I haven't updated this blog in a long while - having been back in Australia for quite some time now - but I'm just checking in to mention my new blog.
It's called ESL Ideas and has lesson ideas, resources, tips, etc, for teaching English as a second language. I'm also moving some of my posts from this blog (suggestions for beginner teachers) to that one, and expanding on them a little.
Cheers.
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
JLPT N2 study materials (part 2)
It's rather a long time since I wrote JLPT N2 study materials (part 1) (see also N3 study materials), but since then I have accumulated even more textbooks; I should be able to open my own Japanese language library any day now... As expected, I didn't pass the test last year - only the listening section - but I am still slowly plugging away at the Japanese and hopefully this year will do better.
Without further ado, here are some more JLPT N2 materials I've been using.
新完全マスター聴解
This book - one in a series focusing on different skills, for various JLPT levels - focuses on listening skills. It comes with two CDs full of listening exercises. The accompanying textbook includes sample JLPT-style questions, explanations of different listening problems with practice exercises, and transcriptions of all the audio.
The listening here is not purely listening to full JLPT-style audio conversations, although there's plenty of that. There are shorter exercises focusing on typical listening problem areas, such as spoken contractions (-te iru = -teru, -te shimau = -chau) and pronunciation, identifying whether a speaker is, say, asking permission to do something or asking the listener to do something, agreeing or disagreeing, etc.
All explanations in the textbook are purely in Japanese (with furigana etc). They shouldn't be too difficult to follow, unless you really are just moving on from N3 and didn't pass N3 very strongly. In any case, good reading/vocab practice. Overall, it's a good book, I feel.
日本語パワードリル（N2文法)
As the title suggests, this book consists of lots of grammar practice questions. There are a few pages practising specific types of grammar (sentence endings, particles like 'ni', 'o', etc') but mostly the book consists of 30 10-minute sections, each with a variety of question: 10 general grammar questions, 4 'put the words in order' questions and 3 'read this passage and choose the right language to fill in the blanks' questions (all question types that appear on the actual JLPT).
There are no grammar explanations in this book, so this would work well in conjunction with another resource, eg, the Internet or a grammar textbook, so that you can look up the ones you didn't know or understand.
This book is useful for grammar drills, but it would be more useful when you have a good bit of vocab/kanji behind you. The reason is none of the words in this book have furigana, and there may be sentences you can't understand if you can't read all the words in the sentence. As someone with rather weak vocab, I find I often don't know which answer is correct because I haven't understood one or two crucial vocabulary words in the sentence, rather than the grammar. I suppose this is good practice for the real test. In any case, even if your vocab is weak, there are loads of grammar questions in this book, so you should be able to find lots of questions that you can read!
Shadowing 日本語を話そう 中~上級編
This is not a JLPT-specific resource, but it's designed for intermediate-level students wanting to improve listening, reading, speaking, etc through the technique of shadowing. Basically, this involves listening to short but full-speed Japanese conversations (and you can read along in the book). You listen a couple of times, then try, eg, repeating after the speaker, or reading them at the same time. It has different types of listening (casual conversations between friends, polite conversations in public settings, etc) and has a mixture of 'intermediate' and 'advanced' level listenings. I like that all the conversations have Japanese transcriptions and English translations.
Personally, I find shadowing a bit boring but I suppose that's the point of having each track so short - each page/track is just one or two minutes long, with several conversations on each page - so you can do short bursts of it. It's a good resource, but I haven't used it much, because I did find it somewhat repetitive.
日本語能力検定試験Ｎ２［読解・言語知識］対策問題＆要点整理
Catchy title, huh? This is another book in a series designed for JLPT practice. As with a lot of practice test material, it's better to start using it after you've been levelling up for a while. I mean, because the reading texts approximate what you'd find on the actual JLPT N2, you probably won't be able to understand much of them if you're fresh out of N3. As with the test, it's broken into different types of reading - shorter texts, longer texts, comparing two texts and finding information in 'real world' texts, and a practice test at the end. There are lengthy explanations of the correct answers, etc. (Frankly, I don't find the explanations of the answers any easier to understand than the actual readings. If you didn't understand the reading properly, you'll probably be all the more confused after struggling through the explanations.)
