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Text of the page (random words):
of relative position left and right under over etc performed much worse in tests of spatial communication than those who learnt a later version of the language which did so it is not implausible that learning only japanese could be a factor which contributes towards ensuring that children learn to think only as japanese we have been amused in management meetings where everyone is rattling along in japanese interspersed with words like management and communication it s a cheap shot to say well the japanese language obviously does not include these concepts and only partly true more accurately these words are used to mean the japanese version of what the original concept was which may bear little relation to what we would expect like a diet for example which includes anything related to exercise as well as a reduction in calorie intake itself and smart means slim once someone here well educated with overseas experience proudly described the japanese funding arrangements as very democratic because all of the senior sensei were given reasonably equitable budgets to disperse as they saw fit among their minions no that is not democracy it s a feudal hierarchy but confusion between the two might explain rather a lot about japanese politics the lack of distinction between right and privilege is also notable imo here we are allowed to do whatever the govt allows us to do and it doesn t matter if we understand the law so long as we obey it so i wonder what would happen if a generation of genuinely bilingual japanese children grow up with a facility to understand and debate the differences between rights and privileges or democracies and feudal hierarchies it could make for interesting times no wonder the reactionary bigots are against it meanwhile jamstec is still bravely holding back the tide of english canute like this makes it very easy to ignore the deluge of administrivia that fills my email inbox long may it continue posted by james annan at tuesday july 06 2010 7 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels japan japanese wednesday june 09 2010 now they tell us there is no need to be able to write by hand all the kanji that s fortunate really since the junior high school level kanji tests that i showed to a few highly educated university graduates were entirely beyond them nevertheless the list of daily use kanji that everyone is supposed to learn is set to grow to include such gems as momme 匁 which my imac doesn t even know i had to cut and paste that from a web page apparently it s a unit of mass equivalent to 3 3 4 grams and used in the pearl industry daily use indeed update ok i m wrong momme is being removed but utsu 鬱 is being added i can t even see the different strokes in that posted by james annan at wednesday june 09 2010 1 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels bizarre japan japanese wednesday june 03 2009 how long via japan probe i found this truly amazing video and i thought i was bad at japanese of course i ve been here for 8 years but not formally studying japanese for that duration in fact i have a full time job that involves very little contact with the language and no real incentive to learn no matter how well acclimated i become i ll still probably be randomly thrown out with little notice and less justification at some point in the future given how typical that experience is nevertheless i can manage a few simple phrases about how long i ve been here and whether i can eat natto shockingly this interviewee was majoring in english at university presumably when she graduates she will end up in the engrish slogan writing division of some company well that or teaching english to unsuspecting japanese children who will themselves end up incapable of stringing two words together after 7 years the mind boggles for the avoidance of doubt i should point out that there are very many highly capable english speakers here in fact i think that almost everyone in my institute is far better than this specimen but maybe not all posted by james annan at wednesday june 03 2009 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels japanese wednesday january 16 2008 can you speak japanese funny how these things come in a bunch i ve already posted about these vague proposals jt about revamping the visa requirements for japan including language skills testing now a similar sort of idea has popped up again but there s still no sign that anyone has actually thought it through before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion let me say at the outset that of course it is not unreasonable to impose some sort of language requirement on permanent residents and citizenship applications these people are in principle here to stay as members of japanese society there already are de facto requirements if not exactly de jure in the form of paperwork and a face to face interview no interpreter allowed exceptions are only made for mass murderers on the interpol wanted list eg and i don t want to stay here that badly it s not really clear what is being considered there is no such thing as a long term visa anyway with most categories limited to 3y and obviously it would be a complete non starter to hope that foreign professionals or wannabe english language teachers would take japanese lessons just on the off chance that they might get offered a short contract here at some point in the future so i am still waiting with interest to see what concrete proposals if any actually see the light of day posted by james annan at wednesday january 16 2008 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels careers japan japanese sunday november 18 2007 children to read by sixteen tories the conservatives have set out plans which they say will ensure children can read by the age of sixteen actually they said six not sixteen i wonder how that would go down in japan where the curriculum covers the most basic 2000 kanji not enough for true reading fluency by any means by the age of about 16 jules s boss who has several children mixed disbelief and astonishment when jules mentioned some time ago that she could read before she went to school that s not normal is it of course there are different interpretations of what it means to be able to read i wouldn t expect a british 6 year old to be able to handle the more sophisticated newspapers or novels but i find it hard to understand a world in which secondary school pupils also cannot read these things posted by james annan at sunday november 18 2007 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels japanese sunday september 16 2007 kanji are crap readers may not have heard about the latest japanese pension scandal which helped to bring down the pm roughly 50 million account details in the national pension have been lost meaning a whole lot of people risk not getting what they are due here s an amusing snippet from a recent newspaper article the social insurance agency failed to enter names for more than 10 percent of the 50 million public pension accounts whose rightful owners are now unknown apparently because the kanji characters created too much work the agency said employees had failed to enter the names likely because figuring out the proper kanji for account holders names was too enormous a task so 5 million people have lost their pensions because the officials cannot