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obaachan

something came over me just now, as i finished writing holiday cards to ppl in japan. my grandmother is in a private hospital, blowing all her decades of savings in the high-income ward where she was placed when she collapsed from diabetes complications. she cycles in an out of good health according to my mother, who flies back and forth between DC and nagoya in the final months of her 30-year employment at the world bank. my mom bikes back and forth from the hospital to the little wooden row-house (長屋) that survived air-raids during WWII, virtually untouched since that time. back and forth in and out up and down how to break free of this incessant cycle of death and rebirth? only through struggle...
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Japanese Class Downtown (Week of 10/23)

This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica...
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Secret Message Writing Exercise (Epistolary Poem)

This is a great writing activity that I learned from DW, but I’ve modified it a little bit so that it will be easier to use with my poetry students. (D, please feel free to post your own version or other versions you have heard of.) materials: lined paper tracing paper instructions: at the top of the sheet of lined paper, write Dear ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever. this will be your reader, your audience, and you will write a letter as if to _______________.) write a secret message to someone that you’ve been meaning to tell but never had the guts to do it. (1 – 2 sentences, but they don’t have to be full sentences). write it on the lined paper so that the message is scattered on the page but so that you can still read it top to bottom and left to right. now forget your secret message when the moderator begins to keep time, start writing and don’t stop. write anything you want but don’t stop, even if you get stuck. if you can’t think of anything, just write nonsense until ...
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