Now and than

I have stumbled across several crazy Japanese commercials on the internet. I asked myself, what the hell happened in Japan during those last 150 years.

Japan was practically isolated from the rest of the world until the half of the nineteen century. Than the white man came, and as usual, started ravaging local culture. With great eagerness from Japanese, to tell the truth. And so Mei-Ji reforms had started. Everything western was happily accepted, as depicted in The Last Samurai film. These reforms destroyed traditional setting of Japanese society – the emperor, nobles, samurai, merchants, peasants … and nation became unified. Anyway, feudal Japan became concurrence able to other nations in less than 100 years, as proved in WWII.

But why that crazy popular culture? My guess is, that it’s combination of that unification of the people, and of the Japanese nature; Japanese have always suppressed their feelings and emotions, regarding the social code. This suppression has to erupt somewhere, so Japanese probably relax watching those mad Japanese TV shows like “human tetris”, Takeshi castle, crazy anime series, androgynous “boy” music bands and insane porn.  And I believe they can easily switch between their duties and their free time, a boss of big company could be a collector of anime figurines, for example.

A short thought on anime/manga: it’s not a genre, it’s a form. All genres, appearing in western film/book/comic can be found in Anime.

 

And now for some examples, the last one is actually connected with the “modern educational methods” theme.

Red riding hood commercial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq8xuVnB-Pk

Schwarzenegger commercial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skBlEbsM0jM

Learning English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRerwXWTRjM

 

Assignment3

For the story about the teacher and her pupils – touchy. Maybe too much. A bit like those „send this e-mail to 20 persons or you will get a cramp“ e-mails.

Now I had to sit for a while and think which one of my teachers impressed me. Come to think of it, I can hardly recall all of my basic school teachers from all the basic schools I attended . For most of the teachers at high school would go „he’s OK, she’s fine“ and for some „what an ass“, but if I had to choose one, it would be Mr. Michael Tesař. He came to the school the year I was to graduate, as a literature teacher. Tall man with a little hair and a face of a child replaced young Mrs. Čecháková who made you fall asleep with her first words and whose cup of coffee would’t spill even if you smashed it on the wall, who replaced Mrs. Lindnerová, in her 40s, with mind partialy in her 20s. Well, quite a funny bunch, when I look back. Anyway, Mr. Tesař. You could see he loved literature from the way he talked about it. Allways a bit like in an other world, yet cary for what his pupils thought about the books. And what did his teaching gave me, for my future life? Frankly, nothing but a several names and a distant memory of a funny fellow.

A visions of students today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

To begin with, all of the „Did you know“ and „Shift happens“ videos have one thing in common. To invoke a feeling ow „Wow!“, „Whoa!“, „How terrible!“, „How sad!“ etc. And I don’t like it. If you think about it, they are just facts. Good? Bad? Just facts. India having more honor kids than USA kids? What a surprise. Not only there is so many kids in india they are standing one on another, but we all know Americans aren’t „the sharpest knife in a drawer“ considering population IQ. 

Printed media disappearing on behalf of online magazines? How terrible, right? Yes. But it’s too late to cry over a lost gills. Evolution is unstoppable and irreversible. 
More videos uploaded to YouTube in last 2 month than on ABC in it’s existence? Now comparing apples and pears, are we? Needless to say more.
Now for the Visions of students. What do we know about the background of this „research“? Done by 200 students. Pretty small number, in my oppinion. 200 students from one school, as it seems. And what do they tell us? They write x times more pages of e-mail than schol work, they read x times more web pages than books … In the video, it’s presented like some of that „Oooh, wow!“, but what the hell? It’s just a simple fact. Sure they e-mail and surf more than their fathers and grandmothers at their ages, since the internet is widely used for only several years. And more drama follows and follows … 
To sum up – the facts are interesting, but not astonishing. A whole new world of cyberspace and surrounding digital media has appeared. Individuals began accepting it a way quicker than state organisations, yet the individuals may demand state to parcitipate faster and on a larger scale. Is it good? Is it bad? In my oppinion, mankind went wrong the second it began it's existence.
Negative person? Yes, I am.
Oh, and for more interesting „Fakts“ see a Harvie Krumpet movie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyVS6HOFeo

A blog?

I have never had a need to create a blog, until now. 

The reason is simple - I don't need to share my feelings, emotions, things I find interesting etc with the, let's say, world. If I need to say something to somebody, I'll tell him in person.