Regional Culture Report --------- South Korea and Japan

Group Members: Yao Hu, Shan Lu, YunFei Hua, Hui Zhang, Mengfei Xu

Regional Culture Report

·        Cuisine

·        Military regulations

·        Wedding Cultures

·        Entertainment

·        Contemporary  issues in South Korea

Cuisine of Japan and Korea:

1)    Kimichi

2)    BBQ

3)    Street food
4)      Sushi
5)    Sashimi

Military regulations of Korea:

1)    At what age to service the military

2)     What do they need to do when they are in military

3)    How many years do they need service the military

Wedding Cultures of Korea:

1)    At what age to get married

2)    Wear traditional cloths when get married

3)    What’s the specific step of  hold a wedding

Entertainment of Korea and Japan:

1)    E-Sports: Star Craft

2)    Clubs: Korean like drinking

3)    Korea Dramas, TV shows and some singers.

4)    Soccer

Contemporary issues in Aisa

1)    South Korea V.S. North Korea

2)    The Impact of Earthquake in Japan

Winner for the Second interview

1st: Wei, Beibei
     http://beibeiwei0420.blogspot.com/
 

2nd: Hussain, Asif

    http://huas0901.blogspot.com/
   

3rd: Meyer, Jordan R    http://jordanmeyeren191s11.blogspot.com/

Link to my score card: https://spreadsheets1.google.com/ccc?hl=en&key=tVk0U2ZbxgoZzc8O2VHIGdA&hl=en#gid=0

Second Interview Report

  Before I posted this interview on my blog, the association of Japan in SCSU sent me event, which is called Solidarity Night. For sure I will go and try my best the people over there.

Prepare Interview.
   Choosing the interviewee is not so hard for me in SCSU, since there are many international students are from Japan. As I mentioned before, I chose Sho as my second interviewee, and he is my friend’s buddy. We made the place of interview was in the study room in library, because I think that’s a quite and nice place for processing my interview.
  This is my second interview, I did some regular things, like the first interview, first I made 10 unique questions which are designed for international students. These 10 questions contain the aspects of their life, study and culture. Second, however, I added two questions about the earthquake that happened on March 11th. I think they would like to talk about it and it’s better than me to look at the news on the internet. The information that I can get from them is firsthand. Third I contact with one guy who is called Sho Hoshino.
  After reading some people’s interviews in the class, I noticed that I have missed many details and crucial points of my own first one. In order to make my own more professional, clear and thoughtful, I revised pervious objects in many places and made it in three parts: preparing, recoding and transcript. Dr. Roland told me I didn’t put too much time on my transcript and I am agree with his suggestion. What’s more, I think that’s why my first interview was poor. This time, I focused on the transcript a lot.
 

Description of interview
   Sho is a nice guy with short and dyed yellow hair, the cloth that he wore that day is fashionable and looked fit for him. Since both of us are Asian, once I saw him, his appeal told me he is Japanese. Sho told me he is 24 years old, the city that he lives in is called Kofu, in Yamanashi. The city is 200 miles away from Tokyo. He has already finished his first major-- finance, and he is going for his second major--accounting. He is very enjoy the life here and St.Cloud is a quiet and safety place for him. When we turned the question to the earthquake, he seemed so sad and sometimes he need a deep breath then kept talking.  
   My interview went very smoothly! It helps me to get know a very good impression of Japan and Japanese. Some information about the earthquake is way more moving than that I watched on the news. From his eyes, I can know he really wanted to go back to Japan and see how bad the situation is right now. Some of his friends are from the places around there and one of them is missing.
  While talking with him, it reminded me of the Wenchuan earthquake happened in China, in 2008. Thousands of people were lost connection with their families and many of them only had one people left of the families. Compare with Sho at least I didn’t have any friends were missing in that earthquake. The feeling of him only himself can know.
  I felt sorry for him. Also, I can barely write the main points of his talking. I spent a lot of time to went through the interview. And I wish all the people in Japan can get rid of the bad situation as soon as possible.