実力アップ!日本語能力試験N2読む(文章の文法・読解)
This is another N2 reading practice book; again, it has a lot of texts with sections similar to those on the real test. As with the previous reading resource, this book is good once you're starting to near N2 level and can benefit from reading texts that are similar to N2 level. A nice feature of this book is a 'quick reading' section with furigana over kanji, but most of the book doesn't have this support (and so is more like the real test). As I said in my review of N3 materials, I had the N3 version of this book and liked it.
I like this reading resource better than the 対策問題 reading book I just described (although the other one has the benefit of a practice test in the back). I think this one makes a little more of an effort to teach you something, rather than just presenting lots of practice; along with the texts there are useful expressions and vocabulary lists - with English translations, even. Another plus is that it includes grammar reading tasks, like on the test, where you read a short passage and must fill in the blanks with the appropriate grammatical expression.
中級を学ぼう―日本語の文型と表現82 中級中期
All these JLPT-specific skill books I've written about are useful for working toward JLPT, and many of them are really good, but they are pretty boring if they are your only resource. Also, some, like the reading practice texts, are not so useful for the gradual process of getting yourself from N3 level to N2 level - they're better when you're close to N2 level already and want to practise more. Therefore, it's quite nice to have an actual general-use textbook like this one, which covers a variety of skills.
I finished my previous textbook (テーマ別中級から学ぶ日本語, which, for simplicity's sake, I'll just refer to from here as 'Japanese by Topic') and I've gone onto this one. I had started to get bored with 'Japanese by Topic' (despite praising it highly in my previous JLPT post) by the end; because of that, this new one seems great by comparison. Like 'Japanese by Topic', this is a general study book - not specifically targeted at JLPT students but containing a mixture of vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening.
Comparing the two:
Without further ado, here are some more JLPT N2 materials I've been using.
新完全マスター聴解
This book - one in a series focusing on different skills, for various JLPT levels - focuses on listening skills. It comes with two CDs full of listening exercises. The accompanying textbook includes sample JLPT-style questions, explanations of different listening problems with practice exercises, and transcriptions of all the audio.
The listening here is not purely listening to full JLPT-style audio conversations, although there's plenty of that. There are shorter exercises focusing on typical listening problem areas, such as spoken contractions (-te iru = -teru, -te shimau = -chau) and pronunciation, identifying whether a speaker is, say, asking permission to do something or asking the listener to do something, agreeing or disagreeing, etc.
All explanations in the textbook are purely in Japanese (with furigana etc). They shouldn't be too difficult to follow, unless you really are just moving on from N3 and didn't pass N3 very strongly. In any case, good reading/vocab practice. Overall, it's a good book, I feel.
日本語パワードリル（N2文法)
As the title suggests, this book consists of lots of grammar practice questions. There are a few pages practising specific types of grammar (sentence endings, particles like 'ni', 'o', etc') but mostly the book consists of 30 10-minute sections, each with a variety of question: 10 general grammar questions, 4 'put the words in order' questions and 3 'read this passage and choose the right language to fill in the blanks' questions (all question types that appear on the actual JLPT).
There are no grammar explanations in this book, so this would work well in conjunction with another resource, eg, the Internet or a grammar textbook, so that you can look up the ones you didn't know or understand.
This book is useful for grammar drills, but it would be more useful when you have a good bit of vocab/kanji behind you. The reason is none of the words in this book have furigana, and there may be sentences you can't understand if you can't read all the words in the sentence. As someone with rather weak vocab, I find I often don't know which answer is correct because I haven't understood one or two crucial vocabulary words in the sentence, rather than the grammar. I suppose this is good practice for the real test. In any case, even if your vocab is weak, there are loads of grammar questions in this book, so you should be able to find lots of questions that you can read!
Shadowing 日本語を話そう 中~上級編
This is not a JLPT-specific resource, but it's designed for intermediate-level students wanting to improve listening, reading, speaking, etc through the technique of shadowing. Basically, this involves listening to short but full-speed Japanese conversations (and you can read along in the book). You listen a couple of times, then try, eg, repeating after the speaker, or reading them at the same time. It has different types of listening (casual conversations between friends, polite conversations in public settings, etc) and has a mixture of 'intermediate' and 'advanced' level listenings. I like that all the conversations have Japanese transcriptions and English translations.
