Book Notes – Liar’s Poker
Cover via Amazon
Michael Lewis, freshly graduated with a Master’s degree in economics from LSU, got a job working for investment bank Salomon Brothers in 1984 (how he got the job is a story to itself; as encouragement to read this witty book, I’ll just tell you it involves the late Queen Mother). Salomon Brothers expanded [...]
Regime change – Japanese style
Image via Wikipedia
UPDATE 1: The phrase “regime change” has certain connotations for English speakers, linked as it now is with rationales given by Western leaders (particularly President Bush and then-Prime Mininster Tony Blair) for invading Iraq back in 2003. As used with reference to Hatoyama and the DPJ election campaign, it is a translation of [...]
Japan throws out its conservative government after 50 years
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Here are some links I found today:
From the Telegraph:
Japanese election: Hatoyama’s agenda includes tax breaks and distance from the US Yukio Hatoyama wooed the Japanese electorate with an agenda for change, but the 62 year-old nicknamed the Alien is an unlikely revolutionary.
Japan votes for a new start as ruling LDP [...]
Meltdown in Japanese – just in time for the election?
Image via Wikipedia
“Meltdown”, historian Thomas Woods’s book on the origins and causes of the present financial crisis, based on Austrian Economics Business Cycle Theory, has been translated into Japanese, and can be bought on Amazon Japan. Woods’ own summary/review can be read on the Lew Rockwell website.
Just in time for the Japanese elections. (The electorate [...]
JALT Presentation on the Immediate Method
A friend and I are giving a presentation this Sunday (July 19) about an EFL approach called The Immediate Method, developed in Japan by foreign-language instructors. Here are some of the documents I will use in my presentation:
bperry1 (pdf)
bperry2 (pdf)
azraextra (pdf)
Here’s the blurb from the JALT events website:
The Immediate Method
Date and Time:
Sunday, 19 July 2009 [...]
Aoyama Gakuin University forcing students to carry tracking devices!
Image via CrunchBase
In a good example of journalese, the JapanProbe headline screams:
Aoyama Gakuin University forcing students to carry tracking devices
with a picture of an iPhone.
At least one of the commenters is alert and informed, and effectively counters the title’s hyperbole:
Comment by jikku
2009-05-17 18:34:27
The title of this article is misleading. The students of Aoyama Gakuin’s School [...]
No swine flu in Japan yet, but universities have already reacted… with panic!
Image via Wikipedia
Completely unpredictably, out of the blue … from the ever watchful Japan Probe.
Teaching in Japan: the Way of the Dragon
Image via Wikipedia
The scene: a highschool gym which also serves as assembly hall. The hall is filled with rowdy students. A stranger takes the podium. No-one pays him the slightest attention. He stands there gazing around at the chattering students. “Why don’t you say something?” asks a girl at the front, “you peed in your [...]
Stand up! Stand up, for the Emperor!
Image via Wikipedia
I used to feel sorry for these people, and I do feel a lingering sympathy, but not much and it’s ebbing away quickly.
Why are these people surprised? What were they expecting? The state is often institutionalized coercion: if they can make everyone study the same subjects, from the same textbooks, why can’t they [...]
When is a dangerous drug not a dangerous drug?
The Cough —-not Strawberry Cough
Originally uploaded by BodhiSativa Photography
Judging from this BBC report about the possible downgrading of the drug ‘ecstasy’, the answer would appear to be “when the British government puts it in the ‘dangerous’ category”.
Over the past few months in Japan, there have been a number of cases of young people arrested for [...]
