Rebecca's Picks
- recommendations for video games, movies, books, and other cool things
Video Games --- 2003/11/22 posted by Rebecca
I am a self-described otaku (video game freak or something similar) and particularly a Nintendo freak (I’ve visited their headquarters in both Japan and America and even met Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game creator who created Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pikmin, and other unparalleled games, as well as the current President of Nintendo in Japan, Mr. Satoru Iwata), and so my first recommendation must be about video games. Specifically, I want to highlight my favorite arcade game (arcades are called “game centers” in Japan), “Keisatsukan.” Keisatsukan, which means “The Policeman” and is called Police 911 in the US, is a gun-shooting game where as a policeman you have to shoot yakuza (Japanese gangsters) who are terrorizing major Japanese cities. But more than that, it’s a game which involves your whole body as well as your mind because to dodge the enemies, you actually have to physically move your body, darting from side to side as well as crouching, quickly rising, and crouching again. Sensors (built into the gun?) sense how your body is positioned (and in this the technology is the best I’ve personally ever seen in such a game), and thus you cannot survive unless you physically and mentally become “part of the game”. This way in which the game involves you and allows you to feel it is what makes it so fun (not to mention also being very good exercise—I sweat more playing that game for about 5 minutes than I did running for 15). I fell in love with this game when I was living in Tokyo as a student (2001-2002) and was overjoyed upon my return to America to find that it had also spread there, but sadly, since I returned to Japan as a teacher this August 2003, I haven’t been able to find it at any arcades! This is a true tragedy, as it is really the best arcade game I’ve ever played (beating out even Star Wars Arcade Trilogy, which I also recommend). I hope people will find it and give it a try, and if you do, please let me know where it is!
Quotes--- 2003/11/22 posted by Rebecca
For some reason I was thinking about quotes I’ve particularly found insightful today and so I wanted to share some. Unfortunately I can’t remember who said all of them, thus I’ll be doing an injustice to some of the authors, but at any rate here are some of my favorites:
“I am convinced that life is 10% what actually happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” (I believe this was by Charles Swindoll)
“The true test of character is how we behave when we don’t know what to do.”
“The Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
“It’s taken me my whole life to understand that I don’t have to understand everything.”
“Sometimes you can see if you don’t focus so hard.”
“Kindness is the ability to love people more than they deserve.”
“Having resentments is like taking poison and waiting for the other guy to die.” (Malachy McCourt, I think)
“If you accept the fact that things don’t have to make sense, then maybe they’ll start to.”
“Faith enables us to withstand what we can’t understand.”
“Today is the tomorrow you spent yesterday worrying about. Was it worth it?”
“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as to have tried and succeeded.” (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
“Sometimes I have gone a whole day without food and a whole night without sleep, giving myself to thought. It was no use. It is better to learn.” (Confucius)
Cross-Cultural Communica... --- 2003/12/05 posted by Rebecca
The topic of intercultural (or cross-cultural) and interpersonal communication is of great interest to me, and thus I’d like to recommend two books by one of the leading scholars in this field, Deborah Tannen. I believe the titles are That’s Not What I Meant! and You Just Don’t Understand. Basically, they deal with the idea that people have different styles of communication and different expectations of how a conversation should go and what is polite or impolite. Maybe because we are often not aware of the ways in which communication styles and expectations can differ, we tend to assume that others share our own style, expectations, and assumptions, and so we tend to assume that if someone says something, he or she meant by it what we would have meant if we had said it. This can often lead to misunderstanding if someone says something or acts in a way we feel to be rude, insensitive, or insulting, because we assume that he/she meant to insult us or is just an insensitive person when actually, to that person, the comment or action may not have been rude or negative at all. Communication styles and expectations may differ among people of different cultures, members of the opposite sex, or even just among individuals (especially in heterogeneous cultures where people’s families and upbringing may vary greatly). Deborah Tannen often deals with differences in communication style between men and women or other individuals, usually through real-life conversations and anecdotes, and her books are often very easy to read, interesting, and even entertaining while at the same time offering fascinating insights into the world of communication and why misunderstanding and conflicts occur. We used such books during my Cross-Cultural Communications class at Georgetown University—it was one of my favorite classes and possibly the one which taught me the most useful information relevant to everyday life, conversation, and relationships. I wish everyone were required to take that class—I really think the amount of fights between people and broken relationships would significantly decrease, as, as such books will demonstrate, conflict often occurs through misunderstanding rather than through genuine malice or ill will. If anyone is further interested in this subject, you can search the Georgetown University website (www.georgetown.edu) for the Cross-Cultural Communications class (I believe it is in the Linguistics department)—it may have an online syllabus with assigned readings, a bibliography, or a book recommendation list, or at least list the professor’s name who you could contact via the Georgetown online directory to ask for book recommendations. If anyone’s interested in my personal experiences and thoughts about Japanese-American communication, please see today’s Diary posting.