Personally, I find shadowing a bit boring but I suppose that's the point of having each track so short - each page/track is just one or two minutes long, with several conversations on each page - so you can do short bursts of it. It's a good resource, but I haven't used it much, because I did find it somewhat repetitive.
日本語能力検定試験Ｎ２［読解・言語知識］対策問題＆要点整理
Catchy title, huh? This is another book in a series designed for JLPT practice. As with a lot of practice test material, it's better to start using it after you've been levelling up for a while. I mean, because the reading texts approximate what you'd find on the actual JLPT N2, you probably won't be able to understand much of them if you're fresh out of N3. As with the test, it's broken into different types of reading - shorter texts, longer texts, comparing two texts and finding information in 'real world' texts, and a practice test at the end. There are lengthy explanations of the correct answers, etc. (Frankly, I don't find the explanations of the answers any easier to understand than the actual readings. If you didn't understand the reading properly, you'll probably be all the more confused after struggling through the explanations.)
実力アップ!日本語能力試験N2読む(文章の文法・読解)
This is another N2 reading practice book; again, it has a lot of texts with sections similar to those on the real test. As with the previous reading resource, this book is good once you're starting to near N2 level and can benefit from reading texts that are similar to N2 level. A nice feature of this book is a 'quick reading' section with furigana over kanji, but most of the book doesn't have this support (and so is more like the real test). As I said in my review of N3 materials, I had the N3 version of this book and liked it.
I like this reading resource better than the 対策問題 reading book I just described (although the other one has the benefit of a practice test in the back). I think this one makes a little more of an effort to teach you something, rather than just presenting lots of practice; along with the texts there are useful expressions and vocabulary lists - with English translations, even. Another plus is that it includes grammar reading tasks, like on the test, where you read a short passage and must fill in the blanks with the appropriate grammatical expression.
中級を学ぼう―日本語の文型と表現82 中級中期
All these JLPT-specific skill books I've written about are useful for working toward JLPT, and many of them are really good, but they are pretty boring if they are your only resource. Also, some, like the reading practice texts, are not so useful for the gradual process of getting yourself from N3 level to N2 level - they're better when you're close to N2 level already and want to practise more. Therefore, it's quite nice to have an actual general-use textbook like this one, which covers a variety of skills.
I finished my previous textbook (テーマ別中級から学ぶ日本語, which, for simplicity's sake, I'll just refer to from here as 'Japanese by Topic') and I've gone onto this one. I had started to get bored with 'Japanese by Topic' (despite praising it highly in my previous JLPT post) by the end; because of that, this new one seems great by comparison. Like 'Japanese by Topic', this is a general study book - not specifically targeted at JLPT students but containing a mixture of vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening.
Comparing the two:
- this book comes with CD included, so it's better value for money
- this book has furigana with kanji - so you can work through it more easily without a teacher helping you - but the furigana are written in red, and there is a red sheet provided with the book. This means that if you want to try to read pages without furigana help, and test your kanji reading skills, you can easily slip the red sheet over a page and immediately hide all the furigana
- this book has new vocabulary threaded through the readings and grammar sentences, but doesn't present you with huge, daunting lists as in the other book
- my impression is that this book starts from a higher level than 'Japanese by Topic', but finishes at a slightly lower level than that book does ('Japanese by Topic' takes a huge leap in difficulty through the book)
- this book has more focus on grammar - more practice questions, example sentences, etc
- this book includes a variety of reading passages, some longer, some mere paragraphs long, which can make a nice change of pace
(Update: I've just written a post on my other blog specifically about the different N2 grammar textbooks I've used - most of them not reviewed on this page.)
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Persistence
Haha... found this entry in my Yokohama diary:
Had a ridiculous 10-minute exchange with some Japanese guy at my door tonight.
It seems like when people come to the door here, they don't just give a decorous knock, wait a few moments, then ring, then wait again. No, it's pound-pound-pound and immediately ringing the bell twice, then pounding again, all before you've even had time to stand up. It gives you a real feeling of urgency, like there must be some kind of emergency happening, and you'd better get to the door QUICK!