read and write kanji properly names are particularly difficult not that this excuses simply abandoning the accounts i m sure they would agree it s a small price to pay for such a beautiful language posted by james annan at sunday september 16 2007 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels japanese saturday june 09 2007 lost in translation attending japanese project meetings is often a bit frustrating to put it mildly part of this is due to them being in japanese so although i can get the gist of it these days especially with the help of the presentation i can t understand the nuance or contribute significantly to the discussion i could and occasionally did say something in english but it s hard to be sure that it hadn t already been covered adequately when the project is closely related to my own interests it s particularly frustrating but i have to just shrug and let them get on with it the quid pro quo is that they generally let me get on with what i want to do too this new project that i m involved in seems to have as its overall aim motivating the public to take action on climate change based on correct scientific information i d have been much happier if this had been written as supporting the decision making process through the best available science the official version sounds rather too much like instilling patriotism though a correct view of history which is what the j govt is trying to do through its censorship of history textbooks and the like in schools these days combine that with re writing their outdated constitution that currently forbids military aggression and it adds up to scary stuff for japan s neighbours but that s another story i m assured that in this case correct scientific information direct translation of 正しい科学的情報 really does just mean best available time will tell it s mildly amusing to play spot the loanword in japanese discussions of course all languages have borrowed words from others usually to describe new concepts that are not already adequately covered such as the french who as bush once famously didn t say were missing the word for entrepreneur of course a lot of japanese originally came from chinese but more recently there have been western imports such as erebeetaa elevator and bataa butter that presumably came together with these products jules and i noticed two loan words in particular that came up regularly in the discussion of the project plans management and communication i hope they catch on posted by james annan at saturday june 09 2007 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels climate science japan japanese tuesday march 27 2007 an ethical foreign policy some of the bureaucrats here really haven t got a clue this is another all too typical example of the sort of mindless box ticking mentality that dominates here the backstory to this is that a year ot two ago there was a minor scandal with some tokyo university professor being caught falsifying data fortunately it coincided with the south korean cloning thing so didn t attract much attention either at home or abroad still someone obviously considered it was important for all scientists to have a refresher course on research conduct so today this arrived in my mailbox edited highlights we will have a briefing session in the title above briefing session for frcgc rules for conduct in research activities all who are engaged in the research activities are required to attend the session please note the language used in the session will be japanese date and time friday march 30 2007 14 00 15 30 ok there will be an english language handout which is more than they have yet managed for the new employment system but really which genius thought it would be useful let alone important enought to make it compulsory for people to sit through some old fogey waffling on for a full 90 minutes in a language they don t understand of course once you understand the bureaucrat s mindset it makes perfect sense it s not important that we actually understand the new rules it s important that they can tick a box to say that we have attended a lecture in which the rules have been explained to us of course my lab would be well within their rights to demand japanese language ability from all employees if they wished but to do so would be to essentially rule out any possibility of attracting researchers from abroad the lab seems to have some aspirations of internationalisation and when i was first employed english language ability and not japanese was specifically required however that seems to have been dropped in more recent recruitment i wonder if they will arrange a special 90 minute one on one session for jules when she returns from her trip posted by james annan at tuesday march 27 2007 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels japan japanese tuesday march 20 2007 second childhood partly as a reward to myself for passing the jlpt 2 test and partly to help with further learning i decided some time ago to get a nintendo ds lite this took some time as the yodobashi stores have been permanently sold out and not even taking orders and i didn t want it so much as to actually go to tokyo and pay over the recommended price at the handful of shops that were price gouging yeah matching supply and demand by chance i wandered in to the yokohama store on friday evening just as they had a batch in so i joined the queue and am now the happy owner of a blue plastic child s toy as i said it s for study really and i ve got a couple of kanji learning applications this kanji kentei drill program and this new release nazotte oboeru otona no kanji renshuu trace and learn kanji practice for adults both of them go through the 1945 jouyou daily use kanji in the standard order that every schoolchild takes about a decade to learn the former application is aimed squarely at a series of kanji exams that this organisation organises with lots of questions in that style the latter is despite the name more like a children s learn to write program with patterns to trace over although i had to learn to read about 1000 kanji for the jlpt test that was just multi choice with no writing required so i d hardly learnt any writing at all in fact writing is completely irrelevant to my daily life in japan i ve never found anywhere that normal roman characters are not usable and even native japanese often struggle a bit when forced to write by hand however i m sure that the action of writing will help to embed the shapes in my memory and i m also tempted to have a go at one of the kanji tests this year as the jlpt1 is too big a jump in one step and the kanji kentei tests are more finely graded i was rather surprised on starting up the nazotte oboeru program that the first practice set of kanji which it presented me with were rather difficult ones which i had no idea how to read or write it turns out that the program judges your starting level based on your age i had thought it was a little intrusive to ask for date of birth along with name to personalise the game at the start but hadn t thought it would really matter so now according to the machine i am james aged 5 again both the programs are aimed solely at japanese not foreign learners of the language they rely on the user knowing a lot of vocabulary written phonetically and as such they are not really suitable for beginners they certainly do not...
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