Standing room only

(1) The first bits:

(a) October 2006 Student Visas: Applications for student visas for the October intake are open and the first deadline is approaching (May 5th). Language quotas will be tight in October due to the large April intake (see selection process) and if you want a single apartment as your first preference you are advised to apply as early as possible. Please note that Student Accommodation will be allocated to successful applicants in the same order that the applications were received. Once the single apartments are full the only way to obtain a single would be via local real estate agents - at market prices instead of the student rate - so don't delay.

(b) Summer Housing - Yamamoto & Villa 2: Some applications are rolling in and about half are being approved at this stage. The majority of applications are asking for single accommodation. Normally once the student village is full we need to reject all new applicants unless we are able to obtain low cost hotel rooms (from about 5250 yen per night). In order to make better use of our resources, a decision has been made to allow short term female students to live in Yamamoto House and from late May, for short term male students to use Yamasa Villa 2. To keep prices down the rent will be the same as the single rooms in the student village (17500 yen per week, no deposit), even though the rooms are larger and include personal refrigerators. Both are also closer to the campus than the Student Village, so it should assist those students who prefer not to obtain bicycles.

(c) Sapporo deadlines: The new Sapporo Japanese Summer Program is full and all applications have been closed. Final notifications are being sent out today. We will be increasing capacity before the 2007 winter and summer sessions. A number of new Ski & Snowboarding in Hokkaido options will be added to the HCJS programs and we will be changing the format of the winter Discovery tours so that the study component can be in either Okazaki or the Hokkaido Center from 2007 onwards. Applications for winter 2007 in Sapporo will open in about 4 weeks.

(d) New International Office Staff: Life just got a lot easier in the International Office with Stephanie Tan from Singapore and Chris Resnik from Switzerland joining the crew. As usual I've insisted that only graduates of the AIJP/AJSP curriculum can work in the office assisting our students - because to advise someone on learning a language like Japanese, you need to know exactly what a student is going through. Stephanie is now training to take over from Shin Yeo as Admissions Coordinator, which will free Shin to do the first marketing activities we've attempted in about 7 years, and Chris is assisting Tomas with the engineering. That also means that we can now handle inquiries in 9 languages, and since Chris just scored 990 in his TOEIC last week, that leaves me as the only member of the team who isn't "merely tri-lingual".

(e) Private Lessons Crunch: We have an extreme shortage of classroom and teaching capacity for private lessons at the moment, so we advise those planning to do private lessons options including Options B & C of the Acceleration program to apply and pay at least 3 months prior to your proposed start date.

(f) Cancellation of 1 day of Golden Week: In order to complete the placement testing and interview processing of the large intake of new students in April, the faculty needed to move the start of classes to Monday 10th April. To ensure that the group lesson component of the Spring Quarter remains at its 243 class base, there will be classes on May 3rd (Constitution Day) for all students in the AIJP and Format 1 of the Acceleration Program. Students in all other programs will have the holiday as scheduled.

(g) Upcoming Trips: The next weekend trip is to Nara on April 30th. Most trips through to August can now be booked online. If you don't know your Student ID number yet, just use your passport number. If you don't know your accommodation allocation yet (or won't require accommodation) just select "Off-Campus". We can change your details after you arrive.

Shinmei-sha Taisai

On May 13th & 14th (always on the second Saturday and Sunday of May) go to the Shinmeiguu shrine (take the bus or ride to the Kousei-cho area north of Higashi Okazaki) for the Shinmei-sha Taisai (Shinmei-sha Shrine Festival). Here you can see children parading in colorful costumes, the beating of taiko drums, and flutes, young ladies doing traditional dances, young men pulling a huge mikoshi shrine etc.

Kyoto Canals		Hanami Party		Easter Rabbits		Irish Ambassadors

3. THINGS JAPANESE: "Hanami" - Cherry blossom viewing in Japan

Literally translated, hanami means viewing the flowers - ie sitting under the trees looking at the cherry blossoms. Aristocrats wrote poetry and sang under the blooming trees. It has been the theme of numerous literary works, dances, and paintings. In actual practice while there is a lot of sitting under the trees, there isn't a lot of looking at the cherry blossoms. This isn't because the blossoms aren't beautiful, it is more a case of the food and drink tending to dominate people's attention spans. And where there is food & drink in Japan, fun is always close to hand. Many of the hanami parties involve everything from...

