All posts tagged: politics

Japanese Immersion: October week 1

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Watching a drama, at last! I finally found a drama I like: the Japanese remake of the Korean drama “Signal”: 『シグナル 長期未解決事件捜査班』. It is about a police investigation team specialised on old unsolved cases. A walkie-talkie allows one of the members of the team to communicate with one of the detectives from the past, who is living at the time when the murders they are working on were committed. I have always tried to watch romance or daily life comedy because they are easier to understand than dramas with a criminal investigation that are set in a police environment. The problem is that I don’t usually like romance and comedy while I would buy anything even remotely connected with a police investigation. While it can be wise to choose something at your level and force yourself a little bit to study it even if it does not interest you, this method does not work for me. If the drama does not interest me, even if I can feel that it helps me to improve my listening …

Japanese Immersion: September week 3

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My focus for this week was to read my novels, so I haven’t done many non-bookish things for my Japanese immersion. Japanese Songs This being said, I did work a little on my immersion with music. I already mentioned it in a previous post, but I have difficulty finding Japanese songs I like. The Japanese artists I loved before learning Japanese are mostly in the instrumental sphere. Now that I am learning Japanese, I am looking for songs with lyrics, but I am starting from zero and slowly building my Japanese playlist. (If you are like me, check these recommendations, they are a good starting point!) Here are two songs that I have discovered this week and like very much: 『夜の流れ』by Cantaro IHARA (井原寛太郎). The first time I saw the artist’s name, I thought it was a great name for a singer because it meant “let’s sing”. Then I wonder why on earth I was thinking that, and I realised that I was mixing Spanish “cantar” (to sing) and Japanese grammar -おう (let’s sing), haha. …

Japanese Immersion: September week 2

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どうぶつの森! I woke up this morning to hear the good news: Animal Crossing is coming for the Switch! To me, Animal Crossing is closely linked to learning Japanese: it is a game I play in Japanese, and it created an unconscious association between “Japanese” and “a fictional world I love, where the smallest acts of kindness matter and make you smile, your efforts always rewarded, where everybody is nice and where animals talk”. I started playing Animal Crossing because it was a refuge against the real world where your efforts are not always appreciated, people are not always nice and animals don’t talk. What is funny is that I watched Animal Crossing New Leaf videos in Japanese this week. I like the channel of a YouTuber called くるみ. I like how she creates stories (she’s dating the cat ジンペイ) inside the Animal Crossing world and makes a game released 6 years before feel fresh and new. LDP election But of course, my Japanese immersion of this week is mainly due to reading the news. I …

Japanese Immersion: September week 1

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The main thing I did to listen to Japanese this week was watching episodes from 『ちびまる子ちゃん』. I also re-watched the film 『舟を編む』which is one of my favourite films. I love equally the novel by Shion MIURA (三浦しをん) as the film by director Yuya ISHII (石井裕也) I really recommend this film to anyone interested in the publishing world, dictionaries and the pursuit of one’s ideal against sales and profit considerations. This film always makes me feel that hard work and dedication can always win against the lack of immediate recognition and approval. I also have to fight an impulse to buy a paper dictionary! JapaNews24 I have found a YouTube live video called “JapaNews24 ～ 海外へ日本のニュースをLIVE配信” on the channel ANNnewsCH. I wish I had known sooner that such a live video exist. Apparently, they take broadcasted news in Japan, put them all together in a YouTube live video for people living outside Japan. I don’t know exactly when they add new contents, but it seems to be always news from the same day. Anyway, I like …

Japanese News: April week1

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I have been checking the news to in Japanese to give an overview of what happened this week (including last weekend). Of course, I may have overlooked important information and I hope that I understood well the articles I have read. I did my best! Let’s have a look! (all sources from NHK News Web): Civil protest after Sagawa’s testimony Last week, Sagawa testified before the Diet concerning the falsification of the documents relative to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal. However, he refused to answer the hottest questions because he could be subject to prosecution. On Friday evening, demonstrators in a massive protest asked for answers: 森友 国会前で大規模抗議デモ 佐川氏喚問後初の週末. I would translate the title as such: “[Moritomo] Big protest before the National Diet building: first weekend after Sagawa’s testimony. 大規模・だいきぼ: large-scale. Sadly, the article does not say how many people were there. 抗議・こうぎ: a protest 喚問・かんもん: a summons The article says that people asked for clear explanations: “ちゃんと説明しろ”. The reporter interviewed two persons. What they say certainly reflects the sentiment of many people and is quite easy …

Japanese News: March week 4

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I feel more and more at ease with the new format of my “Japanese news” posts. I only focused on internal affairs: Anti-tobacco actions The city of Ikoma (Nara prefecture) has adopted a new regulation against tobacco: 喫煙後45分間 エレベーターの利用禁止 奈良 生駒 I think that the title is quite easy to understand if you know the word 喫煙・きつえん (smoking). The last two words are: 奈良・なら: Nara Prefecture 生駒・いこま: city of Ikoma. According to this new regulations, people will have to wait 45 minutes after smoking if they want to ride the elevator: 「たばこを吸った職員は４５分間、エレベーターの利用を禁止」. This regulation concerns all the officials of the city: “市の全職員”. The reason given is that toxic substances keep going out of the body during the 45 minutes after smoking (i feel that my English is horrible, sorry 🙁): “喫煙後も４５分間は体内から有害物質が出続ける” 有害物質・ゆうがいぶっしつ: toxic substance. I learnt this word in my JLPT N2 vocabulary book, haha. The burger chain モスバーガー (Mos Burger) will make all its 1300 restaurants across the country “全国１３００余りのすべての店舗” non-smoking before the Olympics. As the title suggests, Mos Burger is not the first one to adopt …

Japanese News: March week 3

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Usually, I study a news article every Friday. But last week, I decided to change my routine and try to keep an eye on the NHK News website every day. I hope I managed to extract the news of importance, but I certainly missed a lot of information. Anyway, this is an attempt at giving an overview of the week in Japan (internal affairs only). Moritomo Gakuen The Moritomo Gakuen scandal is still in the headlines. On Monday, an NHK article said that popular protest still spread before the Diet building: “森友問題 国会前では抗議活動続く“. 抗議・こうぎ: protest, protestation The people assembled in the protest were yelling in chorus: 「文書の改ざん徹底糾弾」, asking for a thorough investigation to find who gave the order to falsify the documents. 改ざん・かいざん, as I learned last week, means “falsification”. 徹底・てってい: thoroughness 糾弾・きゅうだん: censure, denunciation, condemnation. On Tuesday, the ruling party finally accepted the request of the opposition: Sagawa will testify in the Diet on March 27th. Sagawa was a high official in the Ministry of Finance at the time of the sale. One article’s title on …

Japanese News: an overview of the week (an attempt)

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Today, instead of studying one article, I would like to have an overview of the topical issues of the week. I think that it would be more interesting to look at a wide range of topics and vocabulary, instead of going deeply into one subject. The problem is that I don’t have a paying subscription to access a digital newspaper that would provide headlines. Instead, I use websites like NHK news or Asahi, but the continuous flow of articles makes it daunting to look for main information. The only solution would be to check the news every day and bookmark articles that I want to review. I am far from reading the news every day in Japanese, but this is something I would like to do (instead of “reading”, I should say looking blankly at articles’ titles and having no idea what they are talking about). Unfortunately, I have not been thorough in my reading the news resolution. I just isolated two main topics, but I don’t pretend to really do an overview of the …