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akujunkanHmm. I went out for a walk last night and appear to have returned with a Beginner's Chinese textbook and Beginner's Chinese Poetry text, courtesy of the NHK's Radio and Television Lecture Serious. How did this happen?
If you don't yet know about NHK, and live in Japan, stop reading now. You will only endanger your sanity by progressing further. For those of you who aren't in Japan, and thus somewhat immune to the massive temptation NHK presents, please allow me to tell you about my nightmare.
NHK runs a truly astonishing number of educational radio and television programs in a variety of disciplines. Unlike their American 'Become a Neurosurgeon/Fully Fluent in Afrikaans/French Horn Virtuoso in Under 30 Seconds!' counterparts, the NHK textbooks are real textbooks, that seriously examine their target subjects, and in the case of the language texts, teach grammar and fundamentals (as opposed to the glorified phrasebooks that are the Teach Yourself series).
You now understand why the death knell tolled for me when I discovered that the NHK programs weren't just limited to eikaiwa.
It started simply enough, with the NHK Korean radio and television texts. Then I discovered that all of NHK's programs were beginning anew this April, and what's more, that they'd revamped pretty much every course. Since then, I seem to have somehow acquired their French, Spanish, Italian, and reading the works of Shinran (founder of a large and influential Buddhist sect at one of my favorite temples in Kyoto) texts. I have got to be stopped.
On top of the programs I've just mentioned, they also have courses in German, Balinese, Arabic (Arabic!) Japanese classics, Latin classics, Western culture, composing haiku and tanka, baseball appreciation, several Japanese philosophers I'm not familiar with, recent novels, Western cuisine, Japanese cuisine, and a host of English language texts at all levels. It's dangerous.
And what's more, it's pretty sobering to see how little attention American culture pays to education in comparison. These texts that I've mentioned? $3.00 a pop. And they're professionally done, and they're geared toward laymen, who study these subjects for fun. Of course, the effectiveness of any textbook is limited by the motivation of the person using it, but just the fact that every time I've gone in to drool over these books I've been standing with about three to fourteen other people ranging in age from middle school students to grandparents, says something pretty basic about the Japanese attitude toward learning and what constitutes leisure. Most Americans? spend their $3.00 on tabloids or People magazine.
So yeah. I'm going to be a polyglot by the time I leave this country. What the heck. Polyglots are sexy.
That will be all.
If you don't yet know about NHK, and live in Japan, stop reading now. You will only endanger your sanity by progressing further. For those of you who aren't in Japan, and thus somewhat immune to the massive temptation NHK presents, please allow me to tell you about my nightmare.
NHK runs a truly astonishing number of educational radio and television programs in a variety of disciplines. Unlike their American 'Become a Neurosurgeon/Fully Fluent in Afrikaans/French Horn Virtuoso in Under 30 Seconds!' counterparts, the NHK textbooks are real textbooks, that seriously examine their target subjects, and in the case of the language texts, teach grammar and fundamentals (as opposed to the glorified phrasebooks that are the Teach Yourself series).
You now understand why the death knell tolled for me when I discovered that the NHK programs weren't just limited to eikaiwa.
It started simply enough, with the NHK Korean radio and television texts. Then I discovered that all of NHK's programs were beginning anew this April, and what's more, that they'd revamped pretty much every course. Since then, I seem to have somehow acquired their French, Spanish, Italian, and reading the works of Shinran (founder of a large and influential Buddhist sect at one of my favorite temples in Kyoto) texts. I have got to be stopped.
On top of the programs I've just mentioned, they also have courses in German, Balinese, Arabic (Arabic!) Japanese classics, Latin classics, Western culture, composing haiku and tanka, baseball appreciation, several Japanese philosophers I'm not familiar with, recent novels, Western cuisine, Japanese cuisine, and a host of English language texts at all levels. It's dangerous.
And what's more, it's pretty sobering to see how little attention American culture pays to education in comparison. These texts that I've mentioned? $3.00 a pop. And they're professionally done, and they're geared toward laymen, who study these subjects for fun. Of course, the effectiveness of any textbook is limited by the motivation of the person using it, but just the fact that every time I've gone in to drool over these books I've been standing with about three to fourteen other people ranging in age from middle school students to grandparents, says something pretty basic about the Japanese attitude toward learning and what constitutes leisure. Most Americans? spend their $3.00 on tabloids or People magazine.
So yeah. I'm going to be a polyglot by the time I leave this country. What the heck. Polyglots are sexy.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2005-04-04 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-04-04 05:45 am (UTC)Schedule (and ordering info) are on the NHK website. Welcome to my nightmare.
no subject
on 2005-04-04 03:23 am (UTC)So, in the interests of losing my sanity, do they have any satellite or internet feeds?
(I'm only partially protected by the fact that learning Japanese is currently absorbing every scrap of self-educating energy I've got.)
no subject
on 2005-04-04 05:43 am (UTC)Nope, no Internet feeds, because they want you to buy the CDs (two for each text each month, at $16 a piece. I think this is how they really make their money.)
Well, I've just added Chinese onto Korean and Japanese, so if nothing else, it means I'll be off the Internet more. Eh.
no subject
on 2005-04-04 04:34 am (UTC)Hear hear! XD
it's really fun to learn though. especially if you're really interested in it. (take it from someone who badly wants to learn japanese because she's into reading
shounen aimanga =^^=no subject
on 2005-04-04 05:41 am (UTC)