TWIB-III: 27 (4/13-4/19)
May. 11th, 2009 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanOne more outstanding week to go and I'll be all caught up again! Anyway, here is the long-delayed TWIB from 4/13-4/19:
1) 北朝鮮vs.アメリカ - 原田 武夫
North Korea vs. America - Harada Takeo
North Korea vs. America purports to be an examination of the events surrounding America's 2007 placement of financial sanctions on Banco Delta Asia in an effort to combat the counterfeiting of one-hundred dollar "supernote" bills. Its author is a one-time Japanese foreign service officer and full-time tin hat. Although it's difficult to isolate anything that can be referred to as a thesis in this confused and emotionally shrill mess of a book, Harada seems to be arguing the following at various points in the narrative:
North Korea is not responsible for forging supernotes. Now, this may actually be the case. But according to Harada, the real culprit is not Russia or a Middle Eastern oil nation but the CIA. How does Harada know this? Well, because there's simply no proof, so obviously there must be a cover-up. Why is the CIA forging U.S. currency? Well, to prevent Germany from building strong economic ties with the DPRK. No, wait--so that the Euro doesn't overtake the dollar as a world currency. Or rather, so that the U.S. can freeze North Korean bank accounts in order to unfreeze them later and the launder forged currency to itself in the process. No, wait! It's so that the U.S. can use sanctions against North Korea to prevent Japan from creating a yen block in Asia. By which Harada really means, so that the United States can somehow threaten Chinese financial institutions by putting sanctions on a Singaporean bank. Or, no, no! Wait! It's all a scheme to subordinate Japanese politicians to America's Big Plan (the specifics of which, Harada doesn't illuminate).
I'm sorry if what I've written above sounds ridiculous--because it's nowhere near as ridiculous as it sounds when Harada is describing it. I just can't do his tinhattiness justice. If you'd like an example, though, how about this: Harada points out that many of the main plot elements in Ryuichi Teshima's potboiler Ultra Dollar echo the real life facts surrounding the supernote. Isn't that just a little too suspicious? he asks. (Not if you've ever heard of novels being based on current events. But I digress...) Harada then intimates that Teshima wrote the book at the behest of the CIA order to trick the Japanese public into thinking that Japanese abduction victims are forced to do the forging, so that said public would sympathise with American countermeasures against North Korea, blinding themselves to America's true motives, which I guess are [take your pick from the list above].
I suppose North Korea vs. America might hold some interest as a look into the paranoid ramblings of a Japanese right wing nutcase, but that's a very, very flimsy reason to waste the time and effort it would take to read this otherwise valueless book.
2) Basic Connections: Making your Japanese Flow - Kakuko Shoji
Why the hell wasn't Kodansha publishing this stuff when I was shelling out thousands of dollars a semester to study Japanese? Had I had access to this volume and its compatriot back then, I would have been speaking much more natural Japanese much faster, instead of having to puzzle this shit out on my own over the course of a decade.
Basic Connections does what I love for textbooks to do: give precise explanations of grammatical nuance. Yes, these explanations are already out there in the Unicom and Kanzen Master Japanese Proficiency Test textbooks, but here's the thing: contrary to what the (in my opinion seriously misguided) proponents of immersion education think, sometimes a student just needs to hear a sentence or two of usage explanation in her native language in order to understand how to apply the grammar correctly.
If you are a student of Japanese do, do check this book out. It simply and painlessly explains many usage points that many Japanese teachers refuse to elaborate upon because "you'll pick it up on your own" (you won't, at least not for a long, long time). That said, Kodansha really needs to get its act together when it comes to editing: there are some glaring translation and explanation errors that are likely to throw less advanced students for a serious loop. Nevertheless, the content of Basic Connections justifies the cost of its $18 cover price.
That will be all.
