With Japan’s negative population growth (3Yen), more and more Japanese schools look like this…
View the original, full-sized photo at LOMO Diary | 2010.12.30 [Google Translate]
—Daily life scenes taken with a Soviet LOMO LC-A camera—
…the gate in front of an elementary school [outside Nagoya Japan].
I looove how this news report could be misread as, “We've collected boxes with children—Please give them to bears.” Yummy.
Wildlife protection group receives 300 boxes of acorns for hungry bears
The Mainichi Daily News | 2011/Jan/15
…The Japan Bear and Forest Society's Gunma Prefecture branch in Takasaki has so far received about 3.5 metric tons of acorns which it will spread across mountains in the region in a bid to provide more food to bears…The scorching heat of this past summer caused food shortages in mountain areas, leading bears to stray into residential areas nationwide in search of food last autumn, with some of them ending up shot dead…
… over 3,000 individuals and groups from across the country responded to the request and offered acorns collected from Japanese oak and beech trees… Many of the boxes delivered to the organization were accompanied by messages reading, “Please give them to bears,” or “We've collected acorns with children”…more…
The many previous 3Yen reports about Japan’s increasing bear problems include:
. . . —Garbage bears plague downtown Tokyo!
. . . . .(3Yen / 2010-11-25)
. . . —“Bears Haunting Beware!” (3Yen / 2010-11-17/)
. . . —Doggie-bags for bears in Japan (3Yen / 2010-07-19)
. . . —BUS BEARS! (3Yen / 2009-Sept.)
. . . —Perfect-for-sleepwalking-and-bear-escape
. . . . .(3Yen / 2005-July)
. . . —Japan’s Pedobear naked! (3Yen / 2010-04-10)
And remember the Sage says…
The dreams of thousands of foreign freakazoids and Wapanese to live in Japan and teach engrish for zillions of mega-yen for a 15-hour work week were dashed a few years ago when the largest engrish school in Japan, NOVA, went bankrupt. Finally, in an all too rare example of justice in Japan, the former Nova president received some punishment for running off with the tuition of tens of thousands of students and back wages of thousands of foreign teachers.
Ex-Nova president sentenced to 2-year prison term for embezzlement
The Mainichi Daily News | OSAKA — The former president of English conversation school Nova was handed a two-year prison sentence for corporate embezzlement by the Osaka High Court on Dec. 2. Nozomu Sahashi, 59, had been convicted….more…
For background on the whole NOVA bankruptcy mess read:
. . . —NOVA gone nova (3Yen / 2007-11-02)
. . . —Should you work for Nova? (3Yen / 2006-03-10)
. . . —NOVA in-depth (3Yen / 2006-02-08)
A couple of days ago I did a double-take when I walked by this new business sign on the way back to my condo here in Tokyo.
WTF is a “Harry Angel” and what does “Harry” have to do with this engrish preshool?!
Sokka….Now I can make out the face of some sort of rat dog (dead?) called “Harry Angel” that supposed to be the mascot for this engrish preshool. However, all I can think when seeing “Harry Angel” is the the hard-boiled, potty-mouth, 1950s detective played by Mickey Rourke in the film “Angel Heart” (1987) – IMDb.
For more information refer to: Angel Heart (Wiki)
Sokka / 
is the masculine, casual version of “Aso ka” which is the shortened form of the formal Japanese phrase “Sou-desu-ka” meaning ‘I understand.’
‘Kan-CHO!!’ (3Yen / 2009-08-13) the insidious Japanese school prank performed by poking both index fingers into someone’s butt when the victim is not looking (similar to the wedgie or a goosing).
In Japan it’s the height of scholarly fun in schools and beyond…
For more than 30 years, “eLearning,” “electronic textbooks,” etc. have been touted as the next big thing. However, the reality of lo-tech Japan (BBC/3Yen | 2010-07-15) is that computers in the classroom have been actively ignored until…
Japan to pilot digital textbooks in classrooms
The Economic Times | 24 SEP, 2010
TOKYO: Japan will soon start trialling electronic textbooks in primary schools, enhancing the role of IT in the classroom for a generation of “digital natives” ↓…
….Japan, despite its status as a high-tech pioneer, lags behind South Korea, Singapore, Britain and other countries in IT use in education, said an official with the communications ministry….more…
…Computers in the classrooms of Japan have been actively ignored until South Korea’s Education Ministry started their Digital Textbook program in 2007. South Korea plans to provide free e-textbooks of their core curriculum to every school by 2013 (Wiki).
Similar to way the Japanese government did everything in its power to limit widespread access to the Internet until South Korea took a massive lead in broadband, it was South Korea’s perceived success in its Electronic Textbook program that now has shamed Japan into action.
Also note that in Japan textbooks are heavily/excessively* relied upon. However, texts are not free in Japanese schools and textbook expenses serve as a burden on young families.
*Excessive rote memorization is the
hallmark of Japan’s education woes.
According to a of the Sankei Newspaper Google Translate, Japanese kids are loosinglosing it and are increasingly striking out against their classmates, teachers and in other dangerous ways (rather than just committing suicide like a normal Japanese).
The Japanese Ministry of Education survey of violence of elementary and high school students showed all-time record of 60,000 incidents of violence, up 1,000 cases from previous years. The Ministry reports there is a remarkable increase in violence of school children who increasingly, “snap and lose all control of their emotions.” In addition, analysis showed that the age of violent acts was found to be becoming much younger.
….The most common type of violence was among students, such as fighting and bullying resulting in injury: 42,770 cases. Attacks against teachers also had both increased to 8,304 cases.
There were 66,040 “destruction-of-property” cases and a 26.4% increase hospitaliziation of victims of violence. Upwards of 4,998 students also received guidance measures such as from the police, courts and child guidance centers.
According to the Ministry, “a lack of communication as well as a remarkable lack of awareness and clear standards in the Japanese educational system may have helped increase the violence” …more...
Today I was reading through the Japanese tweets of Nurse K—One of the 3Yen correspondents who sends me story ideas as well as fanmail pix to brighten my day (see right). →
Besides Nurse K’s kinky-but-discreet photos, she often emails me odd news items in Japanese, which I review using Google’s automatic translation feature. Sometimes this results in amusing machine-translation mistakes such as this post about school nurses in Japan offering their students, “BALL RELIEF.”
Actually the “BALL RELIEF” turns out to be tiny balls of sugar (lozenges) that school nurses hand out to students for comfort— a bogus homeopathic placebo.
Okinawa homeopathy in school nurse’s offices — sugar balls for students
(Google Translate) Asahi News — September 12, 2010
For more than five years, the public school nurses in Nago, Okinawa, with the parents, principals, and the school doctor’s approval, dispense balls of sugar as homeopathic folk medicine to the students visiting the school clinic….
…according to the “Homeopathic Medical Association” …sugar balls are used when students complain of poor health. The remedy composed of herbs, plants and insects are “substances that cause symptoms,” are diluted with water in soaked into sugar balls.
However, the Science Council of Japan late last month declared that homeopathy is, “absurd and without any scientific basis” …
More…
DJ Kazuhiro ABO pumps up a rather well-behaved kindergarten rave.
(Note this video was taken five years ago.)
After decades of low and now negative birthrate, Japan’s university enrollment numbers have been plummeting, However, Nippon Sport Sciences University has found a solution by perfecting robotic students to fill their institutions as shown in the videos below.
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