills can bring the price down to.

Source: Rakuten.

Philip Seyfi, new ]]> NihongoUp is a neat little game that installs quickly and cleanly and offers great benefits to you learning Japanese. With Kana and Kanji practice and even vocabulary drills for up to the highest level of the JLPT, it’s certainly getting itself noticed in the language-learning arena. You can also win a free copy!

Philip Seyfi, new media designer and developer at Divita is behind the swanky looking program NihongoUp, which also has an iPhone version. He commissioned me to take an in-depth look at the software and review it. So here’s the good and the bad. Video at the bottom of this post for those of you who don’t like to read :). See the end of the post where I’m giving away TWO free copies of the game! Yes, free! Who doesn’t like free!? There is also a 15-day free trial on his website.

Skip down to the bottom of this post for my Overall Impressions if you are in a hurry!

(Note: I have only been able to test NihongoUp on the Mac, so I cannot comment on the Windows, Linux or iPhone versions of the game.)

Aesthetics

While the goal of the software is to help you learn Japanese, the look and feel of the tools we use are also very important. Studying is often hard, repetitive and just plain boring, so anything you can do to liven up the prcoess is a plus. The Japanese stationary market is flooded with colourful pens, finger-huggingly grippable pencils and cute folders to bring excitement to your work, so a good-looking and well-designed program would have a similar effect.

I’m pleased to report that NihongoUp succeeds at all levels on the design front. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a designer like Philip – his website and products reflect the clean, smooth designs of the modern internet and the animations glide between one-another like the airy clouds floating in the background of the game.

It looks lovely to behold and is a pleasure to use for the most part. A simple, pink layout with sharp transitions as you click between the various types of game available reassure you that this is a product that has been lovingly produced. Even the music fits the design and for the first 10 minutes of so, it’s quite nice to listen to.

Unfortunately at this stage, there only appears to be one track in the game and while it does make for good background music, I quickly became tired of it, preferring to turn it off completely in the settings and stick on Fatblueman’s new album to enjoy while studying. It definitely needs more tracks to choose from.

Functionality

The software is very simple to use and requires no learning curve, so you won’t have any trouble using it. I installed it quickly and simply on my computer and was playing within 3 minutes. The menus and layout for the different types of Japanese review are all clearly separated, as you can see above.

There are also some basic options in the Settings panel that allow you to control music, sound effects, the game duration and, importantly for us Japanese language learners, whether you are viewing kana or kanji in the game (which is great for beginners who might fear kanji). I’ll touch more on this later.

My only minor gripe with the game’s functionality is that it has been designed primarily with keyboard input in mind. A mouse works, for sure, but when I attempted to use it to click on the balloons in the game modes, I sometimes missed, resulting in me ‘pausing’ the game. Rather frustrating and, I reckon, easily fixed. Why not put a small menu button in the corner of the window and have that for pausing the game?

Also, the point-scoring system is somewhat basic. You get more points exponentially as you get a series of correct answers, but I would like to see additional points given if you type or click the correct answer more quickly (i.e. when it is higher up the screen).

Gameplay

The game is divided into 4 sections: Kana, Kanji, Vocabulary and Grammar, so I’ll take a look at each one separately.

Kana Mode

Kana mode offers you 3 types of game: Hiragana, Katakana or mixed practice. The concept is simple: score points by typing the correct meaning of the Japanese characters that you see being transported down by balloons.

Sound easy? It is, but the catch comes when you start doing well. The more unbroken strings of correct answers you get, the faster the game becomes and the more points you rack up. It can get quite challenging, even for a person like me who deals with Japanese characters every day.

The big problem with this method is that is really requires you to have good typing skills. I don’t touch type, and I had trouble keeping up reading the characters, looking at my keyboard and knocking out the readings, especially for those odd combinations like ぢゃ (dya). Still, it is challenging and enjoyable enough to keep you trying again and again. Perfect for absolute beginners of Japanese who really need to nail those character readings. And believe me, you *need* to know the readings before you can progress in the language.

Kanji Mode

Kanji mode currently only offers two levels of study: JLPT levels 4 and 3. This is a big shame, because otherwise the game works quite well. On level 4, you are faced with sentences of hiragana or katakana test and 4 balloons float down. It’s your job to pick the kanji character that matches the highlighted reading at the bottom of the screen.