So anyway, I got there and the first thing he asked me was how long I'd been living here. My immediate thought was 'oh no, perhaps he's one of my neighbors and he's going to complain about hearing noise from my apartment'. But I told him, and his next question was where I was from. I said Australia, and he said: "oh! Ian Thorpe!' I looked at him blankly (because I still had no idea who he was or why he was at my door) so he mimed some swimming strokes. He then said I was beautiful - bijin, kawaii. I became suspicious.
The ensuing conversation consisted of him firing off very long sentences, followed by my blankly repeating the last 3-4 words of that sentence.
Him: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah dekiru desu ka?
Me: ...dekiru desu ka... uh...
And when I did correctly understand him, I didn't know what he was on about.
Him: Can you read Japanese?
Me: I can't read kanji.
Him: When do you you think you'll be able to read?
Me: ?? (thinking I must have misunderstood the question)
Him: When will you be able to read? June? July?
Yeah, I should be able to master 2000 or so kanji in the next couple of weeks, no worries. Shouldn't take longer than that to master the entire Japanese written language, no worries.
Finally asked him 'um, sorry, but who are you?' Finally discovered that he was selling newspaper subscriptions. I find it very difficult to believe that he could persist in a 10-minute one-sided conversation with someone who understood not a lick of his Japanese, and imagine that I'd be interested in subscribing to a Japanese newspaper. He tried to persuade me I might be able to read some of it.
I didn't know how to say 'I'm not interested' in Japanese, but I did latch on firmly to the word 'muri' (impossible), and after repeating it several times, he finally went away. >_<
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
JLPT N2 study materials (part 1)
Ooh, I just got my JLPT N2 test voucher in the mail... the big test is coming up in just over a month. Am I ready for it? No! In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll fail. That said, I have amassed quite a collection of study resources. So, as I talked about the books I was using to study for N3 last year, here's a brief overview of the books I've been using for N2.
(Update: I've just written a post on my other blog specifically about the different N2 grammar textbooks I've used - most of them not reviewed on this page.)
テーマ別中級から学ぶ日本語
This book is not specifically designed for JLPT study, but it is a good book for bridging the gap between N3 and N2, as it begins at a lower intermediate sort of level and gradually gets more challenging, with longer and more complex reading passages.
I like this book a lot. Most Japanese textbooks I've seen have been very dry and contain lots of example sentences and questions, and every chapter contains more and more of the same. They are dull to work through by yourself and even duller to work through with a teacher.
That's why I like this book. Although not wildly exciting, it's the first book I've been able to stick with without getting sick of. Each chapter begins with a list of vocab that will be in that chapter, some discussion questions loosely related to the theme of the chapter, a reading passage with comprehension questions, a few grammar points from the reading, etc. The readings are quite interesting and lend themselves to conversation.
I currently work through this book in private lessons with my Japanese teacher. I think the book is very well suited to a private teacher, because you can check your understanding of everything as you go along, read the passages and have them confirm your answers, etc. Going through each unit makes for a structured lesson that still has a bit of variety to it.
Another good point is that the grammar comes directly from the reading passages, so you can go back and see them in context. Also, the passages gradually get longer and more complex. The early ones are a good level for someone coming out of N3, unlike some N2 textbooks that pitch their level a bit high for someone who is only just starting to study for N2. This book was a good level for me.
The book's not perfect; for example there are no review units, no explanations of grammar and no answers to the questions in the book. It's important to note that this book is not designed for self-study but for class use.
短期マスター 日本語能力試験ドリル N2
This is not exactly a study resource, in that it's not designed to teach you per se; it's just practice test questions so you can get an idea of what to expect in N2. Such a resource is really useful as a measure of progress, and particularly useful if you've never taken a JLPT test before. There's no doubt you will get an advantage from not going in blind - you'll better know how you need to manage your time, you'll know what sections to expect on a listening test, etc.
