STUDIO 360

Learning Japanese Properly - What You Need To Do

If you’re visiting Japan for Japan jobs, studying the language is an important option to take. The good news is that there are clear ways for you to start learning Japanese effectively. Here are the steps towards full proof language education.

Step 1: Learn from courses supplemented by films.

The obvious initial step you should take is to enroll in language courses available in your location. This might be all that you can do at the moment. There are several online services and websites that offer excellent courses grouped according to difficulty.

You can’t just rely on courses though. To be able to clearly remember ideas, memorize rules and identify correct honorifics, you need to pattern after a model. If you can’t find a native speaker who can serve as a model, the next best options are Japanese films in their original form. Although movies aren’t always accurate in presenting situations, you can be sure that the appropriate use of language is fairly intact.

There are a couple of notable directors to check out but no one is as well known as Akira Kurosawa. Get your hands on copies of Rashomon and The Seven Samurai to begin learning. There are copies out there that come with subtitles so you can find it easier to see how Japanese is translated in English.

Step 2: Go to Japan and learn there.

The tip to study Japanese in Japan may not seem to be a very practical one but it is a very good idea. You can’t beat learning a language while you are living right in the very heart of the culture that gave birth to it. With sufficient exposure and immersion, you get the benefit of learning the contextual use of Japanese.

The experience doesn’t have to cost you a lot. There are now programs for citizens of Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Germany to name a few that permit finding and getting work in Japan while on a vacation. This is an excellent opportunity for you to take considering that you will get to observe how the language is used not just for casual conversations but for formal set-ups as well. This will give you a good chance to understand the proper applications of keigo or honorifics which are essential to learning Japanese effectively.

Step 3: Take a course right in Japan.

The highest phase of learning is to enroll in a local school to learn the language. You don’t have to do this considering that all you may need is enough proficiency to communicate with co-workers and customers. If you’re serious about becoming an expert speaker though, you need the help of a qualified local language teacher. Among the things you can learn from a native teacher are the finer distinctions or levels of polite speech, specific counters for group categories, different terms for borrowed words and proper use of honorific titles. Local schools can charge above 200,000 yen for premium lessons.

Definitely, learning Japanese is not easy but these three steps can give you a definite direction. Follow these as faithfully as you can and you will be able to start speaking just as well as the locals.

Yumi Kurosawa - Concert for Japan

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Remaking Kurosawa $85 Through the lens of Akira Kurosawa's films, Martinez dissects the human tendency to make connections in a pioneering attempt to build a bridge out of diverse materials: the anthropology of Japan, film studies, and postmodern theory.

Kurosawa-PB $31.94 The films of Akira Kurosawa have had an immense effect on the way the Japanese have viewed themselves as a nation and on the way the West has viewed Japan. In this comprehensive and theoretically informed study of the influential director's cinema, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto definitively analyzes Kurosawa's entire body of work, from 1943's "Sanshiro Sugata" to 1993's "Madadayo." In scrutinizing this oeuvre, Yoshimoto shifts the ground upon which the scholarship on Japanese cinema has been built and questions its dominant interpretive frameworks and critical assumptions. 	Arguing that Kurosawa's films arouse anxiety in Japanese and Western critics because the films problematize Japan's self-image and the West's image of Japan, Yoshimoto challenges widely circulating cliches about the films and shows how these works constitute narrative answers to sociocultural contradictions and institutional dilemmas. While fully acknowledging the achievement of Kurosawa as a filmmaker, Yoshimoto uses the director's work to reflect on and rethink a variety of larger issues, from Japanese film history, modern Japanese history, and cultural production to national identity and the global circulation of cultural capital. He examines how Japanese cinema has been "invented" in the discipline of film studies for specific ideological purposes and analyzes Kurosawa's role in that process of invention. Demonstrating the richness of both this director's work and Japanese cinema in general, Yoshimoto's nuanced study illuminates an array of thematic and stylistic aspects of the films in addition to their social and historical contexts. 	Beyond aficionados of Kurosawa and Japanese film, this book will interest those engaged with cultural studies, postcolonial studies, cultural globalization, film studies, Asian studies, and the formation of academic disciplines.

