Twentythree

Efforts will double the number of refugees taken in previously.

The Japanese government has announced that this year it will begin accepting Syrian refugees to the country as exchange students, allowing them to bring along their spouses and children, taking in a total of 300 refugees over a five-year span. In addition to providing them with an allowance for living expenses, the refugee families will also be given the opportunity to settle in the country at the end of their term as exchange students.

Using the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s (JICA) technical cooperation organization, 20 exchange students per year will be accepted from Syrian refugees who escaped to Jordan and Lebanon. Based on the average Syrian family structure, JICA expects the total number of refugees entering Japan over the next five years to be 300 people. The first 20 students and their families are scheduled to arrive this summer.

Following talks at the 42nd G7 Summit held last summer in Mie Prefecture regarding the refugee situation, Japan began working proactively to address the problem, recruiting Syrian exchange students and selecting schools to accept them.

Japan has notoriously been hesitant to accept a large amount of refugees. In 2015 the country rejected nearly 99 percent of applicants, ultimately accepting only 27 people. However, prospective efforts over the next five years will double that number, taking in an average of 60 refugees per year. Compared to other countries such as Germany, which took in more than one million refugees in 2015, Japan’s efforts may seem like a mere drop in the bucket. Still, it will likely mean the world to the students and their families who will have a chance to rebuild their lives in Japan.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News 
Top image: Wikipedia/Guest2625

Mr. Kure may not know karate, but he knows ku-re-shi!

Kure City, located on the coast of Hiroshima Prefecture, was once a major military port for the Japanese Imperial Navy. Today the city has a Maritime Self-Defense Forces installation, but also puts effort into promoting itself as a tourism destination, earning popularity for both for its historical and moderns ships as well as the scenic beauty of the Seto Inland Sea. Kure is also the setting of the historical anime film In This Corner of the World, which looks at how the survivors of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima coped.

Even though it’s a fairly well-known place, Kure thought it could do with a little boost in the PR department. So, on 1 February, Kure announced a brand new yuru-kyara mascot, Kure-shi, which translates to “Mr. Kure” but works better as Kure-shi since its also a pun on how you say “Kure City” in Japanese.

Kure-shi is tasked with making sure everyone in Japan gets the city’s name right. Although, the pronunciation “ku-ray” is more clear when written in English, Japanese people often mistakenly read the city’s name in kanji as “go.”

So as we can see, the name of the city is figured prominently in Kure-shi’s design with the kanji for the city on his front and the phonetic katakana rendering of it on his back.

Also his spiky hair is meant to symbolize the waves of the Seto Sea which is also represented in his sparkly blue coloring.

This is all well and great, but simply sticking some words on a big blue square isn’t going to grab the country’s attention, so a promotional video was made. However, after watching you will see that no expense was spared in the making of this video which rivals any that the music industry has put out.

In the video we see that not only is Kure-shi a pretty badass dancer (imagine pulling off those moves while wearing a big furry cube), he seems to be a hit with the ladies as well.

Although cute, those scenes take our attention off Kure-shi’s precision moves, but luckily there is a version of the video that is only him dancing as well.

Fans of J-Pop may recognize the song as TRF’s 1995 hit “Crazy Gonna Crazy”, only this time the words have been altered to promote Kure City and the song has been retitled Kure-shi Gonna Kure-shi.

Reaction to the promotional video has been largely positive and is apparently also working to correct people’s pronunciation of the name.

“After watching the video, I actually think I want to go to Kure City…”

“It’s… not ‘Go?’”

“That totally takes me back to the glory days of [TRF prodycer] Tetsuya Komuro.”

“I remember seeing the sunset in Kure like in the video. It’s like another world.”

“It’s good, but I won’t consider Kure-shi a real yuru-kyara until he has at least five pieces of merchandise for sale.”

While it looks like Kure City’s newest mascot is paying off for them, but Kure-shi’s success is also indicative of a change in Japanese mascot culture. Gone are the days of kimo-kawaii (gross but cute) characters like Okazaemon and Funasshi.

Now we are looking at a potential wave of professional yuru-kyara with skills to pay the bills like Kure-shi’s tight dance moves or the rapid-fire drumming of Nyango Star. For mascots in Japan the future is now, and it is kind of sparkly.

Sources: Kure-shi Official Website, Sankei News, Alfalfalfa
Video, images: YouTube/Hiroshima-ken Kure-shi

邱淑贞15岁女儿沈月近日晒出美照，她坐在泳池边，披着长发，回眸间像足了妈妈。盘点沈月的近照，她已出落得亭亭玉立，貌美腿长，完全继承了邱淑贞的好基因。

哈哈！欢迎关注百变鲁豫！

Making English-learning great again.

With Donald Trump as the new U.S. president, people all around the world have been trying to understand the man better – his policies, his ideas, and most important of all, what he is saying on Twitter.

Up until recently many in Japan had no way of knowing what was coming out of the President’s Twitter feed, outside of breaking out an English dictionary or when something was big enough to make Japanese news. But then, on November 20 last year, an anonymous 17-year-old Japanese high school senior who goes by the pseudonym K・T-san changed all of that. He started translating almost every tweet Donald Trump made into Japanese.

▼ And he does a pretty good job too! If you ever wanted to know
how to say “fake news” in Japanese, it’s feeku nyuusu.

