Japanese Culture

http://jasc.org/

There are a lot of them here!
http://www.manythings.org/japanese/links/#kana

The history and festival presentations were awesome. They had a lot of information and very interesting. I liked hearing about the great swordsman and the strategic invasions (that's if i heard correctly :D;)Some of my favorite anime use japanese history in their plot. Rurouni Kenshin takes place during the meiji era. Peacemaker also has some of the historical Shinsengumi members in it's series such as Okita Souji and Saitou Hajime. Shinsengumi were a police group back during the late Tokugawa Shogunate period. He is among one of the strongest and well known in the Shinsengumi Okita Souji has not only been featured in Rurouni Kenshin and Peacemaker, but he was also in a novel called Shinsengumi Keppuroku, Ghost sweeper Mikami, and Shura No Toki. The latter three I haven't seen. He was born in 1842 or 1844. He had two older sisters. He started training around the tender age of nine. Peacemaker had that right for the most part. In 1861 he became Jukutou or head couch at the Shieikan. He was quite the prodigy that he was XD! Peacemaker Souji is pictured on the side there.
I googled the image and my information came from wikipedia.org

Okinawa’s history is rich and varied. Researchers can trace the presence of villagers in the Ryukyu Islands back to 2000 BC. From all records, Okinawa and its outlying islands grew reasonably peacefully through the first millennium AD. By the twelfth century, substantial governments in the Ryukyu prefecture began to spring forth, followed closely by the influence of trading ships. The period from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries is called “ancient Okinawa” and refers to a time of frequent change and grown for the island chain. A haven for passing ships; Okinawa was visited frequently by cultures all over the Pacific, all of which had a hand in influencing the diverse culture that grew on the island. At that time, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam all donated to the traditions still seen on the island. Countries battled most seriously for Okinawa in the Pre-modern period (16^th to 18^th centuries). China’s loss in the Chinese-Japanese war solidified Okinawa’s place under the Japanese government, and many Chinese traditions were quickly abandoned. Japan is most famously known for the major battles fought on its land during WWII. The island suffered catastrophic casualties during the war and most of the island is left as a monument to the battles that took place there. Although technically a province of Japan, many Okinawains (mostly older ones) do not consider themselves Japanese. The island is still occupied by military forces, so control of the island was surrendered to the Japanese nearly 40 years ago. Today, Okinawa preserves some of the oldest traditions of the Japanese culture.

Source: http://www.okinawan-shorinryu.com/okinawa/history.html

Your Japanese history research assignment due is 11/21, Tuesday before class. Topic can be any kinds of Japanese history. Post your 1)research in 200 words, 2)one picture, and 3)references.
If you were one of presenters today, no need to do this assignment. If you still have a "saved cash" from extra points, no need to do this, either.

JDC is a 28-day, summer immersion experience that Kyoei Gakuen hosts in
Japan from July 20 to August 19. In teams of four, Japanese and American
high school students travel around Japan, experience modern and ancient
cultural treasures, and help each other to understand the world they share.
Moreover, they must cooperate with each other to accomplish a rigorous, but
fun set of creative expression tasks involving the production of video and
other media about Japan.

We offer two (2) U.S. Undergraduates the opportunity to participate as team
leaders, whereby each will receive a ¥120,000 scholarship and all of their
expenses related to room, board, and travel within Japan will be provided.

http://www.kyoex.com/apply.html

Thru Nov. 16... Force of Nature: featuring Japanese artists Yumiko Yamazaki and Rikuo Ueda. The closing event of Force of Nature is Thursday, Nov 16 at 8pm in the Rutledge Auditorium: Professor Emeritus Dr. DeLamater, Art Historian, addresses the question: “What’s Japanese about Japanese Contemporary Art?"

HOMG!!! Those presentations were beautiful :D I enjoyed them and they were very insightful. The animal part was cool. I like animals. Sakura festival...i'd definitely wanna go to one someday. Sakura blossoms are always pretty ^^ Calligraphy was awesome even though i stunk at it XD!! Hope we get to do some more. The person on the video made it look soo easy. Of course it wasn't as easy as it looked. It always happens like that. But yes again i must say that it was indeed fun. I attempted to write Furiko which i thought was close to impossible, but it looked like something :D it made me happy. I wanted to do love but that was incredibly hard for me.

I really enjoyed being able to do our own calligraphy. I found ut easier to write the alphabet and other kanji using the brush than with regular pencil. It's absolutely astounding how much work goes into the penmenship of Kanji. The video was a great example of that. When I did some research of Japanese Calligraphy, I found that there are three different types of handwriting. The first, the one on the very right above, is the most traditional and formal way of writing, the way that we were all practicing (kaisho). The one in the middles is called semi-cursive (gyosho). This is used when writers are in more of a hurry. It's more difficult to read. The third way of writing, the picture on the left, is called cursive (sosho). It uses the fewest amount of strokes an is fastest, but as you can tell, it's a lot more difficult to read that either of the first two. Do people really write in the sosho way? It seems so difficult to read!

Source: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2095.html