MLO 2: Culture
2.1 Students develop a comprehensive understanding, appreciation and knowledge of Japanese culture: perspectives (ideas, beliefs, attitudes, values, philosophies), practices (patterns of social interactions) and products (both tangible and intangible, for example, art, history, literature, music).
2.2 Students develop analytical and critical thinking in areas such as how Japan’s cultural background influences modern Japanese life, how to compare their own culture with the Japanese culture, or how Japanese culture relates to other world cultures in an age of global inter-relatedness.
Learning a language is just the first step to understand another countries culture. With language we can converse and ask questions to find out what is unique about a countries culture. I was able to immerse my self in the Japanese culture during my year abroad at Toyo University. While studying abroad in Japan I was lucky enough be able to travel to several different areas of Japan experiencing the culture of each prefecture. I will talk about more about my immersion in my study abroad section.
Courses taken:
JAPN 215: Cool Japan Today
JAPN 305: Introduction to Japanese Culture and Civilization
JAPN 311 : Social Issues in Japan
JAPN 314: Japanese Visual Culture and Media
JAPN 215: The name of the course tells us all about the content . This is introduced the popular trends of Modern Japan. Japan is said to be the number one export of modern culture to other countries today. It is not surprisng to hear because a number of video game, JPOP, JROCK, manga, and anime can be seen all around the globe. For this reason culture is the number export of Japan. The reason why im studying Japanese is that I introduced to the Popular culture at a young age. For the final project I wrote about Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli because over the last 25 years the have been producing popular movies such as Spirited Away and Castle and the Sky.
JAPN 305: Up to this point the only idea I had about Japanese culture was the food and samurai. In this course we looked primarily at the Tokugawa Era and the effects it would have on modern Japanese society. The Tokugawa era is ushered in by Tokugawa Ieyasu who is one of the unified of Japan. The Tokugawa era was the longest period of peace for Japan. I've always been fascinated by the samurai culture and in this course I was able to study the inner working of the samurai ranks
Japan 311: The previous semesters I was introduced to the Japanese language and the culture but never had an opportunity to look at the social issues that are currently in Japanese society. In this course we looked at issues regarding work, education, and different lifestyles we might fine odd. A major difference between Japan and America is regards to education. In the U.S education before entering university is not rigorous and the only years that count are the last two of high school. In Japan though higher education is not rigorous as 1st-12th grade. Their is an importance for students to get into the best schools which leads to mainly studying for test to enter the best University.
JAPN 314: Japanese culture is visually appealing. There is an emphasis on showing the outer shell when it comes to many aspects of life. I looked at maps, travel brochures, advertisement, videos, and pictures to understand the importance of visually appealing. Surprising travel brochures held a great importance on how modern society evolved. During the early eras few people could travel beyond the prefecture so the can never see what is beyond their backdoor allowing the shogunate to hold more power. Little by little people where traveling around the country and documenting each location that they went to. Many of these travelers published brochures to allow other to see what is in their own country. With these first travel brochures began the large migration of Japan.
2.2 Students develop analytical and critical thinking in areas such as how Japan’s cultural background influences modern Japanese life, how to compare their own culture with the Japanese culture, or how Japanese culture relates to other world cultures in an age of global inter-relatedness.
Learning a language is just the first step to understand another countries culture. With language we can converse and ask questions to find out what is unique about a countries culture. I was able to immerse my self in the Japanese culture during my year abroad at Toyo University. While studying abroad in Japan I was lucky enough be able to travel to several different areas of Japan experiencing the culture of each prefecture. I will talk about more about my immersion in my study abroad section.
Courses taken:
JAPN 215: Cool Japan Today
JAPN 305: Introduction to Japanese Culture and Civilization
JAPN 311 : Social Issues in Japan
JAPN 314: Japanese Visual Culture and Media
JAPN 215: The name of the course tells us all about the content . This is introduced the popular trends of Modern Japan. Japan is said to be the number one export of modern culture to other countries today. It is not surprisng to hear because a number of video game, JPOP, JROCK, manga, and anime can be seen all around the globe. For this reason culture is the number export of Japan. The reason why im studying Japanese is that I introduced to the Popular culture at a young age. For the final project I wrote about Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli because over the last 25 years the have been producing popular movies such as Spirited Away and Castle and the Sky.
JAPN 305: Up to this point the only idea I had about Japanese culture was the food and samurai. In this course we looked primarily at the Tokugawa Era and the effects it would have on modern Japanese society. The Tokugawa era is ushered in by Tokugawa Ieyasu who is one of the unified of Japan. The Tokugawa era was the longest period of peace for Japan. I've always been fascinated by the samurai culture and in this course I was able to study the inner working of the samurai ranks
Japan 311: The previous semesters I was introduced to the Japanese language and the culture but never had an opportunity to look at the social issues that are currently in Japanese society. In this course we looked at issues regarding work, education, and different lifestyles we might fine odd. A major difference between Japan and America is regards to education. In the U.S education before entering university is not rigorous and the only years that count are the last two of high school. In Japan though higher education is not rigorous as 1st-12th grade. Their is an importance for students to get into the best schools which leads to mainly studying for test to enter the best University.
JAPN 314: Japanese culture is visually appealing. There is an emphasis on showing the outer shell when it comes to many aspects of life. I looked at maps, travel brochures, advertisement, videos, and pictures to understand the importance of visually appealing. Surprising travel brochures held a great importance on how modern society evolved. During the early eras few people could travel beyond the prefecture so the can never see what is beyond their backdoor allowing the shogunate to hold more power. Little by little people where traveling around the country and documenting each location that they went to. Many of these travelers published brochures to allow other to see what is in their own country. With these first travel brochures began the large migration of Japan.