1) 北朝鮮vs.アメリカ - 原田 武夫
North Korea vs. America - Harada Takeo
North Korea vs. America purports to be an examination of the events surrounding America's 2007 placement of financial sanctions on Banco Delta Asia in an effort to combat the counterfeiting of one-hundred dollar "supernote" bills. Its author is a one-time Japanese foreign service officer and full-time tin hat. Although it's difficult to isolate anything that can be referred to as a thesis in this confused and emotionally shrill mess of a book, Harada seems to be arguing the following at various points in the narrative:
North Korea is not responsible for forging supernotes. Now, this may actually be the case. But according to Harada, the real culprit is not Russia or a Middle Eastern oil nation but the CIA. How does Harada know this? Well, because there's simply no proof, so obviously there must be a cover-up. Why is the CIA forging U.S. currency? Well, to prevent Germany from building strong economic ties with the DPRK. No, wait--so that the Euro doesn't overtake the dollar as a world currency. Or rather, so that the U.S. can freeze North Korean bank accounts in order to unfreeze them later and the launder forged currency to itself in the process. No, wait! It's so that the U.S. can use sanctions against North Korea to prevent Japan from creating a yen block in Asia. By which Harada really means, so that the United States can somehow threaten Chinese financial institutions by putting sanctions on a Singaporean bank. Or, no, no! Wait! It's all a scheme to subordinate Japanese politicians to America's Big Plan (the specifics of which, Harada doesn't illuminate).
I'm sorry if what I've written above sounds ridiculous--because it's nowhere near as ridiculous as it sounds when Harada is describing it. I just can't do his tinhattiness justice. If you'd like an example, though, how about this: Harada points out that many of the main plot elements in Ryuichi Teshima's potboiler Ultra Dollar echo the real life facts surrounding the supernote. Isn't that just a little too suspicious? he asks. (Not if you've ever heard of novels being based on current events. But I digress...) Harada then intimates that Teshima wrote the book at the behest of the CIA order to trick the Japanese public into thinking that Japanese abduction victims are forced to do the forging, so that said public would sympathise with American countermeasures against North Korea, blinding themselves to America's true motives, which I guess are [take your pick from the list above].
I suppose North Korea vs. America might hold some interest as a look into the paranoid ramblings of a Japanese right wing nutcase, but that's a very, very flimsy reason to waste the time and effort it would take to read this otherwise valueless book.
2) Basic Connections: Making your Japanese Flow - Kakuko Shoji
Why the hell wasn't Kodansha publishing this stuff when I was shelling out thousands of dollars a semester to study Japanese? Had I had access to this volume and its compatriot back then, I would have been speaking much more natural Japanese much faster, instead of having to puzzle this shit out on my own over the course of a decade.
Basic Connections does what I love for textbooks to do: give precise explanations of grammatical nuance. Yes, these explanations are already out there in the Unicom and Kanzen Master Japanese Proficiency Test textbooks, but here's the thing: contrary to what the (in my opinion seriously misguided) proponents of immersion education think, sometimes a student just needs to hear a sentence or two of usage explanation in her native language in order to understand how to apply the grammar correctly.
If you are a student of Japanese do, do check this book out. It simply and painlessly explains many usage points that many Japanese teachers refuse to elaborate upon because "you'll pick it up on your own" (you won't, at least not for a long, long time). That said, Kodansha really needs to get its act together when it comes to editing: there are some glaring translation and explanation errors that are likely to throw less advanced students for a serious loop. Nevertheless, the content of Basic Connections justifies the cost of its $18 cover price.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2009-05-12 08:38 pm (UTC)Kampai!!!
no subject
on 2009-05-14 02:29 pm (UTC)And OMEDETOU!!!!! I am having an Asahi 500ml in your honor right now. Seriously, that is awesome newsXD
no subject
on 2009-05-19 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-20 12:19 pm (UTC)....I officially hate you now.
no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:30 pm (UTC)I thought dearly about you as I was chugging and burping!
no subject
on 2009-05-27 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-28 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-01 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-19 10:43 pm (UTC)And drink up, because we got the same grades (my overall GPA is beating her by .02. usually the only thing being beaten by that amount in our relationship is our BAC but hey what the hell)
no subject
on 2009-05-20 12:13 pm (UTC)And you can't see it, but I'm raising another 500ml Asahi to you...it may yet be that my BAC beats both of yours:-)
no subject
on 2009-05-26 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-05-27 04:06 am (UTC)Without putting too fine a point on it, I think Cumings would happily spend the rest of his days personally masturbating Kim Jong-Il if he got the chance.
no subject
on 2009-05-28 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-01 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-09 10:59 pm (UTC)