Reading Japanese with a Smile
This small book, which has more English in it than Japanese, contains nine short stories from the Shuukan Asahi, with detailed explanations of the language in them. Each story is a bit quirky or funny. Each chapter begins with the magazine story in Japanese, and a straight translation into English on the adjacent page. After that, the story is dissected sentence-by-sentence, with further explanations of the vocab and grammar used in them.
This is a nice bit of extra reading material and good for three main reasons:
U-CANの日本語能力試験N2これだけ！
I grabbed this book because it was quite small (though it has around 350 pages); it's easy to carry around in a handbag. This book focuses on the kanji/vocabulary section of the JLPT and just consists of loads and loads of questions to practise on. The book is divided into the sections you'd find on the test (eg, in the first section, you have to give the hiragana reading of an underlined kanji, or vice versa). The answers include a brief 'explanation' - for example, giving you the readings of the incorrect kanji, or showing how you'd use each of the vocabulary words in a sentence. There are also a few pages for review, that have loads of kanji/words and you have to test your memory.
This book is good for drilling yourself. It's easy to use because you don't have to flick to the back of the book to check your answers - the questions are on the left-hand page, the answers on the adjoining right-hand page. Another neat thing about this book is that it gives the answers in red - and provides a red plastic sheet. This means you can cover the answers and reveal them as you like; furigana is also provided in red so you can try to read words without help first, then check the furigana if you can't get them.
Good to dip into for a bit of quick drilling and practice; not good for extended periods of study or (despite the cheery name of the book) as your only resource for learning new vocab/kanji.
Anki (kyouiku kanji deck)
This is not a book, but a free piece of software that a lot of people use for language learning. Basically, it's a flashcard program that shows you flashcards at intervals, depending on how well you know the information on the cards. I really recommend it. You can make your own deck or download other people's flashcard sets to study with.
Kanji has always been a weak area of mine, so I decided to download a kyouiku kanji deck (all 1000-odd characters learned by primary school children in Japan) and go through every one of them until I could read and write all of them. It took me over six months, but I did it. I think it helped having this kyouiku kanji deck. That is, it was a clearly defined deck, with a finite number of cards and a definite goal. The way Anki works gives an incentive to study every day (if you leave it a couple of days, the number of cards you have to review increases).
I tried to really learn kanji using radicals; ie by learning the meaning of some common radicals and mentally tying them together to learn the kanji, rather than just trying to remember how to write all the different strokes. Inspired by Tofugu's article 'The 5 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Learning Kanji', I used sites like Jisho's radical look-up and Tofugu's kanji radicals cheat sheet.
Update: I have finally updated and added JLPT N2 study materials (part 2).
(Update: I've just written a post on my other blog specifically about the different N2 grammar textbooks I've used - most of them not reviewed on this page.)
テーマ別中級から学ぶ日本語
This book is not specifically designed for JLPT study, but it is a good book for bridging the gap between N3 and N2, as it begins at a lower intermediate sort of level and gradually gets more challenging, with longer and more complex reading passages.
I like this book a lot. Most Japanese textbooks I've seen have been very dry and contain lots of example sentences and questions, and every chapter contains more and more of the same. They are dull to work through by yourself and even duller to work through with a teacher.
That's why I like this book. Although not wildly exciting, it's the first book I've been able to stick with without getting sick of. Each chapter begins with a list of vocab that will be in that chapter, some discussion questions loosely related to the theme of the chapter, a reading passage with comprehension questions, a few grammar points from the reading, etc. The readings are quite interesting and lend themselves to conversation.
I currently work through this book in private lessons with my Japanese teacher. I think the book is very well suited to a private teacher, because you can check your understanding of everything as you go along, read the passages and have them confirm your answers, etc. Going through each unit makes for a structured lesson that still has a bit of variety to it.
Another good point is that the grammar comes directly from the reading passages, so you can go back and see them in context. Also, the passages gradually get longer and more complex. The early ones are a good level for someone coming out of N3, unlike some N2 textbooks that pitch their level a bit high for someone who is only just starting to study for N2. This book was a good level for me.
The book's not perfect; for example there are no review units, no explanations of grammar and no answers to the questions in the book. It's important to note that this book is not designed for self-study but for class use.
