General Discussion Forum for the Class

[Anonymous]

This one is just outright funny, but there was a piece on KTLA news last night about Japanese metrosexuals, and how much money they spend on looking good.

I knew about LA metrosexuals, but the Japanese seem to take this to its highest possible level, with men spending up to $300.00 per bottle/container of eye cream. Being a modest Clinque girl myself, that is pretty surprising, but I could not help envying the guy getting his facial and massage. Ah...if only we could all be so lucky and pampered. Although the last one said that he had spent so much money on his skincare, he could have bought a new car. That really does make you wonder what these men are thinking.....

[Anonymous]

For the first of the websites I researched, I found this one:

http://www.aems.uiuc.edu

which is done by the Univ of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. It is a great site, one that is very easy to use, because there is a search engine right on it for whatever media you may be searching for regarding teaching Asia in your classroom.

This is definitely one to bookmark, and use in the future as a reference.

[Anonymous]

For the second website, I found this one:

http://www.smith.edu/fcceas/links.html

This one is done by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies. This one is not quite as much a database as the previous one, but very well organized and also easy to use. What I liked best about it is that it has the various aspects you may want to read up on already subdivided into regions as well as topics. So for every region (China and Taiwan, Korea, Japan), you have the subheadings of travel, arts and culture, textbooks, lesson plans, etc.

This is another very useful site which will come in handy in the future.

[Anonymous]

Trying to get away from a continual US perspective on Asia, I also found an Australian site that has to do with teaching Asia, and since they are in Asia themselves, I suspected that they would have some fantastic resources. Well, they do, and they can be found at:

http://www.asiaeducation.edu.au

Then click onto curriculum resources and you will find links and information about the various histories of the region, art galleries, local museums, and even zoos in Asia.

We always tend to think about our own museums (at least I do, in terms of field trips, etc), but there are so many other places out there, I have to remind myself that we really can access everything via the web in order to help our students visualize the various cultures.

[Anonymous]

One of the last websites I looked up had to do with Japanese castles. In spite of having had my head ripped off at the beginning of these web based seminars, I do also enjoy learning about the warrior culture of Japan. One of the best sites I found was:

http://www.jcastle.info/castle

It has many photographs, which for the purpose of the introduction to a topic in a class works very well. As I have mentioned before, my students are very visual, and I have to continuously remind myself to bring in more visuals for their sake.
This is not an overly intellectual site, but brings up the basics. Well done.

[Anonymous]

For the last website, I go back to my love of gardens. There are many sites on japanese gardens, such as the Huntingon website, the LA Arboretum website, etc.

However, if you want it all in one place, there is the site http://www.jgarden.org, which is essentially a database of all japanese gardens that you may want to research. It has everything from a listing of gardens, to subsections on the types of plants that would be found in a japanese garden, and much more information.

Again, for a teacher, it is a great resource, but can also be used in a scaled back version for generally introducing students to the concept of a japanese garden.

[Anonymous]

For my very last post, I chose something a bit off-beat. Once again, in the Economist, there was a brief article about the world's largest casino being opened in Macau. It is the Asian version of the Venetian, backed by Las Vegas interests, is Asia's largest building, with a construction cost of 2.4 billion dollars, more than Macau's entire public works budget for the past five years.

It is a huge casino, with 870 tables and 3,400 slot machines, but the more interesting part of this story is that the casino is doing quite well, which shows that enough people will travel there to gamble. Not to stereotype, but going back to some of the Asian friends I have, gambling seems to be very much a part of their culture. My Filipina friend loves to gamble, and of course, in Asia, the bets are not only with cards, but cockfights in the Philippines also.
I am assuming that is why such a large casino could be opened in China/Macau, along with other local casinos, and still do well.

It is an interesting facet of the culture - one that is not often explored and when it is, is usually shown in a derogatory way.

[Author]

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