The good thing about this is that Philip appears to have accounted for kanji knowledge in-between levels. I can’t verify that for all kanji, but I did notice that in level 3, basic kanji characters you should have learnt in level 4 are used – so there’s no use cheating yourself! Let’s hope this trend continues when he adds JLPT levels 2 and 1 in the future and it’ll make for a very useable tool to track your reading progression and kanji recognition.

Also, you are able to change from sentences to just words in the settings if you prefer to focus on only one word when looking for the right kanji.

One problem, however, is that you cannot swap the kanj and matching kana around. In other words, you cannot check your kanji reading skills by looking at the character and selecting the correct reading for it. This sort of practice is essential because the JLPT test has a section that requires you to select the correct reading of kanji based on the characters you see in word combinations. In other words, you have to remember the readings for yourself instead of having to match the character to a reading already displayed. I hope to see this in future versions, as it is crucial to learning to read kanji well, in my opinion.

An example from the game. Choose the kanji:

おもさ　　Choose:　重　昼　土　犬

Not in the game – I want an option to be able to choose like this too:

重さ　　Choose:　おもさ　いもさ　じゅうさ　じょうさ

Vocabulary Mode

This is more like it. All the levels of the old JLPT test are here 1-4. You are presented with an English word at the bottom of the screen and can choose to display answers in either kanji or in kana from the settings.

Unlike the kana mode games, this mode doesn’t get any faster, and I found it to be a little too slow at times. It works like many other drill programs I’ve seen whereby you just select the answer that matches the text, resulting in a satisfying ringing sound when you are correct and a bleep when wrong. Points increase exponentially as you get successive answers correct.

The big problem with this mode, as with the Kanji mode, is that there is no apparent way of swapping the recognition modes around. You must always select the relevant kanji based upon the English reading. Again, this is unacceptable for a serious learner, who must be able to understand kanji as seen in context. I think it is much more important to be able to see a kanji compound piece of vocabulary and choose the closest match in English to what it means.

Grammar Mode

Finally, we come to the grammar mode, with its Japanese particles and Japanese counters practice sections. Both items are very important in mastering the language, and even I struggle with counters after many years of study, so they are very welcome additions.

The counters practice in particular is a nicely done mode, utilising sentences complete with kanji and the counter in context. You choose the correct reading. The particles section is also good, but unfortunately only uses kana to keep things simple and at times has sentences to which there are multiple possible answers. A good start and fine for testing basic grammar, but this mode could use further improvement to really help it shine.

Overall Impressions

Alrighty then. No doubt there are some of you who skipped here to read my conclusion first. I don’t blame you – you want to know whether or not this piece of software is worth the $5 asking price, right?

Here’s your answer: Yes!

That’s going to be especially true for those of you who are still beginners learning the language. There’s so much to offer for the beginning learner – complete kana practice, JLPT levels 4 and 3 kanji practice and plenty of sentences in the vocabulary and grammar sections to get you off on a good start. Yes, you could find many of the same things online for free, but you can save yourself the time by just giving NihongoUp a try. I think the excellent kana practice and counters drills are the best I have seen to date and are worth the asking price alone.

For the more advanced learner, the answer is a more reserved yes. I would hope to see more on offer in future updates, such as additions to the kanji mode for JLPT levels 1 and 2. You can practice your advanced vocabulary up to the highest level JLPT1 though, which is great for improving your recognition skills one-way, but it is still limited. The big advantage is that all the words are already ready for you inside NihongoUp. If you use another SRS program like the marvellous Anki, you will need to create or download the databases containing all the vocabulary yourself.

Still not sure? Philip offers a free 15-day trial of the software on his website. Go over and taste it for yourself! NihongoUp Free Trial

Suggested Improvements

As outlined in my breakdown of the program, here is my list of suggestions for improvements:

Competition to win a FREE copy of the game!

I have two copies of the game to give away. There are three ways to win! You only have to do *one* of the below to enter, but do all three if you like :)

1) Re-tweet the following text on Twitter. Make sure to include everything, especially the hashtag at the end!:

Win a FREE copy of NihongoUp and learn Japanese! Simply re-tweet. http://bit.ly/gakgoup #gakUP

2) Make a Youtube video telling me why you want to win a copy of NihongoUp and make sure to post a link to your video in the comments of this post.

3) Leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to win a copy of NihongoUp.

You can also follow me or Philip on Twitter for further Japanese stuff and general cool points :)

Follow @gakuranman on Twitter
Follow @nihongoup on Twitter

Winners will be announced by 22nd January. Good luck!