しあわせ

Amy Murphy has started a web site guide to Leaving Certificate Japanese. Having taught herself Japanese successfully for the 2009 Leaving, she is now passing on her enthusiasm and insights to other candidates.
If you live in Ireland, Leaving Cert Japanese is worth a look.
Self-motivated and self-led learning is a completely different experience to the rigidity of most secondary school language programs.

Short post and link.
I’ll be on the lookout for these the next time I’m in Japan. Kanji Transformers from Bandai!
The site I found it on, Pink Tentacle, is a mine of weird interesting Japanese art and design.
Another one from them is spot the kanji in town logos.

Two years ago mixi started requiring a Japanese email address in order to sign up to mixi. It seems that what they are doing is filtering for undesirable domains. Hence google mail etc are being barred, Japanese keitai are not.
Koichi at Tofugu has found an apparent crack in mixi’s filters. dot-edu domain addresses are not being blocked. (for the moment). Which is good news if you have a .edu email address. He has even found a way to get a .edu address via an Australian site. Details can be found on Tofugu.
Apparently (I haven’t checked) .ac.uk addresses work as well.
You also don’t need an invite to join mixi anymore according to Tofugu. But play nice please; mixi is different from Facebook et al. and the social conventions around friend requests are different.
I wouldn’t liken it to the Black Ships yet. No one is forcing mixi to open up (and no-one should really). More like some Jesuits being snuck in.

I got a nice email from the author of futurefire, a blog about Japanese study written in German, so I went to check out her site.
I can’t read German but I’m sure it would be useful if you can. As you might expect from someone studying design the graphics are interesting. Check out the article on a re-design of the Tokyo subway map and one on furoshiki.
Also have a look at thephotographs on Wanda’s main site.

As part of the Terracotta Film Festival at the Prince Charles cinema over the bank holiday weekend, there are three Japanese films being screened.

After School Saturday 23 May 16:15
High Kick Girl Sunday 24 May 18:40
Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Friday 22 May 20:45

Details at the festival site. There are also films from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia if you are a fan of Asian cinema.

Thanks to Paul at London Japanese Language Meetup for the heads-up!

I first saw The Queen’s Classroom in Japan about a year ago. It has got to have the most evil bully of a teacher even in TV. Set in the sixth grade class in an elementary school, Akutsu-sensei has a heart of ice and rules with a mental rod of iron, introducing her charges to all the injustice they will encounter in the wider world.
Today I came across it on a Drama site with links out to Google Video. I’m enjoying it in an oh-my-God sort of way. In fact the lead is so~o evil they have to show her transforming back into an actress in the closing credits.