Peacebuilding --- 2004/02/16 posted by Rebecca
I’d like to recommend another book. When I was a senior in college, I interned for a year at an NGO in Washington DC called the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy (IMTD). This NGO does international conflict resolution and peacebuilding work throughout the world and has been instrumental in promoting not only practical peacebuilding activities but peace education and research as well. One of its major works was publishing a book explaining the theory of multi-track diplomacy and its importance for international peacebuilding. The book, called "Multi-track Diplomacy: A Systems Approach to Peace", was written by Ambassador John McDonald, a former US Ambassador and the current Chairman of IMTD, and Dr. Louise Diamond, the co-founder and President Emeritus of IMTD. It is one of the most remarkable books I've ever read.
One of IMTD's main theses is that true peace cannot come about simply through treaties between governments and laws--for there to be true peace, the people who live in communities together have to be able to live together in peace. Peacebuilding and conflict resolution must focus not simply on resolving issues of dispute in a conflict but on building human relationships between the parties involved. IMTD's book describes the important role of multi-track diplomacy in these processes. Basically, while diplomacy has traditionally been thought to be something done only by governments, the theory of multi-track diplomacy says that there are in fact 9 "tracks" (or actors/parts of society) that can engage in diplomacy for peacemaking: 1.Government 2.Conflict resolution professionals 3.Business, 4.Private citizens 5.Research, training, and education 6.Activism 7.Religion 8.Funding 9.Communications and the media. No one track is more important than the other, and no one track is independent from the others. They operate together as a system. Each track has its own resources, values, and approach, but since they are all linked, they can operate more powerfully when they are coordinated. Thus the multi-track diplomacy system is a new (and as yet not well-known) conception of and approach to peacemaking.
IMTD's book describes this theory and approach to peacemaking more deeply and describes in detail each of the 9 tracks, their roles and activities, current issues and challenges, and how all the tracks work together. It also gives a lot of resource information about organizations and individuals that are doing work in each of the 9 tracks, their contact information, and other resources. I have done a lot of reading and studying on peacebuilding and conflict resolution and have taken various university classes on these topics (as this is the field I wish to work in), and this book has been one of the greatest resources I've ever found in the field of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Thus I recommend it to anyone with an interest in making the world a more peaceful place, especially since one of the main theses of the book is that if people were more aware of each of the 9 tracks of multi-track diplomacy and the system in which they function, they would begin to see how their work and activities are connected to those of others and how they can work together to achieve the common goal of peacebuilding. Indeed, one of the main foundations of the theory of multi-track diplomacy is that every person, whatever their station in life, can play a role in building peace.
For anyone interested in getting a copy of this book, or in learning more about IMTD, its current work, and the ideas of multi-track diplomacy, please check out IMTD’s website at www.imtd.org.
(By the way, this book, published in America, was translated into Japanese about ten years ago by a man now living in Kyoto. However, they were never able to find a publisher who would be willing to publish the book in Japan. Now that I am back in Japan, I am hoping that I might be able to help IMTD find a publisher for this book. I would really like to make this book available to Japanese readers, as I think that not only would a lot of Japanese find the topic and ideas of the book very interesting and beneficial and learn a lot from it, but that the ideas of the book could help to stimulate Japanese contributions to international peacebuilding. Indeed, I think some of the ideas promoted by the book are particular strengths of Japanese culture. So, if anyone should happen to have any suggestions or advice, please let me know!:))
SERVAS --- 2004/06/08 posted by Rebecca
If you read my recent diary posting, you’ll know I recently went to Indonesia to volunteer helping Indonesian students with English. Before starting my volunteer work, I did a homestay for a few days at the home of a couple living in Jakarta. I’d like to explain a little about, and to highly recommend, the organization through which I did the homestay, an organization called SERVAS. SERVAS is an international peace organization with branches all over the world and has consultative status as a non-governmental organization with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, currently with representation at many of the UN's hubs of activity. It seeks to promote international friendship, goodwill, and understanding among people of different cultures by connecting people who want to travel to and experience the way of life of other countries with people in those countries who have an interest in hosting foreign travelers. To join the organization, one must pay a certain fee and be interviewed by a SERVAS representative. (I was interviewed by a wonderful person who is a regional coordinator for SERVAS in my prefecture in Japan.) Once you are approved, you write a short letter of introduction, which once stamped is your “SERVAS passport” to go anywhere as a SERVAS traveler. As a SERVAS traveler, when you want to do a homestay in a certain country, you contact a SERVAS coordinator who gives you the list of contact information for SERVAS members in that country. You can then contact whichever SERVAS members you wish there in order to find someone who is able to host you during the time you wish to travel. My SERVAS homestay in Jakarta was one of the most wonderful and meaningful experiences of my life, and gave me what I hope will be a lifelong friendship with an Indonesian woman. I highly recommend this organization to anyone who is interested in really learning about another culture through traveling or hosting a foreign traveler. For more information, please check out SERVAS’s international website at http://www.servas.org. There is also a SERVAS Japan website in Japanese at http://www.servas-japan.org/ with a link to an English version.