The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa $38.99 The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, who died at the age of 88, has been internationally acclaimed as a giant of world cinema. "Rashomon," which won both the Venice Film Festival's grand prize and an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, helped ignite Western interest in the Japanese cinema. "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo" remain enormously popular both in Japan and abroad. In this newly revised and expanded edition of his study of Kurosawa's films, Stephen Prince provides two new chapters that examine Kurosawa's remaining films, placing him in the context of cinema history. Prince also discusses how Kurosawa furnished a template for some well-known Hollywood directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Providing a new and comprehensive look at this master filmmaker, "The Warrior's Camera" probes the complex visual structure of Kurosawa's work. The book shows how Kurosawa attempted to symbolize on film a course of national development for post-war Japan, and it traces the ways that he tied his social visions to a dynamic system of visual and narrative forms. The author analyzes Kurosawa's entire career and places the films in context by drawing on the director's autobiography--a fascinating work that presents Kurosawa as a Kurosawa character and the story of his life as the kind of spiritual odyssey witnessed so often in his films. After examining the development of Kurosawa's visual style in his early work, "The Warrior's Camera "explains how he used this style in subsequent films to forge a politically committed model of filmmaking. It then demonstrates how the collapse of Kurosawa's efforts to participate as a filmmaker in the tasks of social reconstruction led to the very different cinematic style evident in his most recent films, works of pessimism that view the world as resistant to change.

The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Master of Fear $17.83 Here is the first book in English about Japan's modern master of fear and horror. The book traces Kiyoshi Kurosawa's humble beginning in the pink film industry through his evolution into yakuza movie director and the celebrated filmmaker of gripping works like Cure and Pulse. Included are essays on twenty-five films, a filmography, and a sit-down interview. An excellent guide to one of Japan's freshest cinematic masters. Jerry White is a regular contributor to Asian Cult Cinema and the writer of several award-winning short films. He lives in Watchung, New Jersey.

Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa $19.63 Teruyo Nogami was a relative newcomer to film production when hired as a continuity/script assistant on Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. A witness to its filming-and its near destruction in a fire-over the next fifty years she worked on all the master's films-Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, and Dreams. No one was more closely involved in Kurosawa's productions, and in this memoir, charmingly illustrated with her own sketches, Nogami writes candidly about the director's energy, creativity, and his famous rages, telling the inside story on how so many classics of world cinema were made. "Teruyo Nogami was Akira Kurosawa's script supervisor throughout his career, more importantly she was his loyal assistant and supporter during both the good and bad moments of his life. She is an extraordinary woman and these memories are a path to understanding the temperament and genius of one of the few...geniuses of cinematic history. It's not uncommon for a film director to have made one or two great films, but Kurosawa was able to create many masterpieces in many styles, set in both modern and classic times. So the opportunity to know this artist through the lucid eyes of a long-time collaborator is a privilege and an opportunity. Nogami-san's salty personality is perfect to show his many sides, not always flattering, which is essential in grasping him. This book is a treasury of stories and a key to the great body of cinematic work of Akira Kurosawa." -- Francis Ford Coppola "If you're interested in movies, then you're interested in the work of Akira Kurosawa. Teruyo Nogami was by Kurosawa's side for almost 50 years, as he quietly (and sometimes, not so quietly) revolutionized the very grammar of cinema. This is a wonderfully intimate and beautifully written portrait of one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, which makes it essential reading." -- Martin Scorsese "Sure to become a classic memoir, essential for our understanding of one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century." -- The Japan Times

Japan $20.66 From the revered classics of Akira Kurosawa to the modern marvels of Takeshi Kitano, the films that have emerged from Japan represent a national cinema that has gained worldwide admiration and appreciation. "The Directory of World Cinema: Japan" provides an insight into the cinema of Japan through reviews of significant titles and case studies of leading directors, alongside explorations of the cultural and industrial origins of key genres.   As the inaugural volume of an ambitious new series from Intellect documenting world cinema, the directory aims to play a part in moving intelligent, scholarly criticism beyond the academy by building a forum for the study of film that relies on a disciplined theoretical base. It takes the form of an A–Z collection of reviews, longer essays, and research resources, accompanied by fifty full-color film stills highlighting significant films and players. The cinematic lineage of samurai warriors, yakuza enforcers, and atomic monsters take their place alongside the politically charged works of the Japanese New Wave, making this a truly comprehensive volume. 

