This pod-casting project will allow me to learn many more applications of the grammar and vocabulary which I have learned throughout these past two semesters. I will be able to broaden the situational usages of Japanese beyond those we learn in the classroom. Additionally, it will allow me the chance to be more familiar with speaking the language, both from a technical standpoint and from a conversational aspect. The degree to which this is taken advantage of depends on my and my group mates, since it is up to us utilize the language and the opportunities it presents to it's fullest.
This project relies on and is about communication. So what is communication? In a broad sense, communication is made of the verbal and non-verbal interactions between any amount of people. Part of communication is language, of course, and depends on the level of comprehension between or among the people speaking. However, communication is also beyond just the spoken word. You can communicate with how exactly you speak (your intonation etc) as well as body language. Much of this is responsible for how your act of communication will be received, since it must be received for it to be considered "communication." Generally, "communication" is how we interact with others and how we are perceived by others.
好きな物がたくさんたくさんあります。。。しゃしんやおんがくや食べ物などがすきですよ。でも、もうおんがくをはなしましたから、しゃしんをはなしましょう。しゃしんをたくさんとります。Canon Rebel XS があります。とても古いですが、いいです。えいごで "Oldie but a goodie" ですよ。私のしゃしんがみたいですか?
The history of Japanese music and jazz is actually pretty interesting, er, to me at least. While I'm not very familiar with post-WWII Japan, it would seem that along with the rest of world-wide cultural influences came American Jazz. I say "American" to emphasize that it came from America, ahah. Ever since the mid 70's or there abouts, there has a lot of mixing in Japan of their more traditional musics with jazz. The opposite happened, too, where American musicians starting copying the musical style of traditional Japan. Ever since then, and especially in the 80's, Japanese ideas have been used in American music, which was used in Japanese music, and back to America and so on until it's hard to distinguish what aspects came first. Here is an example.
日本のジャズの中で、上原ひろみがいちばんすきです。
My favorite Japanese jazz musician is Uehara Hiromi. In one of her more recent albums, "Beyond Standard," she takes a lot of classic songs and puts her own jazz spin on them. Some you might recognize are Caravan (by Duke Ellington), Clair de Lune (by Debussy), and My Favorite Things (popularized in Sound of Music). But on a CD with largely western songs, I was always baffled by one song whose title is in Japanese. My step-mom recognized it as an American song, but the title seemed to imply it was Japanese. Let's see if you know.
Here is the version she is familiar with:
If you are familiar with older Japanese music (or maybe even not! this guy was really famous), you would have recognized this song as (excuse my poor translation?) "I shall walk looking up" by Kyu Sakamoto. Of course, 日本語で、the song is 「上を向いて歩こう」。
Here is the original:
And of course, this is the song that Hiromi plays in her album.
So far, I've shown you the opening, ending, and one random song from Cowboy Bebop. I think it's time for another ending. About halfway through the show, there is a special two part episode featuring Vicious and Gren. It's a very touching episode and incredibly well done (also more related to the overall story than most episodes), and so I guess the director thought that it deserved it's own ending. I have to admit, I found it very fitting. Although, since I'm posting it here pretty much without context (SPOILERS!!! :O) you may not know why it's so fitting. But trust me it is. Or better yet, go watch the show! A little context though. The name of the song at the end is "Space Lion." (Wonder why? Watch the show!) It is based on a song in another part of the episode named "Goodnight Julia" which, for reasons of spoilers, I cannot explain here~ *(Also, don't be daunted by the four videos I posted. It's really not a lot, 'cuz they are all short and one them is technically a duplicate version. Also, they *are* all the same song...)*
^_^
Here's Julia (original music box version. want to know why? watch the show!):
Here's the sax/piano version:
And here's Space Lion: **SPOILER ALERT**
Here is the clean version of the song, sans ending, for those wary of the spoiler~ (jsyk, the song picks up a lot more than sax/piano version):