Japanese Culture--very i...--- 2004/06/24 posted by Rebecca
I just finished reading one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read on Japan, called A Japanese Mirror by Ian Buruma. The author, who was born in the Netherlands and now lives in Britain but formerly lived in Japan, analyzes themes, trends, and patterns in Japanese entertainment media—movies, manga, etc.—and in doing so describes some fascinating insights into Japanese society and culture. I don’t know whether to say his perceptions and insights about Japan are fully accurate or not, and would love to hear a Japanese person’s opinion about this, but much of what he says made a lot of sense to me because he describes phenomena I have observed (or have observed allusions to) in Japan, and not only describes these phenomena but gives a deeper analysis of why they occur, including societal attitudes that lead to them.
Particularly interesting to me (and at times sort of shocking) were his analyses of Japanese attitudes toward sex, violence, and death. The intensity of certain types of violence and sexual themes in media like manga and children’s anime in Japan may be I think shocking at times to Westerners, especially when it is displayed prominently in places where we would not usually expect it. There has been much debate on whether, for example, violence in TV shows and movies leads to greater acts of violence or more violent tendencies in those who view them, and I think it is often thought that constantly being drawn to excessively violent and sexual media may be a sign of a moral problem in the character of a person. When Buruma describes these phenomena in Japan, however, he seems to make the point that reading or watching violent or sexually violent media may not necessarily lead to one carrying out those acts in real life, and he seems to suggest that when seeing violence against human beings in manga or movies, Japanese audiences may not see any need to feel compassion or empathy with the character or actress on the screen because they have no connection with her, and anyway the character is not a real person. I found discussions like this in the book quite interesting and I would really love to hear from some Japanese people your thoughts on whether you think such analyses are accurate and how you think such phenomena are viewed in Japan.
Another theme discussed in the book that was particularly interesting to me was the phenomena that heroes in Japanese movies and media often die in the end, and often for a “hopeless” cause. According to Buruma, what is seen as heroic and admirable is the hero’s willingness to die for his cause (and the more hopeless the cause, the more sincere and admirable he is seen to be) and the way in which he dies. It seems that the willingness to die and the way in which the hero dies for the cause is more important than the cause itself—that is, dying and the way one dies is more important than why one dies or for what one dies. (I feel this phenomenon is clearly observable in the movie The Last Samurai, and to be honest this was something that rather disturbed me about that movie.) It seems to me that the idea that the way in which one does something may be more important than what one actually does and why one does it, that the process is more important than the end result itself, can be observed in other aspects of Japanese society as well. While this is sometimes true in Western thought and media as well, I think one’s end goal and the reason for this goal is often seen as more important. Thus in Western media it is not usually simply suffering or dying for a cause that is glorified, but suffering or dying for a “good cause”, and dying for a “hopeless” cause, when one’s death would not really lead to any change or positively impact society, may be seen as foolish and a waste of human life rather than a noble sacrifice. I would be really interested to hear the thoughts of some Japanese people as to what they think about Buruma’s assertions about Japanese culture and society. If anyone decides to read this book or has anything to share about these issues, please share your thoughts!
+Re: --- 2004/06/29 posted by Kaori
Hi, Rebecca
This topic intrigues me so much. Let me write something about what I feel now.
Indeed, we, Japanese have regarded reading or watching violent or sexually violent media do not so much affective on the character of a person since it's just happened in the media as Buruma suggested. We do not relate things in the media to our real life.
However, this is questioned and discussed nowadays after the recent killings of children by children in Nagasaki and Sasebo. We can no more neglect the media's influence since it has been revealed the fact that one of children likes watching violent movie which is
Of course it is still believed that all the people who often watch violent films are not inclind to commite a crime, rather most of them keep their morality with no problem, but we cannot help feeling the need to think this matter seriously once again.
By the way, do Americans always connect themselves to what they see in the screen or books? Don't they think it's mere a false story as almost Japanese do? Is there any apparent difference between Americans and Japanese? If so, I would like to know it.
One more thing, yes, Last Samurai...
I knew it would be controvesial when I had watched it at first.
I do not know whether I can explain it nicely or not, but would like to think about it.
It seems that no Japanese people in this modern times agree to die for helpless cause of courcse, however, we are able to understand why the heroes died for helpless cause, or sacrificed themselves even there were other ways to survive.
One reason is that to die is most scary thing for all human being, so Samurai who overcomes it easily or someone who is always resigned to die is highly respected as a brave soldier.