Continued at http://www.yamasa.org/acjs/network/english/newsletter/things_japanese_37.html

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STUDENT INTERVIEW: Chia-An Li (SILAC)

Chia-An Li

(Interview by Shin Yeo, translated from Chinese)

Shin: Konnichiwa. Can I interview you for the coming newsletter?
Li: Sure.
Shin: Should I come later, since it is your lunch break now?
Li: No worries, we can do it now.

S: Thanks. So, how long have you been in Japan?
L: In Okazaki, for about 2 weeks. Before I came here after travelling to Okinawa and then up to Sendai, doing some sightseeing before my course began.
S: How did you find Okinawa and Sendai?
L: Okinawa is actually very similar to Taiwan. People there are more carefree and the pace of living is not that fast.
S: And how do you find Okazaki?
L: Compared to Okinawa and Sendai, I think Okazaki is a busy city.

S: How did you get to know Yamasa?
L: I found it on the internet when I was doing some searching...
S: And which program are you enrolled in now?
L: I'm in SILAC.
S: Why did you choose SILAC?
L: I choose SILAC mainly because of the flexible length of study available and the intensity it offered.
S: How long will you be here?
L: Only 4 weeks unfortunately, because I have to go back to to do my university studies.

S: I see. Why did you study Japanese?
L: I like Japanese culture, especially J-pop and also, I think it is important to be able to communicate with some of my Japanese friends in their language.
S: I see, J-pop... Any group/person in particular?
L: I like Domouto Tsuyoshi...
S: Oh really.. the guy from Kinki Kids, the first generation of Kindaiichi?
L: Yup, and I like another group called KAT-TUN, they recently debuted with a single and an album.
S: I see.
L: And they are doing a concert tour in various locations.
S: Oh really? Any idea if they are coming to ....

Continued at http://www.yamasa.org/acjs/network/english/newsletter/student_int_69.html

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5. Japan Guide: Helicopter Skiing (Nagano) & Matsumae (Hokkaido)

Horai Senmaida:

Horai Senmaida

Japan is mountainous and predominantly rural. For as long as there has been an identifiably "Japanese" society on the archipelago, generations of communities have eeked out their living from farming and forestry. Many of these have been in what were until recently extremely remote valleys, with rich local traditions. Some of these are still very remote, preserving an increasing hard to find but nevertheless rich and interesting folk culture. During the past 20 years, many Japanese people have come to realize that much of the country's heritage has been lost or endangered, and as a result efforts to record and preserve regional dances, songs, dialects, architecture etc have proceeded apace. In the case of some villages such as Ogimachi in the Shirakawa-go region of Gifu prefecture, or villages such as Tsumago in southern Nagano prefecture, this has been done with considerable success - mainly with an idea to developing the tourism potential of the local economy....

Continued at http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/aichi/horai_senmaida.html

Shiretoko National Park:

Shiretoko National Park was gazetted in 1964 and covers a substantial part, some 386.33 square kilometers (miles), or roughly half of the Shiretoko peninsula, a long narrow peninsula jutting about 70 kilometers into the Sea of Okhotsk from the northeastern tip of Hokkaido. This large Japanese national park was added to the World Heritage list in July 2005. It is one of the most isolated parts of Japan and contains extensive wilderness, there are few roads (and none into the heart of the national park), so the only way to access much is by boat or on foot.

The name Shiretoko is derived from an Ainu word meaning the "end of the earth" or "lands end". The peninsula is formed from a volcanic chain of mountains, enormous black rocks are strewn everywhere, reminding you where they came from. There are few roads, none at all to the cape, and large numbers of wild deer, Hokkaido brown bears and foxes. It is a birder's paradise. Drift ice, hot thermal vents and springs, wild seas and cliffs, quiet ponds, are all a feature of this beautiful wild area.

Shiretoko is unusual in Japan in that it includes.....

Continued at http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/hokkaido/shiretoko.html

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