Genki Japan Blog はじめまして。

Today, I'll be discussing two articles I came accross. First of all, the highly anticipated, anxiously awaited, Korean missle launch . This is a controversial topic, and it seems that people are taking sides all over the place. Aside from the fact that under UN terms this launch is illegal, there are a number of reasons why I believe that Japan is definately in the right when it comes to either shooting down the rocket itself, or the debris it leaves. First of all, the opposition once told me, "If I blew up your car because it might crash into somethat, would that be a friendly action?" There's a few things wrong with this, namely, blowing up cars is illegal, and UN finds Japan's actions perfectly acceptable. Moreover, we don't blow cars up in America, we take peoples' driver's liscense if they have a poor track record, and North Korea certainly has a poor track record. Their last missle stayed in the air a mere 30 seconds! If someone were to po...

I was going to do GTO, but I have to rewatch it. Instead, I'm going to review Haibane Renmei , and I'm going to do it with only a small portion of the screen visible, since my laptop screen seems to have something wrong with it, maybe the ribbon cable. This is an amazing anime, and I can't believe how many years it took me to discover it! Being a fan of Serial Experiments Lain , you'd think that I’d have jumped right into this one. Oh well, better late than never, eh? Plot: Again, this is another anime where it's hard to give away much information without completely spoiling the plot. Well, here we go. A girl who appears to be in her mid-teens dreams of falling from the sky. Unfortunately, the dream ends before we can se the rest of it. Anyway, she wakes up inside of a cocoon that’s filled with water, and when it hatches, she finds herself living in a home amongst the Haibane, who appear to be humans with wings and halos. She herself is now a Haibane with no memor...

A song known to most of us as "Numa Numa" is quite popular on the internet right now. Originally in Romanian, it has been translated into various languages, including Japanese. I just had to post it when I found the video for it, because it's epic. First of all, it's almost nothing like the original song, so I'll just give you a heads up. Second, the lead singer/actor in this is a man dressed as a high school girl. He also plays the teacher said student falls for. Creepy? It gets better in that he actually looks better than most of the girls in this video. Perhaps this was done intentionally to help him "pass". He looks to me like a Japanese Jack Black, actually. Enjoy!

I've been waiting to do this one. Why? Because Pimsleur offers amazing audio tapes for a multitude of languages! What's more is that they do them well. As a repititious learner, these CDs did wonders for me. They also made me go broke, but the price is well worth it, and if you can get it used, it should only cost you little more than $100. Pimsleur's motto says that you don't have to read Japanese at all, the point of fluency being able to hold casual conversation. I don't agree with the Stroll Learning company on that one, so I do recommend that you learn Hiragana at least before tackling these. The pronunciation guide is very good, but if you start with, say, Power Japanese , you'll be able to master it faster and with much more accuracy. Now, one thing I do agree with Pimsleur on is this: the reason why no one remembers the languages they "learned" in high school is simply this: they don't teach you how to actually speak. They teach you a bunch...

There have been whisperings going on about how hackers can cause the next big war, because the Internet is like a weapon (watch out all you anti-weapon people!), and I guess that this article over at the Japan Times is a pretty good explanation as to why. And, what do you know? I can't copy the article over here because of all the stupid graphics, and it won't let me highlight just the text for some strange reason. Just click on the link above for the story. Personally, I find this very troubling, but given that banks aren't exaclty doing well, I think I fear our economy even more. Granted, Japan's yen is still stronger than the dollar, but they're suffering because we're not buying their exports. This means that, apparently, Japan was doing something right. Last I read, they are now trying to inflate their money (bad move, in my opinion), so the strong dollar may not last. I promise to put that article up if I can find it again.