On the contrary, to run away to survive or obey to the enermy is the shame for Samurai and also for his family.
And another reason is Japanese people like a tragic hero, rather than stereo-typed popular heroes like super man. Happy endings of Hollywood film are sometimes oversimple for us. In most of Japanese historical drama, main characters died at the end after struggling for some prupose. (even in the most famous story, 46 samurai died together!) In general drama also, main charactors tend to be somewhat tragic, it's also strange for Americans. As a whole, we seem to like to see tragedy, which is characteristic of Japanese.
Well, these comments above are my personal thinking, so I am not sure how other Japanese people think about it, but it may not so far. I would like to hear some other Japanese comments as well.
Kids' Letters to Terrori... --- 2005/07/12 posted by Rebecca
I’d like to recommend today one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s a very short book (with two sentences/paragraphs on each page, you could finish it in about 30 minutes), but very powerful. It’s called “Kids’ Letters to Terrorists”, compiled by John Shuchart and Steve Scearcy, and it’s a book of writings from young teens in America who participated in a program developed after the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11th called AFTER. The AFTER program was an interactive course on violence and terrorism, and during the final session, each student is asked to write an anonymous letter to an imaginary terrorist. This book is made up of short excerpts from these kids’ letters.
This book deeply and powerfully touched me. It made me cry sometimes but it inspired me. Many of these kids expressed the feelings that I myself feel, but they said them better than I could. I wish every single person on earth could take the 30 minutes and read this book. I really do think there would be less violence and conflict in the world if they did. Anyway, I think the best way to explain this book is to quote some excerpts from it, so here we go:
From the introduction written by the teachers:
“After showing some of the letters to friends and relatives, we realized something truly remarkable; there was, peculiarly, in almost all of them, an absence of anger. Some were funny (‘Why don’t you come over here and teach the boy scouts how to live in caves?’), many were sad (‘I just don’t understand why you do what you do…don’t you realize how hurtful you are?’), but almost all showed empathy and hope. A typical letter questions the terrorist’s actions, but encourages future behavior (‘Why do you think you have to do these things? You could become a lawyer or a doctor.’).
As parents, we shouldn’t be totally surprised. After all, isn’t this what we’ve taught our children? That people deserve second chance; that people can change; that we should forgive others and encourage them to improve? It’s hard to believe, but maybe, just maybe, our young people are listening to us. At least some of the time!”
From the students’ letters to terrorists:
“My grandpa says when we learn stuff sometimes it’s like swallowing frogs…..big green slimy frogs. It’s just hard to do. I want to hate you. But I am taught to forgive. You are the BIGGEST FROG I have ever seen.”
“I look at people differently now. If I think they are from the mid-east I am afraid. I think they are going to hurt me. It is not right. Most of these people are very nice. But I can’t quit the feeling of fear. I know I will get over it in time. But this must be how you live all the time. I feel very sorry for you.”
“I hate you and I don’t like that. I do not know the sound of your voice. I do not know your face but I hate you. I will take care of my hate. I will put it out. Please put your’s out.” (sic)
“I guess it could even happen in Kansas, now. Please don’t come. Terrorism is not cool. Sincerely, your hated friend.”
“You have succeeded. If your goal was to make me afraid, I am.”
“We will rebuild. You won’t. We will go on. You won’t. I promise.”
“What a sad hopeless view of the world you have. I guess that is why you do what you do. I wish I could give you hope.”
“You have made things different. And I don’t like it. But I believe we can be better when this is over.”
“You are not a monster but you sure seem like it. You are a human just like me but it doesn’t seem like it. We walk on the same world under the same sun and moon but I don’t understand. Talk to me, write me back but please don’t attack us.”
“I will pray for you.”
“Do you think people don’t care about you? Well they do care…..as long as you don’t try to kill them. It is a good reason to stop.”
“Terrorists…
Well, what have you done? Really? You killed thousands and made many times more sad. And the cause you helped was…..what? A religious one? A political one? It is not that clear. You hate Americans. That is clear. So because you hate you attack. GROW UP!”
“We build and have pride. You destroy and have pride. I want you to think a minute. Who is the real evil?”
“How could you do such a thing? You made me cry. You broke my heart. Your message was hate. But somehow in all of this my spirit grows hard and strong. You are so small…..how can I expect you to answer my questions?”
“…..But as I’ve grown I’ve learned that if there’s a problem, the solution should never end up in violence…..Do you think that life is only about revenge? If so, I no longer feel sorry for my country, I feel bad for you.”
And my favorite excerpt:
“I know you laughed and smiled when you did it. You thought you had hurt your enemy. You are wrong. I care for you even though you hurt us and laughed. I care for your children that are being taught to hate. I care for you that know only hate. You thought you had hurt an enemy. You are wrong.”