やらかしたNYタイムズだが、ほんの最初から私のことを捉え間違っていた。彼らは私が予備選挙でも負け、本選挙でも負けると言ったんだ。フェイク(嘘)ニュースめ！ http://twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…

—
(日本語訳)ドナルド トランプ (@DonaldTrumpJPN) January 28, 2017

K・T-san says that he created the account in order to improve his English skills for college entrance exams by doing some translation. He was also interested in what the president was saying, and had others encourage him to go through with it.

To help him figure out some of the more difficult expressions and political/cultural issues, he enlists the help of an American student he met in Japan, an American who works in Japan who offered to help him, and, since　K・T-san is only 17, his dad.

▼ Aside from just translating tweets,
K・T-san has also put together summaries of Trump’s policies…

◇トランプ氏の政策まとめ 21日(現地時間では20日)にトランプ氏が大統領に就任します。ここで政策を把握しておきましょう (政策は変わる可能性があります。) #拡散希望 https://t.co/HGLu4soCQQ

—
(日本語訳)ドナルド トランプ (@DonaldTrumpJPN) January 19, 2017

▼ …and lists some of Trump’s most
frequently words and their meanings.

トランプ氏のツイッターを見る上でこれだけは覚えておきたい9の単語・用語 https://t.co/Ge2xim5cQR

—
(日本語訳)ドナルド トランプ (@DonaldTrumpJPN) January 21, 2017

▼ But it’s not easy, especially when spelling mistakes are made, like
“gas” for “has,” making K・T-san need to explain all the “gas” jokes.

珍しい。。 トランプ氏が誤字――has を gas と誤表記して投稿。これに対し｢トランプこそガスまみれだ｣とのコメント多数 https://t.co/kM2DvnCwWd

—
(日本語訳)ドナルド トランプ (@DonaldTrumpJPN) January 29, 2017

When asked if translating the tweets has helped with his English, K・T-san responded that he’s learned a lot of useful expressions. He’s also gained an interest in politics, and he’s gotten many words of thanks from Japanese people for his work with the translation, which are a huge support. As of this writing he has over 60,000 followers, and that number just gets higher every day.

One aspect in particular that makes K・T-san’s translations so colorful is his commitment to conveying Trump’s casual language. For example, when Trump uses “you” to address the American people, K・T-san translates it as anatagata, a very polite “you all.” But when Trump says “you” referring to a someone he doesn’t like, K・T-san translates it is aitsura (an impolite “those guys”) or omae (an impolite “you”), words that Japanese politicians would almost never use.

▼ Here, “you” is translated as kimitachi (a close and intimate “you”) when addressing his followers, showing K・T-san’s prowess translating notoriously difficult pronouns.

K・T-san has said that he will continue to translate the tweets for as long as possible. He plans to study international economics at college and wants to use the English he’s learned in projects all around the world.

We wish the best of luck to K・T-san in his endeavor to translate Trump, and if we ever get the chance to meet up with him, we’d gladly treat him to a Trump burger in Tokyo.

Source: Twitter/@DonaldTrumpJPN via BuzzFeed Japan
Top image: Twitter/@DonaldTrumpJPN

The ashtrays in front of Japanese convenience stores aren’t there for people to smoke around.

There’s hardly anything that isn’t awesome about going to Japanese convenience stores. They’re open 24 hours a day, and they’re constantly stocked with all sorts of tasty pre-made meals, satisfying snacks, and an array of beverages that runs the gamut from hot tea to ice-cold beer.

There is one thing that can sort of mar the experience, though, and that’s when you have to pass through a cloud of foul-smelling cigarette smoke to get in the door. See, a lot of convenience stores have an ashtray set up near their entrance, and often groups of smokers will congregate around them, spewing second-hand smoke in a radius around themselves as they indulge their nicotine cravings.

コンビニ前の灰皿が置かれたスペースは喫煙所ではなかったらしい http://ift.tt/RZ0pDq https://t.co/GwQzmTCxkx

—
ますたー (@qmanews) February 02, 2017

Passing through that haze on their way through the door is a pretty disgusting situation for non-smokers. In 2015, the Japan Society for Tobacco Control asked convenience stores to remove ashtrays in hope of making the area outside the shop entrances a less convenient place to light up, and the idea is getting increased consideration in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The Japanese government is already mulling other ways to bring Japan’s comparatively lax anti-smoking measures closer to those of many Western nations before the Games start and bring the world’s attention with them, and many are saying that this is a good opportunity for convenience stores to get rid of the ashtrays outside their buildings.

But unbeknownst to many, the reason many convenience stores have ashtrays outside isn’t because they want to create a place for smokers to relax and puff away. The original reason for the trays is simply to give smoking pedestrians a place to put out their cigarettes before they come into the store to do their shopping. Some convenience stores even emphasize this by placing signs near the ash trays saying “Please do not smoke here.”

Unfortunately, many smokers see the ashtrays and immediately assume that it designates the area as an outdoor smoking lounge. With anti-smoking sentiments growing in Japanese society, 7-Eleven has said it is planning to begin removing ashtrays from in front of its stores.

▼ This branch already has, in addition to slapping a “No smoking” sticker on the window smokers used to gather in front of.

Fellow convenience store chain Family Mart says it plans to do likewise in communities that have ordinances prohibiting pedestrians from smoking while walking, which should please customers who don’t have “lungful of second-hand smoke” on their shopping list.

Source: Sankei West via Hamster Sokuho
Images ©RocketNews24