Country Report about Japan
  Geography: 
 1.      Japan is located in Asian. Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku are the four largest.
Japan's closest neighbors are Korea, Russia and China.
Capital city is Tokyo.
  Population:
    The population of Japan is about 125,000,000.
  Earthquake
   1. Japan is located in a region, and there are several continental plates meet. Earthquake is very normal for Japanese. However, the country has suffered three huge earthquake.
The worst was in 1923, hit Kanto plain that city is by Tokyo. That time resulted in over 1 million people dead.
2. In 1995, the city is called Kobe and 6,000 people were killed and 415,000 people injured.
3. On march 11th, 2011. Japan had a 8.9 magnitude earthquake, it hit Pacific Coastal Regions of Northeastern Japan.  Based on CNN, there are more than 8,000 people were died and 13,000 are missing.  And this time, the Nuclear may result more bad effects of the world.

Interview Report:

Interviewer: Mengfei Xu
Interviewee: Sho Hoshino
Interview date: Mar.19th, 2011
Interview place: Study room of library in SCSU

Xu: Hi, I’m Mengfei Xu, and I am from China.
    Sho: Hi, My name is Sho Hoshino, I am Japanese, and I am from the city called Kofu, Yamanashi.
Xu: How old are you?
    Sho: I am 24 years old.
3. Xu: Is that ok for me to have a interview with you, and it will last around 30    minutes?
    Sho: Sure!
4. Xu: Thank you. How many years have you been in USA?
    Sho: I have been here for 4 years. And I was studied in Akita International                             University, In my third year I transfered to St.Cloud State University.
5. Xu: Oh, I see. Your English is very fluently. Are you graduate student right now?
    Sho: No. My major is Finance, and I have finished it last spring. Right now I am studying in Accounting. It’s really hard to find a job of graduating with a single major. That’s why I came back to school this spring for another major.
6. Xu: Yes, that’s true. I am also thinking of to get double majors. What was the reason for you to choose SCSU?
    Sho: Well, when I first came to USA, I was still waiting for my green card here, I was considered as an international student at that time. SCSU is very famous for offering the substantial scholarship for international students and my family also live in Minnesota, so I applied for this school.
7. Xu: How do you like here?
    Sho: I like here very much. My goal here is for studying, for this reason here is quite and safety. Also, I like snow, I really enjoy the snow in Minnesota, I can do a lot of snowing sports in the winter.
8. Xu: So do I. lol. Would you please introduce something that you like in Japan?
    Sho: I really want to introduce introduce a restaurant to you. It’s called Yoshinoya in Japanese. My favourite is Niku-juagai, which is boiled with meat and potato. What’s more, my hometown, Kofu, is only 200 miles away from Tokyo, so it’s very close to Fuji mountain. It’s a really nice place. If you have chance you should go to see the mountain and the sekula (oriental cherry blossom) is so beautiful.
9. Xu: I really want to see the sekula. As we all know, Japan has suffered from an 8.9 earthquake, would you please tell me something about it?
    Sho: When I first heard this news, I thought that’s nothing, because we had too many earthquakes back-home. But, later my friend told it came with Tsunami and the magnitude of this time was 8.9. At that moment I was shocked. I was trying to reached my friends and relatives as soon as possible. After one day, I found out most of them were safe, only one of my friend is missing till now (He stopped talking for around 10 seconds). Now the government is trying to solve the radiation of the unclear power, since it will cause a global problem. How I wish it can be solve as soon as possible, nobody wants to see any people died anymore.
10. Xu:I can understand your feeling right now, I wish all the people can be safe in the world and Japanese can rebuild your hometown soon. Thank you for your time!
      Sho: No problem.

Winners of the competition

No.1: Severson, Natalien M
No.2: Hayes, Amanda M
No.3: Meyer, Jordan R

score card

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=tS-guKFUNtn2O5qaHRZa9SQ#gid=0


https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=tS-guKFUNtn2O5qaHRZa9SQ#gid=0

My First Interview

Preparations of my interview:
  I knew this guy from my roommate, and his name is Kuota Sato, he is from Japan. And we had this interview in the study room of library, on Frbruary 25th. During the interview I recorded it.