短期マスター 日本語能力試験ドリル N2
This is not exactly a study resource, in that it's not designed to teach you per se; it's just practice test questions so you can get an idea of what to expect in N2. Such a resource is really useful as a measure of progress, and particularly useful if you've never taken a JLPT test before. There's no doubt you will get an advantage from not going in blind - you'll better know how you need to manage your time, you'll know what sections to expect on a listening test, etc.
Reading Japanese with a Smile
This small book, which has more English in it than Japanese, contains nine short stories from the Shuukan Asahi, with detailed explanations of the language in them. Each story is a bit quirky or funny. Each chapter begins with the magazine story in Japanese, and a straight translation into English on the adjacent page. After that, the story is dissected sentence-by-sentence, with further explanations of the vocab and grammar used in them.
This is a nice bit of extra reading material and good for three main reasons:
- sometimes you get sick of reading meh JLPT-style passages and want something more fun
- sometimes you get sick of reading everything purely in Japanese and want a break
- sometimes it can be really helpful to get into the nitty-gritty of what you read and thus build your understanding in general. As a Japanese student, you probably often read passages you mostly understand but you're kind of guessing 'what does this particle mean?' 'does this phrase change the meaning of the sentence?' 'what is this word referring to?' etc. This book makes those things very clear.
U-CANの日本語能力試験N2これだけ！
I grabbed this book because it was quite small (though it has around 350 pages); it's easy to carry around in a handbag. This book focuses on the kanji/vocabulary section of the JLPT and just consists of loads and loads of questions to practise on. The book is divided into the sections you'd find on the test (eg, in the first section, you have to give the hiragana reading of an underlined kanji, or vice versa). The answers include a brief 'explanation' - for example, giving you the readings of the incorrect kanji, or showing how you'd use each of the vocabulary words in a sentence. There are also a few pages for review, that have loads of kanji/words and you have to test your memory.
This book is good for drilling yourself. It's easy to use because you don't have to flick to the back of the book to check your answers - the questions are on the left-hand page, the answers on the adjoining right-hand page. Another neat thing about this book is that it gives the answers in red - and provides a red plastic sheet. This means you can cover the answers and reveal them as you like; furigana is also provided in red so you can try to read words without help first, then check the furigana if you can't get them.
Good to dip into for a bit of quick drilling and practice; not good for extended periods of study or (despite the cheery name of the book) as your only resource for learning new vocab/kanji.
Anki (kyouiku kanji deck)
This is not a book, but a free piece of software that a lot of people use for language learning. Basically, it's a flashcard program that shows you flashcards at intervals, depending on how well you know the information on the cards. I really recommend it. You can make your own deck or download other people's flashcard sets to study with.
Kanji has always been a weak area of mine, so I decided to download a kyouiku kanji deck (all 1000-odd characters learned by primary school children in Japan) and go through every one of them until I could read and write all of them. It took me over six months, but I did it. I think it helped having this kyouiku kanji deck. That is, it was a clearly defined deck, with a finite number of cards and a definite goal. The way Anki works gives an incentive to study every day (if you leave it a couple of days, the number of cards you have to review increases).
I tried to really learn kanji using radicals; ie by learning the meaning of some common radicals and mentally tying them together to learn the kanji, rather than just trying to remember how to write all the different strokes. Inspired by Tofugu's article 'The 5 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Learning Kanji', I used sites like Jisho's radical look-up and Tofugu's kanji radicals cheat sheet.
Update: I have finally updated and added JLPT N2 study materials (part 2).
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Akage no An (Anne of Green Gables)
While I was in Japan I got to see my first Japanese musical, Anne of Green Gables (in Japanese, 'Akage no An' - literally, 'red-haired Anne'). This was being put on by the Shiki Theatre Company - see their website here.
Back when I was living in Japan, this musical was being advertised but hadn't come out yet, so I never got to see it. This time, it was playing again, so I took the chance. I went on a weekday; the theatre was only half full, and although I got a cheap B section seat at the very back, the theatre (the small Jiyuu theatre) was small enough that I could see it very well.
I saw on the Shiki website that I could buy tickets via PIA tickets, which you can buy through some 7-Elevens. (A lot of convenience stores have machines to buy tickets for concerts, games or shows.) A nice staff member at 7-Eleven helped me buy a ticket. It's a Shiki production so was showing at one of the Shiki theatres near Hamamatsucho station in Tokyo.
