にほんのおんがく

I havent written in this for awhile, but I thought I'd talk about Japanese music that I like. I don't know too many artists but there a few that I enjoy. I've included some YouTube videos for your viewing pleasure.

1. ナンバーガール (Number Girl): if you like bands like Sonic Youth or maybe the Pixies you'll probably like Number Girl. If you like to rock the f out you'll probably like Number Girl. Watch this video to hear the first NG song I ever heard and to see a pretty hilarious music video. Dont ask me about the creepy kitty mask - I dont know.



2. ラブ・サイケデリコ (Love Psychedelico): this is more poppy. They combine English and Japanese lyrics which is confusing for everybody. The singer kind of has a Southern accent when she sings in English.



3. あそびセクス　(Asobi Seksu): this band isn't really Japanese. They are from NYC. However, the lead singer is Japanese and some of their songs are in Japanese too. They often sound kind of like "shoegazer" bands such as My Bloody Valentine but a little more poppy. I tried to find a copy of my favorite Asobi Seksu song for you, which is called "Umi de no Jisatsu", but I couldnt find one online (yeah I admit they have weird names for things). However, I found a video for a different song thats in Japanese. This one pretty much takes the cake.

Composition #2

やまださんへ、

はじめまして。わたしはジョナスはなえです。じゅうななさいです。アメリカのヴァーモントからきました。コロンビアだいがくのがくせいです。

ヴァーモントはすてきなところです。やまときがたくさなります。きれいです。そしてしずかです。

わたしのだいがくはニューヨークにあります。ニューヨークはきれいじゃありませんが、にぎやかです。だいがくでにほんごとしんりがくとぶんがくをべんきょうします。クラスはむずかしいですが、おもしろいです。しゅくだいがたくさんあります。だいがくのせいかつはとてもいそがしいです。

だいがくでりょうでねます。りょうのへやはちいさいですが、あまりわるくありません。しょくどうでりょうりをたべます。たべものはあまりおいしくありません。

しちがつついたちににほんへきます。

どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

ジョナスはなえ

This weekend was parents weekend, so I got to do the following things:

1. practice speaking Japanese
2. eat Japanese food for free
3. go to Kinokuniya
4. get help with my Japanese homework

These are all good things.

きんようび、とも (Broadway & 110th) でばんごはんをたべました。I had never been there before. すしをたべました, including the "Tomo Roll" which was wrapped not in nori but in paper thin slices of cucumber which was just crazy. It tasted very clean. I also had spicy tuna with avocado (おいしい) and yellowtail scallion (あまりおいしくない). But overall the food was decent - definitely on par with Swish if you are looking for Japanese in the immediate area.

きょ、ははときのくにやへいきました. I like looking at all the Japanese products, like calendars and pencils and that kind of thing. Japanese crap is so much more fun than American crap. Of course, the books there are very nice too, though most of them I can't read. There are some very beautiful picture books though. My mom likes to get those to give to people. I ended up buying one book (http://www.hnabooks.com/product/show/6816), although I have no idea why they were selling it in Kinokuniya since it is not in Japanese, by a Japanese person, nor related to Japan in any way.

cool stuff

So it turns out that some pretty cool Japan-related events happen at Columbia.
It all started a few weeks ago when I saw a poster for a movie called "Doubles: Japan and America's Intercultural Children" that was being shown at Barnard. I didn't know anything about it, but I gathered from the poster that it was about the children of mixed marriages between Japanese and Americans, and that naturally interested me so I decided to go. The movie was about an hour long, and turned out to be pretty interesting as well as moving. It focused quite a bit on children who were born during the American occupation of Japan following WWII, although there were also modern day children featured (well, modern being 1995). All in all, pretty interesting.
Then, after leaving the movie I went onto the website for the Donald Keene Center, which had shown the movie. Turns out that the Donald Keene Center is a Japanese cultural institute here at Columbia. I looked around their website and promptly became very excited because I saw that they are having Gary Snyder speak on October 24th! For those of you who don't know, Gary Snyder is a beat era poet - he hung around with Ginsberg and Kerouac and all of them. He also was interested in Buddhism and lived in Japan for many years. A lot of his poetry is about nature, but Japan plays a pretty big role in some of it. He's one of my favorite poets so I'm going to go hear him and I'm extremely excited!
It's pretty nice that such cool stuff goes on here.

weekend

きんようび、うちへかえりました　（Vermontからきまして）。　ひとりでバスでいきました。　Vermontはけれいなでした！

Self introduction

こんいちは。はじめまして。わたしはじょなすはなえです。あめりかからきました。わたしはColumbiaだいがくのいちねんせいです。わたしはじゅななさいです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

Though I have been raised in somewhat of a Japanese household, I'm not too in touch with Japanese popular culture. I don't really know about the aspects of it that tend to reach the United States, namely anime, manga, video games, etc (although I admit to a bit of a Hello Kitty thing when I was younger). However, I have one Japanese fixation and that is the movies of Miyazaki Hayao (ok maybe that's anime). A few years ago my dad bought me a Chinese bootlegged boxset of them on eBay, so between that and my Japanese friends, I'm pretty sure I've seen almost all of the Miyazaki/Ghibli movies (there are some that are unavailable with English subtitles though). I've even seen that TV show about the spies...

Anyway I thought I'd bring this up since this past weekend for some reason I ended up watching two of them, 天空の城ラピュタ ("Laputa") and 耳をすませば ("Whisper of the Heart"). I didn't end up finishing either, but I've seen them both before so it's okay. I think that these two films represent the two directions Miyazaki movies tend to take: Laputa is in the fantastical style that Miyazaki is most well known for (at least in the USA), while Whisper of the Heart is a junior high love story (he's actually made quite a few of those as well). At any rate I enjoyed both of them and would recommend either...

yikes

I have a friend from high school named やすさん, who is from Nagoya, home of さとせんせい. (They also sound exactly the same when speaking English, which is kind of weird.)　やすさんわLondonだいがくのがくせいです。 After I started taking Japanese I wrote a few messages on Facebook to him using my new Japanese skills...and he replied with this:

はなちゃんはげんきですか？
ぼくはもうすぐロンドンへかえります。
いまからハリーくんにあうのがたのしみだよ。
むこうでせいかつがおちついたらまたてがみをかくよ。

I understand the first line but otherwise...HUH?

Nihongo...

Hajime mashite. Watashi wa Hanae desu. Barnard no ichinensei desu. Okasan wa nihonjin desu. Otosan wa amerikajin desu. I was not raised bilingually (though I have a very limited vocabulary of random words), and my parents use Japanese mostly for the purpose of saying things I'm not supposed to hear. Therefore I must learn it.