                                        

Country report:

   This time my interviewee is from Japan.  He told me that Japanese called their country as “Land of the rising sun”.

  According to the website, Journey to Asia, “Japan is a country of islands, extends along the eastern or Pacific coast of Asia. The four main islands, running from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu (or the mainland), Shikoku, and Kyushu. Okinawa Island is about 380 miles southwest of Kyushu. About 3,000 smaller islands are included in the archipelago. In total land area, Japan is slightly smaller than California. About 73% of the country is mountainous, with a chain running through each of the main islands. Japan's highest mountain is the world famous Mt. Fuji (12,388 feet).” That’s why Japan is famous for its Sushi.  

  My interviewee also strongly recommended me go to Japan for a touring. On the website Travel.state.Gov, there is an article describe that “a land of striking scenic beauty. First time visitors are impressed by its greenness and its mountains, which cover nearly three-quarters of the country. Gentle plains and intermountain basins account for only about 25% of Japanese territory” As I said it before, sushi is very good over there and it’s already have become a world famous food. There is a lot of Sushi restraints in downtown Tokyo.

So from my point of view, I think when you have a chance we should go to Japan to have a look.

Cited

1.      http://www.koreanhistoryproject.org/Jta/Jp/index.htm visited date: 2011-2-26

2.      http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1148.html visited date:2011-2-28

                                                 
Interview report: 
  My interviewee, Kouta Sato, is from Japan this time. He was born in the Tokyo and his native language is Japanese. He is a guy whose cloth is very fashion and cares about his own style.

  Japan is an island nation in East Asia; it is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. Japan has over 127 million people. The city that Sato comes from is a crowed place. As of October 1, 2009, the population of Tokyo is estimated to be 12.989 million, or about 10% of Japan’s total population, and it has the largest population among all the 47 prefectures. Sato likes to drive in America with less population but more land. The only thing that he doesn’t like here is the weather.

Compare with his hometown there is almost no snow back home. However, because of the weather, the life style is different in Japan and Sato told me he would like to try out every different kind of life style. And with different experience talking to people here, he can learn a lot of words, which helps him with his English speaking skill. After his graduation, Sato wants to have a job here to gain some experience to develop his personal vale, and then succeed more chances when he go back to Japan. Because English is global language, he is happy with he

When we talked about the hoppy, Sato seemed very excited to tell me he like traveling by car. He can see a lot of landscape through the window. Traveling gives him different experience of life. He also recommended people come to USA if they get chance.

I was fully prepared for this interview, so that it went through very well. Sometimes we get something in common, I think because we are both Asians. Our interview was in one of the study room in the library, Miller center. There are quite and nice.


                                                   

Interview Transcript:

Xu: Hi, This is Mengfei Xu, I’m in my English 191 class, and I need to have a short interview with you.

Sato: Sure

1.      Xu：Where were you born, your native language, and where did you grow up?
Sato: My name is Kouta Sato. I was born in Japan, Japanese is my native language, I grew up there.

2.      Xu: Why did you choose go to school in SCSU?

Sato: I heard it from my friend and he was studying here.

3.      Xu: Could you tell me a traditional thing in your country?

Sato: I would like to tell you about the traditional cloth of Japan. It’s unique in the world.

4.      Xu: How is your living situation in St. Cloud different than at home?
Sato: it’s not so crowd than in Japan and the people are very friendly.

5.      Xu: Do you want to work in the United States?
Sato: Yes, I want to get more experience and I can have more chances when I go back to Japan.

6.      Xu: What do you enjoy to do for fun?

Sato: I like traveling by car. I can see a lot of different landscape through the window.

7.      Xu: Do you think English should be a global language?
Sato: Yes, there are lots of English speaking countries in the world, and everybody is learning English, of course we need to use it.

8.      Xu: Do you recommend people attend school in the U.S.?
Sato: If you have chance to come, then come for sure. It great opportunity for life.

9.      Xu: What’s the most difficult thing that you met at school so far?

Sato: Some of the words that I cannot really understand.

10.  Xu: What do you miss about being home?

Sato: The food back home and my family.

Xu: Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.
Sato: You are welcome. You too.