Comments on: TPR News: Thursday, November 2, 2006 - Japan’s high schools not teaching required courses, and a dolphin slaughter

by: DeOrio

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:14:15 +0000

OK, let’s see. Novels, roughly in the order that I like them (English titles, of course, let me know if you want originals.):
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Hear The Wind Sing / Pinball 1973 / A Wild Sheep Chase / Dance, Dance, Dance (Those four are a lossely linked tetralogy - the first two are really hard to find in English, but translations exist.)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
South of the Border, West of the Sun

There are plenty more that I like, he’s been prolific, but that list is a start.

My single favorite work of his, though, is the short story “TV People,” available in the collection The Elephant Vanishes as well as in a collection of various modern authors’ short stories edited by Alfred Birnbaum, one of his frequent translators, called Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction.
His nonfiction book Underground, about the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo Subway is excellent as well.

by: John Sheridan

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:38:18 +0000

I read Norwegian Wood and really liked it, but another one (can’t remember the name…something about Electric Sheep in Ladyland…maybe) but I didn’t get into it. Any others you’d recommend?

by: DeOrio

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:10:10 +0000

Andrea, I’m a big fan. I thought Kafka on the Shore was, relatively speaking, a bit weak, but I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read of Murakami’s, which is just about everything available in English and took a crack at some of his more recent stuff in the original, which was tough, to say the least.

by: ken

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:42:50 +0000

Andrea - there are suicide notes left behind that mention bullying, for one thing.

Won’t the high school students who didn’t have to take classes such as world history have an unfair adantage because they had extra time to prepare for the entrance examinations?

Yup. But don’t say that out loud.

by: Andrea

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:42:58 +0000

Oh! And congrats to Haruki Murakami. I loved “Norwegian Wood” and have been recommended other books of his by a friend of mine. Are you guys fans?

by: Andrea

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:41:50 +0000

Guys, I like the news podcasts.
Two questions:
1. How sure are people that bullying caused those teenage suicides? What is the evidence? Teenagers who commit suicide are usually suffering from mental illness or clinical depression, bullying alone was probably NOT the cause, which means the Saitama Board of Education is correct.
2. Won’t the high school students who didn’t have to take classes such as world history have an unfair adantage because they had extra time to prepare for the entrance examinations?