Today's Picture: 063
Mar. 30th, 2009 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanIs of:
a club poster. Japanese kids work their asses off through high school to get into good colleges, because the school you attend plays a huge, huge role in determining what companies will employ you, to say nothing of your salary and how far up the ladder you'll advance before hitting the mandatory retirement age.
Once you're in college, however; it's a different story. You don't really have to show up at class provided you can pass the tests. So what do Japanese college students do in their free time? Socialise...pretty much exclusively with the other members of the club they join. So choosing which club to join is more than just making a decision between archery or pottery, it's making a decision about who you'll hang out with for the next four years. For their part, clubs put huge amounts of effort into attracting freshmen each spring.
Graduate students are a little different, because it's still pretty rare for Japanese to pursue advanced degrees, and those who do are expected to act like serious students. Thus, not only do graduate students not join university clubs, they don't really socialise with one another much, either. Or at least not to the same extent as do undergraduates.
That said, HOT DAMN I AM JOINING THIS CLUB.
As you can see, the poster features a person being crushed to death by books. The text reads: "If Death by Book is your Fondest Wish: Ritsumeikan Lit Club." As if that weren't awesome enough on its own, there's a crapload of wordplay going on too: the character 「本」means book, but also means "original" or "true," which is why it shows up in ｢本望」--"fondest wish." A literal (although incorrect) reading of those two characters is "book desire." Finally (and so subtlely that I didn't notice it the first time I stopped to drool over the awesomeness that is this poster), the two characters written in red on the righthand side: 「本」 and ｢死」 mean "book" and "death" respectively, but stick them together and you also get a nonexistent word honshi, which is a homophone for the word "true purpose."
So there you have it. The near-sexual fetishization of books and multilayered, cheesy puns.
...TRULY, THESE ARE MY PEOPLE.
In other (related) news, I catalogued my 2,500th book on LT today, and I'll finish reading my 40th book of the year tomorrow (if I don't actually do so tonight, that is).
That will be all.
a club poster. Japanese kids work their asses off through high school to get into good colleges, because the school you attend plays a huge, huge role in determining what companies will employ you, to say nothing of your salary and how far up the ladder you'll advance before hitting the mandatory retirement age.
Once you're in college, however; it's a different story. You don't really have to show up at class provided you can pass the tests. So what do Japanese college students do in their free time? Socialise...pretty much exclusively with the other members of the club they join. So choosing which club to join is more than just making a decision between archery or pottery, it's making a decision about who you'll hang out with for the next four years. For their part, clubs put huge amounts of effort into attracting freshmen each spring.
Graduate students are a little different, because it's still pretty rare for Japanese to pursue advanced degrees, and those who do are expected to act like serious students. Thus, not only do graduate students not join university clubs, they don't really socialise with one another much, either. Or at least not to the same extent as do undergraduates.
That said, HOT DAMN I AM JOINING THIS CLUB.
As you can see, the poster features a person being crushed to death by books. The text reads: "If Death by Book is your Fondest Wish: Ritsumeikan Lit Club." As if that weren't awesome enough on its own, there's a crapload of wordplay going on too: the character 「本」means book, but also means "original" or "true," which is why it shows up in ｢本望」--"fondest wish." A literal (although incorrect) reading of those two characters is "book desire." Finally (and so subtlely that I didn't notice it the first time I stopped to drool over the awesomeness that is this poster), the two characters written in red on the righthand side: 「本」 and ｢死」 mean "book" and "death" respectively, but stick them together and you also get a nonexistent word honshi, which is a homophone for the word "true purpose."
So there you have it. The near-sexual fetishization of books and multilayered, cheesy puns.
...TRULY, THESE ARE MY PEOPLE.
In other (related) news, I catalogued my 2,500th book on LT today, and I'll finish reading my 40th book of the year tomorrow (if I don't actually do so tonight, that is).
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2009-03-30 02:16 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
no subject
on 2009-03-31 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-31 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-31 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-31 02:07 pm (UTC)But god, I dunno if I'm gonna have time for a bona fide club this year. I've only got T-11 months and counting to write my theses...
no subject
on 2009-03-31 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-04-01 03:01 am (UTC)If anything deserves to be a t-shirt, it's that poster.
no subject
on 2009-03-31 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-04-01 02:51 am (UTC)Which, now that I think about it, increases its awesomeness even more.