The Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow blog, founded by Chris MaGee in 2007, will be celebrating it’s first anniversary at the Victory Cafe on May 23, 2009 in Toronto. The organizers would like to add some live musical entertainment to the party. It could be traditional Japanese music, funk, jazz, rock, or even pop performed by musicians of Japanese heritage, whether visiting, immigrated, or naturalized citizens of Canada.
The Pow-Wow is a totally volunteer organization where Torontonians (and others from around the GTA, and a few from around the world!) can gush, wax rhapsodic, debate, compare notes, nit pick, and generally obsess about all aspects of Japanese cinema.
If you are interested, or know of someone you would like to recommend, OR for more information please contact Chris MaGee at jfilmpowwow@yahoo.ca.

Canada Japan Society’s CJS annual Bonenkai (end-of-year party) is happening on Thursday, December 4^th.

If you’d like to join the famous year end bash, please RSVP as soon as possible.  There will be great Japanese food including sushi, live traditional Japanese music, and door prizes.  A selection of domestic beers will be available for $5 (including tax & tip).  It’s a great time to meet new people, informally network, practice your Japanese and/or English and have a fun time with people that have an interest/connection to Japan.

BONENKAI

Thursday December 4, 2008

6:00 pm to 12:00 am

Mochizuki Restaurant
655 Bay Street (at Elm)

$15 CJS members and students
$20 for non-CJS members

RSVP to Jeff Harju:  jeff@cjst.org

For more information

Web: www.cjst.org

Blog: http://canadajapansociety.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2427889556#

Dir En Grey

Dir En Grey will be in Toronto Sunday November 16 with The Human Abstract at Kool Haus (The Guvernment) 132 Queens Quay East Toronto, ON M5A 3Y5

Get Directions
(416) 869-0045

This is an all ages show. Doors open at 7:00pm
The Human Abstract – 8:00 – 8:45
Dir En Grey – 9:15 – 10:45

There’s still time to get your ticket!

THE VENUE HAS CHANGED LOCATIONS.

Originally Camino (Japan), Artbeat (US), Niverse (CA) were to perform at the Music Hall (Queen St W & Dovercourt Rd) this Friday November 14 but this location has been changed to:

SUBA Club 8-11pm

Suba Club
292 College St. W
Toronto, Ontario

Dotcon Members and Pre-Registered Dotcon-goers get in FOR FREE. And general/at the door is $10!

Link to original post Japan’s Camino to perform in Toronto November 14 – 15 ~*~ 日本のカミノはトロントでライブです14日-15日11月

For more information and/or tickets contact:

J-rock North Promotions Inc

On the first Thursday of every month The Canada Japan Society, CJS of Toronto’s monthly social event, Ichimoku-kai, is held at Manpuku in Toronto. It’s a place to meet new friends, informally network, and practice your English/Japanese with native speakers of each language.

Manpuku

105 McCaul Street (Inside Village By the Grange Building, south of the Food Court ) see map

6:00 pm – 10:00 pm +

Free for CJS members; $5 for guests

Discounts for groups of three or more people.

There are food and drink specials and it’s a fun time had by all.

If you have any questions please contact Jeff Harju at: jeff@cjst.org

Mokuhanga

at the

Japan Foundation

This weekend I went to the Japan Foundation to check out the Woodblock Print exhibition. Here’s a few photos of the visit.

Akira Kurosaki

Ralph Kiggell

Eisen

Okumura Masanobu

Yoshitoshi

Cammomile

Yeah that’s me showing off my pink hair. The show runs October 3 – November 15, 2008. Contemporary exhibiting artists include:

Akira Kurosaki
Moya Bligh
Miki Kuroki
Wayne Crothers
Kyoko Sakamoto
Elizabeth Forrest
Yasuyuki Shibata
Ralph Kiggell
Rebecca Salter

As well, there are quite a number of original prints from Ukiyo-e era artists:

Kunisada (1786-1865)
Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764)
Hokusai (1760-1849)
Utamaro (1753-1806)
Eisen (1790-1848)
Hiroshige (1797-1858)
and more…

It’s well worth checking out.

A contributor is someone who will write new posts (author), help translate English to Japanese or Japanese to English from authors who are more proficient in one language than the other (editor), or someone who provides information, ideas, or research on things Japanese related to Toronto (associate).

As you can see, of late, this blog has not been completely bilingual. That’s because we lost a few of our Japanese speaking contributors. I do my best to write in Japanese where I can, but I am far from bilingual myself.