The musical itself was good, I thought. I'm a big Anne of Green Gables fan and I know the story inside out, so I could easily follow it although it was all in Japanese. The actors were good and so was the singing. When I first heard of this musical I thought it might be unintentionally funny - not only a musical version of Anne, but in Japanese - but I enjoyed it.
One part that amused me was that act 1 ended with a big musical number, 'Ice cream', in which everyone at the church picnic sang the words 'ice cream' over and over again, while everyone held cones in the air. This was immediately followed by an interval, and everyone streamed into the foyer, where they were selling ice creams. You could see everyone thinking 'hmm... for some reason I feel like an ice cream'.
One thing I like about going to shows/movies with Japanese people is that generally, things start right on time, and the people around you are quiet and don't talk to each other during the show/movie. One thing I don't like is that the people around you generally don't respond much to anything. Part of the enjoyment of going to a movie or show is sharing the experience with the people around you. If something funny happens, I like it when everyone laughs. If a big song ends, I think everyone should clap, not just the audience in the first few rows.
Apparently, there is an English version of the Anne of Green Gables musical, which has run mostly in Canada, particularly on Prince Edward Island; you can see a song list on the musical's Wikipedia entry. This is the same musical I saw, with the same songs, though obviously all in Japanese.
Back when I was living in Japan, this musical was being advertised but hadn't come out yet, so I never got to see it. This time, it was playing again, so I took the chance. I went on a weekday; the theatre was only half full, and although I got a cheap B section seat at the very back, the theatre (the small Jiyuu theatre) was small enough that I could see it very well.
I saw on the Shiki website that I could buy tickets via PIA tickets, which you can buy through some 7-Elevens. (A lot of convenience stores have machines to buy tickets for concerts, games or shows.) A nice staff member at 7-Eleven helped me buy a ticket. It's a Shiki production so was showing at one of the Shiki theatres near Hamamatsucho station in Tokyo.
The musical itself was good, I thought. I'm a big Anne of Green Gables fan and I know the story inside out, so I could easily follow it although it was all in Japanese. The actors were good and so was the singing. When I first heard of this musical I thought it might be unintentionally funny - not only a musical version of Anne, but in Japanese - but I enjoyed it.
One part that amused me was that act 1 ended with a big musical number, 'Ice cream', in which everyone at the church picnic sang the words 'ice cream' over and over again, while everyone held cones in the air. This was immediately followed by an interval, and everyone streamed into the foyer, where they were selling ice creams. You could see everyone thinking 'hmm... for some reason I feel like an ice cream'.
One thing I like about going to shows/movies with Japanese people is that generally, things start right on time, and the people around you are quiet and don't talk to each other during the show/movie. One thing I don't like is that the people around you generally don't respond much to anything. Part of the enjoyment of going to a movie or show is sharing the experience with the people around you. If something funny happens, I like it when everyone laughs. If a big song ends, I think everyone should clap, not just the audience in the first few rows.
Apparently, there is an English version of the Anne of Green Gables musical, which has run mostly in Canada, particularly on Prince Edward Island; you can see a song list on the musical's Wikipedia entry. This is the same musical I saw, with the same songs, though obviously all in Japanese.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Meguro Parasitological Museum
The Meguro Parasitological Museum is about a 10-minute walk from Meguro station, in Tokyo. This small museum, as the name suggests, is a museum about parasites, with lots of samples in jars, posters on walls and explanations of different parasites, their life cycles, and different ways of being affected by them.
I had heard of this museum, written up on several different websites as a bit of a quirky novelty. I suppose it is an unusual tourist draw, but it really is small, and has very few English explanations of anything. You can buy an English guidebook, or look at it for free (there's a sample one on the desk by the merchandise counter, along with all the Japanese books), and this does help a lot.
I was amused to read an English newspaper article on the wall which described the museum as being an unusual attraction for young couples; couples would go there on dates, to test their mettle or gross themselves out. As it happened, all the other visitors while I was there were young couples exclaiming over the displays. Unlikely as it sounds, I guess the article got it right!
