“We Are Tomodachi” – Summer 2017 Edition
Greetings to all members of JET Alumni Association from the staff of the Prime Minister's Office of Japan. We are pleased to announce that we have published on the JapanGov…
Review – My Dad and Mr. Ito
By Geoffrey Greig
Director Yuki Tanada’s film, My Dad and Mr. Ito (お父さんと伊藤さん) had its North American premiere on November 10th, and JETAA Toronto was proud to be one of the community co-presenters for the film. The film was well-attended at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, and seemed to very much engage the audience.
Review – Tsukiji Wonderland
By Amy Uyeda
JETAA Toronto was proud to be one of the co-presenters of Tsukiji Wonderland, which was screened as part of the Reel Asian Film Festival. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary year, Reel Asian continues to bring Asian cinema to Toronto. This screening was the Canadian premiere of Tsukiji Wonderland and the first Reel Asian film to be shown in the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre.
Career Corner: ATS-The ‘Bot Every Job Hunter Needs to Know About
By Maurice Kumalo (Kumamoto ALT 1999-2002).
According to Hollywood, robots will change the world into a machine-centric dystopia. In the real world you may have heard that robots will change the workplace. The truth is they already have and not just on the manufacturing floor. The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times and others media outlets have covered how machines will change the workplace. If you are a job seeker of any sort – that includes JETs of all stripes – you need to know how they are changing it now. (more…)
Painting Without Painting: Paradise Bound (270 Augusta Ave.)
Article by Katie Yantzi (JET 2011-2013, Akita Prefecture). Reprinted with permissions from Archenemy Magazine.
Just steps away from the bustle of Kensington market lies a quiet haven of art from across the Pacific. Though the actual degree of quiet depends on what’s spinning from the record player. Paradise Bound (270 Augusta Ave.) is a shop that sells a fascinating pairing of things owner Grey Coyote loves most: good tunes and good old Japanese art.
“Old” is definitely the operative word here. Coyote has rare original works dating from the eighteenth century, which likely once belonged to samurai. The intricately designed pieces adorning the shop’s walls are known as kakejiku, meaning “hanging scroll,” and they can fetch anywhere from $100 to $3000.
“There are many artisans involved in the whole process,” says Coyote as he points out the various components of each scroll—the handmade silk; washi, meaning the sturdy Japanese paper; the delicate ink scenes; and jikusaki, the roller ends used to hold the scrolls in place. Finally, one artisan, “a mounting artist, much like our framing artists”, assembles the final scroll.
Life After JET: A Former CIR’s Passion for Humanitarian Work
Article by Patricia Nip
When I first met Mike Connolly in November of 2011, we were in the living room of a reclaimed house in Ishinomaki. I had just arrived for a week of volunteering in the tsunami ravaged coastal region just north of Sendai. During the grand tour, I was told that I was in good company because there were two other Canadians in the house that was serving as the headquarters for the volunteer group It’s Not Just Mud. The first one that I met had been my ride from the train station, and now I was meeting the mysterious Mike. As we were introduced, I couldn’t shake a strange sense of déjà vu.
A few days later, Mike and I were sent off together on a tsunami clean up request. We made our way to what used to be the Kikuchi family’s small family business. Their simple wish was to regain access to the second floor of the building, where their family had lived before the tsunami debris filled the first floor and made it impossible to access the stairwell. It was during the course of our path clearing, potentially tetanus causing endeavours that the mysterious source of my déjà vu became clear to me. Mike Connolly, was Mike-sensei… (more…)
Feature Essay: Completing My Japan Quest
Umeda Sky Building Osaka (August 2010)
“So how is Canada?”
“Uh… Toronto is quite good…”
I’ve had this conversation in some form or other countless times since I landed in Japan three years ago. Anyone who’s visited Japan knows that Japanese people are naturally curious about your home country or will often ask for recommendations upon planning a trip there. When they directed their curiosity towards me, however, I found myself at a loss.
“Where do you recommend going in Canada?”
“I hear BC is nice. I think you can see the aurora in the north. Anne of Green Gables takes place in PEI… maybe?”
You see, before I came to Japan I was utterly uninterested in travelling (especially my own country, yuck!). Though my friends would go on about their amazing Eurotrips and getaways to the Caribbean, I scoffed in secret, deploring such wastes of money. Seeing the world just didn’t seem worth it, and the whole cult of ‘investing in experience’ was a first class ticket to financial woe in my mind.
But I did want to see what all the fuss was about. And after deciding that a PhD and a life of academia wasn’t for me after finishing my Master’s, moving to Japan seemed like the quickest way to jump into the deep end. So I applied to JET. (more…)
Feature Essay: The Art Of Being Misunderstood
A lovely American couple moved into the region this past year and they include me in their mailing list of updates home to family and friends. I love reading them, not just because they are funny and honest, but because it reminds me of what it was like my first year here as well. Everything was exciting, fresh, a new discovery. If I go through my photo album from that time there are exponentially more images of me doing mid-air jump shots in front of random Japanese tourist sites and flashing two-fingered peace signs like Winston Churchill was in town. If you flip forward in my album you’ll notice that pictures these days rarely have me in them, cause I spend most of my time trying to digitally immortalize Noah rather than keep an enduring record of my own stark aging process. Times change.