I know there are many readers of this blog who hail from Japan. If you live in Japan and are interested in Toronto, why not get involved? We’d love to have you! Just as important are those from Toronto, either native English speakers or native Japanese speakers.

Don’t be shy! Leave a comment on this post and tell me what you can do! Or write to me at japanintoronto (at) gmail (dot) com

Regards,
Cammomile

J-rock North Promotions Inc, a Toronto-based promotions company, will be holding a concert in conjunction with Avex Group Holdings Inc. and Tearbridge Production, Friday November 14, 2008 at the Great Hall in Toronto, Canada.

Avex J-rock band, Camino, will be performing alongside American band Artbeat and Canadian band Niverse.

Camino

Artbeat

Niverse

Camino is well known in Japan for performing the opening song of the Japanese television show Tomica Hero Rescue Force [トミカヒーロー レスキューフォース]

The concert will be held Friday, November 14th, 2008.  Camino and Niverse will be making special appearances [autograph sessions, etc...] at the Dotcon Convention, November 15th – 16th 2008.

Tickets for the concert are $20 for Dotcon members and pre-registered Dotcon-goers and $30 for the general public.  More details about the concert can be found HERE.

J-Rock North Productions has just uploaded Camino’s video messages for Dotcon and JNP ~~ so check those out too~~ (in both English and Japanese!)

よろしくお願いします　（よろしくおねがいします）　yoroshiku onegaishimasu

As a native English speaker, this phrase has been the hardest to understand in my meager 3 years of studying the Japanese language. I’ve asked numerous native Japanese speakers to explain it to me. I’ve gotten numerous responses. It means ‘Nice to meet you!’ they say, or can be used when parting like ‘Kind regards.’ My absolute beginner Japanese text book translates どうぞ　よろしく (douzo yoroshiku) as ‘Nice to meet you,’ but literally translated I discover it means ‘Please kindly,’ said as a way of suggesting that the person being spoken to kindly treat the speaker well. What? Call me naive, but isn’t that rather offensive? I mean to be on the offense, assuming up front, that the person you are meeting for the first time is likely to not treat you well.

My worst experience with this term so far was when I used it as a parting statement with someone I had met for the first time (someone Japanese). He blankly looked at me and said ‘no.. you don’t say that now,’ without any explanation as to when I should say it. Sounds unusually uncharacteristic coming from a native Japanese speaker doesn’t it? I thought so. Because of this, my caution surrounding the use of this term increased as did my sense of discomfort. It must be a very important term for someone Japanese to break from character and appear so stern and unapologetic about it’s use.
Ok, all jesting aside, I do understand the meaning to be ‘nice to meet you’ when used in introductions and that any native Japanese speaker hearing this would likely understand it to be a friendly greeting, but what about the numerous ‘other’ situations it is used in? For example, it is often used in parting statements by friends and strangers alike, specifically in letters and emails. Or sometimes it is used in place of the English Thank You.

There is a complex hierarchy of honorary terms used by people in Japan with varying status’s, but why is this term so common among the Japanese people and why is it so hard to pin it’s meaning down? For this reason I have avoided using this term for almost 3 full years. Yet, I find it unavoidable and finally must have an explanation that will ultimately lessen my queasiness around the use of the term.
From Japanese text books (more advanced than my beginner text) – よろしく yoroshiku is an adverb meaning ‘in a good/appropriate way’ and when used with the verb 願う negau = I make a request of you (お願いします onegaishimasu is the polite form of the verb) it definitely seems to have another meaning besides ‘Nice to meet you’. Jun Ohashi in her study “Japanese culture specific face and politeness orientation: A pragmatic investigation of yoroshiku onegaishimasu” describes it as a ‘negative politeness strategy’ used to balance the debt/credit equilibrium, or to save face (face being positive or negative self image) when asking for a favour from someone. So how does meeting someone for the first time equate to asking for a favour? The Japanese have their own way of inventing politeness (as it is very important to them) and by asking the person to ‘treat you kindly’ you are shifting the focus from the speaker to the listener, therefore giving them more status and hoping that they will treat you kindly with this status given (by you). Perhaps this explains the ‘bowing’ wars I’ve sometimes witnessed by the Japanese of the elder generation. They are attempting to give more credit to the other by bowing lower, therefore putting themselves beneath the other in status. While shifting credit from themselves to the recipient, the recipient tries to restore the debt/credit balance by bowing lower than the other, and on it can continue.

Well I think I understand now… よろしくお願いします！Or in other words… “I beg of you to go easy on me!” (expecially if I use this damn term wrong again) :0