Japanese Culture Reminders?
I think it would be cool to have something like:
"Did you know the Japanese read Comics (Manga) from back to front?"
"Did you know the Japanese find it customary to place their shoes just inside the entrance of their house?"
Pictures, photos, randomized reminders and so on would be kind of awesome, right?
My idea is to have it on the top area of the site or even in some easy to put place.
"Did you know the Japanese read Comics (Manga) from back to front?"
"Did you know the Japanese find it customary to place their shoes just inside the entrance of their house?"
Pictures, photos, randomized reminders and so on would be kind of awesome, right?
My idea is to have it on the top area of the site or even in some easy to put place.
posted by JanetMerai
Comments 15
I have interest in providing Japanese Cultures and everything about Japan as contents.
But, it is something really big and needs a lot of work.
I will try to make them from now, starting from few things such as
- Japanese Celebrities
- Japanese Food
- Japanese Clothings
Don't you think that it is difficult to provide descriptive content, especially for me, I'm not good at writing. So instead, I would probably just provide pictures and names.
Is it ok?- On a second thought, while I am trying to make it...
I realize that this is a really big thing, really broad and wide.
I'm a one person developer, and JCJP is not the only thing I am working on, though JCJP is one of the main things that I am working on. But still, I need to work on something else to keep JCJP exist. It is really difficult to tell if JCJP will be profitable in the future, but I have the intention to keep the site free forever.
JCJP is really meaningful for me, by building JCJP I learned a lot of things about web development. Because of this, I want to keep on improving this site.
If you ask me to provide all those contents, it is really difficult. In the long term, I have to manage all the fuzzy and broad categories. Unlike language, it can be simplified to be Kanji, vocabulary, grammar. The reason why it is difficult to provide grammar content, because grammar is a broad thing.
To understand this, you can start creating a mind map of "Japanese Culture". Seriously, I believe that you can come up with so many things in the main category, and lots of sub categories. This is not a one man work. In fact, there are some other sites who are already providing this contents.
In conclusion, I agree that learning Japanese Culture should be learned in parallel with learning Japanese Language, I have always been thinking about this too. But there are so many hindrance that hesitate me to start working on it which is the complexity, and broadness.
But I think I have another solution to this, I can provide a system where users can provide the contents. There are also a doubt in this that how many users will be willing to participate? Of course I should make restrictions to only trust worthy person.
How about this user generating system? 
Maybe you should ask help from fellow members of JCJP to give suggestions to "Japanese Culture Reminders"!
I wouldn't mind making content :3
Things like sentences, quotes, news and other things would be fun to make.
Plus I enjoy learning new things and understanding how things work, so making content for myself and others would be beneficial :3
On the other hand as an artist, I don't have all the time in the world but I can offer my help here and there :3- How about content like this
http://japaneseclass.jp/about_japan/index
this is just a draft if you think it has potential to be improved, please tell me.
That content is basically a wikipedia daily trends (sorted according to wikipedia Page Views).
It is from Wikipedia Japanese Language, so it reflect on trends in Japan.
the images is drawn from Yahoo Japan image search API.
I can improve on something like listings of places in Japan for travel, Japanese Food, etc, you name it.
However, this requires a lot of data processing... as it has to process all the wikipedia PV (Wikipedia doesn't have the API to get PV) on each wikipedia pages (Japanese pages). So, I may need some stronger servers.
I have not tried on the current server though, I did the processing for today's trends on my MacBook Pro, and it took some time to process 3 days trends. - I personally think that these kind of content is kind of interesting and attractive.
I will add manga/anime ranking later.
And I think I will add some restrictions to see the content itself. So the user need some certain level to be able to access certain page. As the contents can be attractive (don't you think so) it can be good for motivation to earn EXP and study.
What do you think? - Before, I was thinking to make avatar feature and virtual items. So users can earn GOLD to buy virtual clothing for their avatars. So that virtual items can be the purpose/motivation to earn EXP. but it is difficult as I'm not good at drawing.
- While this is a good idea, I am not sure buying virtual items with EXP or gold would really be a good idea.
This is also probably up to the community as America (or other countries than Japan) are not so heavily interested in EXP and RPG's as most Japanese are.
Avatar's are already in motion, I have an idea though.
If I made a simple 3D model of an anime guy and girl, based on my design, we could eventually sell it :3
My idea, because I am an artist and making my own game as we speak, is to make a game where you go through a quest to learn Japanese as an overseas transfer student.
In "My name is/I am Yan", (a very old 80's-ish series) makes clever use of learning Japanese while living there without filtering it to be America.
You are Japanese as far as I am aware Beeant, so if you would be interested in working with me, we could make a Japanese game that follows:
You have just set out for a vacation in Japan as an actual Japanese girl/guy and arrived from the Airport, and just like the Yan series, you are given small hints and comprehensive ideas that are geared towards learning the context, Kanji and so on without trying to Americanize it.
Let's say while you are walking to meet your friends there is a Japanese girl wanting to eat a particular food, so you chat with her and she speaks in Japanese.
While the conversation is going on, she is clearly demonstrating that she is eating and my animation could hint at the context without translating it.
Little ideas like that about hinting, suggesting and making decisions blends you into the culture.
One thing I know is that I don't live in Japan, so having help about culture insight, proof-reading and correction could help me make a game :3
Besides, I have been wanting to make a game to learn Japanese in a natural way than most methods out there have done.
My ideas include:
Vocabulary list (if you encounter words or phrases or anything else, it goes into your list and you get a translation for it)
Drama (If you encounter a skit disguised as drama, you will see events and actions suggesting particular content actually designed to help you learn)
Culture (Let's say you visit a friend's house and the camera in the game shows that you are putting your shoes into the entrance while a note reminds you that its part of culture)
I have so many ideas, plus I can make a 3D model and textures, what do you think about this Beeant?
If we can collaborate, I can use Unity3D to make the game. - It's a great idea but, I'm not Japanese... I live in Japan right now, for University.
I created this site to help me learn Japanese by memorizing vocabularies and kanji.
I've been wanting to integrate education in fun games, of course there are some educational games. but as you know, most of them are not engaging enough.
I'm interested on working in something like this, but I'd prefer to start from something simple. - Are you a programmer or do you have any skills related to game development?
- I tried to learn Unity before, I know I can use JavaScript for Unity.
I'm ok with JavaScript. - anyway, the page has been changed:
http://japaneseclass.jp/about_japan/artists
if you want to keep track with the progress - Looks awesome, great work :3
Also, I will work on my idea eventually. - Just an offtopic note to Janet, the official name is "Learning Japanese With Yan-san" I got all the episodes on dvd, it's kinda funny series, I like it : P
- Its outdated and the language is a bit... dated too, but its a classic and I had fun with it XD
Too bad the texts are not in production anymore.
