If you search Google with the phrase “Timeline of Japanese History”, not surprisingly the first link sends you off to Wikipedia. What is disappointing is the large gaps displayed on the site that currently range from the 9th century all the way to the 16th century. By adding accurate information to the site, you’ll be teaching the world just like Samurai Awakening tries to do.
Look it up and fill’er in!
In need of a few stocking stuffers? At Think Geek you can purchase your very own samurai sword handle umbrella and a samurai sword letter opener!
Check them out!
Umbrella: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/b625/
Letter Opener: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ea0f/
Our final team meeting was today. It consisted of planning our presentation in order to make it the most effective. It became apparent last Thursday, November 29th that our mindset for presenting was different from many of the other groups. By this we mean our objective is to show the class how we created the site, rather than the material specifically. Since the audience for our website is the rest of the world – and the class is already aware of many misconceptions – it seems redundant to rehash the material not only covered by our professor but also by the seven groups before us. This does not mean we will omit our analysis of the media we considered. This was the basis of our presentation.
We also lucked out in the order of presentation; we are able to see the pros and cons of presentations in order to perfect ours.
Theme: How does media and pop culture present samurai?
Things to include in our presentation: formal introductions of group participants, goals of site, present to the class as a whole rather than the individual.
Order: Megan, Monica, Esther, Brad, goals of site, acknowledgements, biographies, creative process and posts.
Projection description order: Samurai Champloo, Afro Samurai, Samurai Jack, T-Rex vs. Samurai, The Last Samurai.
Watch a very comical and informative video titled The Adventures of Otakunosuke created by Joy, Paul and Roy of our Japanese 242 class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHqDS0ikXGs.
Also check out F Yeah Samurai on Tumblr, developed by our classmates Joanna, Chris and Jacqueline.
http://fyeahsamuraiwomen.tumblr.com/
Well done kids!
Today’s meeting, for the most part, consisted of standing down the rough edges of our project, preparing it for the presentation next Tuesday. If our project were a maturing female in 11th century Japan, today we blackened her teeth and shaved her eyebrows. We worked on our write-ups for The Last Samurai, making sure the aspects analyzed were both relevant and accurate. Formatting was also a necessity. We are confident in our site, and are excited to present our marriage-ready daughter to the class.
Tonight was our Professor Mikael Adolphson’s talk at Edmonton Art Gallery. The 45 minute talk was the summary of our three months lectures. Of course, hearing everything in simplified form was VERY easily understood and as always, entertaining. At the end of the lecture was question time. One question that stuck out was “Why are there nipple rings on the samurai armor?” HAHA I didn’t notice them until whoever pointed those out… Apparently, they were used to hang something that made the person wearing the armor “LOOK BIG” and (sorry for this word) BADASS. Or if they weren’t on the display (sitting position shown in the picture below), those “nipple rings” were used to hang the armor. Other than those rings, Professor talked about the usage of the armors which weren’t really discussed in class… so for further information on the samurai armor – -Please check out The Last Samurai page =)
Today our group, minus one sick person, met to discuss The Last Samurai that we all now have watched. Together, we created a list of possible aspects of the movie that we want to research in terms of accuracy. Not only are we adding to the site and group project, but it is also a great way to review material for the upcoming final exam.
In order to get started we set up meetings once/week as to get us all moving in the same productive direction. We first decided we needed both group and individual work for this project; this meant that we would choose a source to research individually but also collectively research a source together. Our numbers of sources changed from day to day; at one point we considered each doing two sources individually then doing two sources as a group for a total of ten sources; however, after careful consideration we thought it best to have quality over quantity. From here our final decision was each doing a single source of our choice along with the group source. Choosing the group source was also up for debate, with the consensus being that a film was best. Although Harakiri and Seven Samurai were two films we all watched in class, The Last Samurai was our final decision; this was not only readily available to watch, but also a film not yet discussed in class. As it is more well-known, it will be easier for other to relate to or recognize the ideas we refer to.
Welcome to Samurai Awakening: a site dedicated to acknowledging common misconceptions of the samurai while at the same time teaching the true story. The idea for this site began in October 2012, at the University of Alberta when four strangers enrolled in Japanese 242 were put in a group and assigned the task of informing the world of the samurai in Japanese culture. The four group members and creators of this site are: Bradley Matsuba, Esther Won, Megan Soon and Monica Slaback with our individual biographies found under the appropriate heading.
It took little time for the individuals to come together as a team with emails and texts flying in every direction. Before we knew it, we had a long list of possible sources, and the idea of housing them, publicly, on a site.
Samurai Awakening 