Mizoguchi and Japan $36.21 For a majority of filmgoers, the names most usually associated with classic Japanese cinema are those of Kurosawa and Ozu. Yet during the early 1950s, at the same time that Kurosawa was becoming known to the public through the release of classics such as "Rashomon "and "The Seven Samurai, " another Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi, quietly came out with a trilogy of films--"The Life of" "Oharu, Ugetsu Monogatari, "and "Sansho the Bailiff"--that are the equal of Kurosawa's in mastery, and that by any standard rank among the greatest and most enduring masterpieces of world cinema. Despite Mizoguchi's extraordinary qualities as a filmmaker, this is the first full-length study in English devoted to his work in over twenty years. Mark Le Fanu eloquently demonstrates that Mizoguchi's films are as vibrant now as they were in his heyday, and that the director richly deserves the praise lavished on him by the French film review "Cahiers du Cinema, "which recently hailed Mizoguchi as "the greatest of all cineastes."

Will (Japan) $17.99 Will (Japan)

Akira Kurosawa $50 This book is in New - Excellent condition

Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Most Influential Men and Women $17.79 Giants of Japan brings to life fifteen centuries of Japanese history through lively biographical sketches of the great men and women who have shaped this fascinating and complex country. Covering industry, the arts, religion, and politics, the book includes business titans such as Morita Akio, founder of Sony, and Toyoda Eiji, the man behind Toyota's incredible success; creative giants such as writer Mishima Yukio and film director Kurosawa Akira; and historical icons such as Shotoku, the prince who helped bring Buddhism to Japan, and Izumo no Okuni, the actress and dancer who created kabuki theater. The economies and futures of the West and Japan are now more interdependent than ever, yet Japan remains very much a mystery to many Westerners. The more than forty profiles in this entertaining and enlightening book are essential knowledge about a nation that is a key player on the world stage.

Japan (Japan) $69.99 Japan (Japan)

Nightmare Japan $64.4 Over the last two decades, Japanese filmmakers have produced some of the most important and innovative works of cinematic horror. At once visually arresting, philosophically complex, and politically charged, films by directors like Tsukamoto Shinya ( Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1988] and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer [1992]), Sato Hisayasu ( Muscle [1988] and Naked Blood [1995]) Kurosawa Kiyoshi ( Cure [1997], Séance [2000], and Kaïro [2001]), Nakata Hideo ( Ringu [1998], Ringu II [1999], and Dark Water [2002]), and Miike Takashi ( Audition [1999] and Ichi the Killer [2001]) continually revisit and redefine the horror genre in both its Japanese and global contexts. In the process, these and other directors of contemporary Japanese horror film consistently contribute exciting and important new visions, from postmodern reworkings of traditional avenging spirit narratives to groundbreaking works of cinematic terror that position depictions of radical or ‘monstrous’ alterity/hybridity as metaphors for larger socio-political concerns, including shifting gender roles, reconsiderations of the importance of the extended family as a social institution, and reconceptualisations of the very notion of cultural and national boundaries.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams from Warner Bros. $19.5 Academy Award-winning director Akira Kurosawa ("The Seven Samurai," "Ran"), whose cinematic genius has inspired such classic films as "Star Wars" and "The Magnificent Seven," presents his 28th, and most personal, film. Visually splendid, Kurosawa's film c

The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa $14.96 This book is in New - Excellent condition

The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan $20.37 No one has written more, or more artfully, about Japan and Japanese culture than Donald Richie. Richie moved to Tokyo just after World War II. And he is still there, still writing. This book is the first compilation of the best of Richie's writings on Japan, with excerpts from his critical work on film (Richie helped introduce Japanese film to the West in the late 1950s) and his unpublished private journal, plus fiction, Zen musings, and masterful essays on culture, travel, people, and style. With a critical introduction and full bibliography. Donald Richie's many books include "The Films of Akira Kurosawa, The Japanese Tattoo, " and the PBS favorite "The Inland Sea." Vienna resident Arturo Silva lived in Japan for 18 years. "To read The Donald Richie Reader and The Japan Journals] is like diving for pearls. Dip into any part of them and you will surely find treasures about the cinema, literature, traveling, writing. The passages are evocative, erotic, playful, and often profound." Japanese Language and Literature

Postwar Kurosawa Box [Criterion Collection] [5 Discs] - $59.99 Includes:No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) One Wonderful Sunday (1947) Scandal (1950) The Idiot (1951) Record of a Living Being (1955) No Regrets for Our Youth Based on the Takikawa incident of 1933, in which a prominent professor was forced out of his position by the government for his leftist views, Akira Kurosawa directs this socially minded tale about a pure-hearted lass coming to terms with the corrupt nature of the world. Though professor Yagihara (played by silent film star Denjiro ...