I had heard of this museum, written up on several different websites as a bit of a quirky novelty. I suppose it is an unusual tourist draw, but it really is small, and has very few English explanations of anything. You can buy an English guidebook, or look at it for free (there's a sample one on the desk by the merchandise counter, along with all the Japanese books), and this does help a lot.
I was amused to read an English newspaper article on the wall which described the museum as being an unusual attraction for young couples; couples would go there on dates, to test their mettle or gross themselves out. As it happened, all the other visitors while I was there were young couples exclaiming over the displays. Unlikely as it sounds, I guess the article got it right!
Friday, 12 October 2012
Maid cafe
Ah, the maid cafe - a uniquely Japanese innovation (I hope) and a particularly famous feature of Akihabara, the geek mecca. The idea is that you pay a little extra to be waited on by cute girls dressed as maids. The cafes range from subdued - really like a normal cafe except that the girls happen to be in costume - to weird - where they girls fuss over you, act 'moe' (…look it up) and play games with the customers. I've been to a 'normal' maid cafe before, but I just had to see what the other sort might be like.
The elevator door opened to a cutesy, brightly decorated cafe with a stage (where the maids sometimes do a show at set hours), pictures on the walls showing us this cafe's girls, and, of course the girls themselves. They greeted me with a wildly excited 'okaerinasai!' ('welcome home!') and called me 'ojousama' - I'm the lady of the house, you see, and they were welcoming me like good maids.
There were a few other customers, mostly male and all Japanese, and the different maids chatted with the different tables, or to each other. When customers ordered food or drink, the maid delivering it would have the customer play a little game with them (like, chant some cute phrase before eating) before leaving them to consume it.
The aim of the maids is to spend time with the customers, and make them feel special by joking and asking questions and being cute. They were quite good at this, but I still felt uncomfortable. It's just kind of an embarrassing atmosphere; perhaps it would be better if the cafe were absolutely full of customers and all of them well into their cups, so that there was a loud and cheery atmosphere. I ended up feeling a bit sorry for the girls, because who wants to try to josh along and play cute games with reticent guys who can hardly look you in the eye? I felt vaguely as if I were seeing a new type of geisha, in the sense that their job is to look pretty and chat with customers, no matter how little the customers have to say.
A maid cafe is a little different from a normal cafe; with their gimmicks, they get a bit of extra money out of you. When I went (Tuesday evening), these were the rules:
The elevator door opened to a cutesy, brightly decorated cafe with a stage (where the maids sometimes do a show at set hours), pictures on the walls showing us this cafe's girls, and, of course the girls themselves. They greeted me with a wildly excited 'okaerinasai!' ('welcome home!') and called me 'ojousama' - I'm the lady of the house, you see, and they were welcoming me like good maids.
There were a few other customers, mostly male and all Japanese, and the different maids chatted with the different tables, or to each other. When customers ordered food or drink, the maid delivering it would have the customer play a little game with them (like, chant some cute phrase before eating) before leaving them to consume it.
The aim of the maids is to spend time with the customers, and make them feel special by joking and asking questions and being cute. They were quite good at this, but I still felt uncomfortable. It's just kind of an embarrassing atmosphere; perhaps it would be better if the cafe were absolutely full of customers and all of them well into their cups, so that there was a loud and cheery atmosphere. I ended up feeling a bit sorry for the girls, because who wants to try to josh along and play cute games with reticent guys who can hardly look you in the eye? I felt vaguely as if I were seeing a new type of geisha, in the sense that their job is to look pretty and chat with customers, no matter how little the customers have to say.
A maid cafe is a little different from a normal cafe; with their gimmicks, they get a bit of extra money out of you. When I went (Tuesday evening), these were the rules:
- There's a table charge - for 1000 yen you can stay two hours.
- You must order either a 'set menu', or choose a minimum of two items from the normal menu. These 'set menus', each of them over 2000 yen, included food and drink, as well as maid-related things - like a keychain, a photo opportunity, etc.
- You can't take photos of the maids, unless you have paid for the privilege. You can also buy merchandise with the maids' pictures on it - hence why they don't want you to take your own! As
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