News
I have been away for more than 3 months and now I am
finally back in London. 28.7.2008
Elena’s email address has been, all this while, left
misspelt in these pages. We sincerely
apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused. Today we rectified the error. Elena has also started writing her page on
Japan. Her experience as a reader of
books on Japan is, as far as I can see, quite extensive. Her interest ranges from Japanese traditional
culture to its contemporary society. The
fact that there are lots of books on Japan written in Russian and that she
reads them also makes her attempt interesting and stimulating. Hopefully, she will keep expanding her page
on Japan. 4.3.2008
I have added two more links in my “Links” page. 26.2.2008
“Links” pages have been added to both Kaz & Elena’s sections.
The choices are almost arbitrary, but may be of some interest to
some. 25.2.2008
So it is already two years since this page was
launched. Where does the time go? …I am still trying to work out what I shall
do for this page. I am thinking about
adding a few more pages to my half of this site where, for instance, I review
books in Japanese published in Japan and not translated into English, or where
I scribble my fragmentary thoughts on contemporary Japan – in English, that
is. One way or the other, I will have it
expanded. In the meantime, let me guide
you to one of my articles that is available online for
free. It is in Japanese and is on Wuthering Heights and translatability of
literary texts (http://www.knowledge-garden.net/webmagazine/etrans/etrans0310/tokushu0310/ando.php). There is another one currently available
online, a short one, on detective fiction, that you will find in my Japanese
homepage (http://kazando.ld.infoseek.co.jp/anoteonthewaythroughthewoods.htm). This one is in English. It is just a fragment, not publishable as it
is, but maybe of some interest to you if you are a fan of Colin Dexter’s
original Morse stories. 22.2.2008
Tomorrow this small homepage of ours is going to
celebrate its second anniversary. Two
years on since its conception, I have decided to re-activate this site. For now, a couple of new pages have been
added. They are ads, announcing that we
are available for translation and private tuition services. The fees we have set are quite reasonable, I
hope. Elena does Russian – English
stuff. She is a qualified language
teacher and is exceptionally good at teaching methodically, at all levels, from
the beginner’s to the advanced. On the
other hand, I (Kaz) have substantial experience in
facilitating Japanese – English language exchange at undergraduate to academic
levels. I am happy to teach Japanese at
all levels, however, to anybody who is interested in the Japanese language
and/or the Japanese culture. I currently
work for some universities in Tokyo on contracts, which send me to Tokyo twice
a year for 3 months each time…so I might be able to even help you with your
job-hunting there if you are doing that.
We are not a corporation – just working from home. We are based in Hampstead, North London. So, prompt and flexible services shall be
provided for those who live in or are willing to travel to NW3. Let me, now, remind you once again of my
Japanese homepage, if you are learning Japanese or, even more relevantly, the
contemporary Japanese culture from the
viewpoint of the British Japanologist. I shall plant a link to it at the bottom of this
page. This homepage of mine is primarily
for those Japanese who are interested in British Literature and Cinema, today’s
British society in general, today’s London, etc., but also contains short
essays on the contemporary culture of Japan, which may be of some interest to
you. Especially if you are seeking an
academic position in Japan, I am sure that reading my Japanese homepage will be
a useful source of information for you.
21.2.2008
I am back in London again. I notice that the last time I wrote for this
page was a year ago. No big changes have
taken place in my life since. I was back
in Tokyo in April 2007 to work for three months, as lecturer in English, came
back to London in July to spend my summer “holiday,” and then worked for four
months in Tokyo, on the same contracts, from October till January. If anything was new in the year 2007, it was
that I dropped all attempt at generating academic articles – deliberately. For I finally came to realise the absurdity
of my jobs, which simply took up so much of my time that, if I were to still
try to produce academic output, I would have absolutely no time to do anything
else while I was in Tokyo. I enjoyed
teaching, as ever. The seminars I
conducted in the academic year 2007 - 2008 include “Contemporary British
Fiction – Graham Swift” and “Putting the British Cinema 1990 - in
Context.” These were simply fun. But, as an underpaid freelance, I had to take
on more work, mostly as a language instructor.
This was so very, very tiring. I
don’t feel like counting them, but my annual teaching hours probably ran up to
700. And I wasn’t paid well enough even
to buy the most basic literature I would have needed to do proper research. I just gave up. So I concentrated on teaching instead of
writing. One just cannot function as an
active academic on the kind of remuneration one gets as a freelancer
there. I have chronicled my ordeal in my
Japanese HP, together with lots of comments on what kinds of weird turns the
Japanese society has been taking lately.
Please read my Japanese pages if you are interested in English Studies
in Japan or the contemporary society of Japan in general, assuming that you
have a good enough command of the Japanese language. And please do not hesitate to email me to ask
questions – I will most likely readily answer your questions. The link to my
Japanese pages is to be found in my previous entry below. For contacting me, please use the address
provided in the “Projects” page of this site, the link to which is given at the
bottom of this page. 20.2.2007
Two weeks and half ago I came back to London, and I am
going to be here until mid-April. About
9 weeks is what I get for a “holiday” after having put in three times as many
teaching hours as the average academic in Japan does. There is only so much one can do in 9 weeks –
especially when you have to have a proper break from any kinds of work and
relax for at least a couple of weeks to recover from the damage done to your
health because of continuous lack of sleep lasting over a period of some four
months. It helps that I come back to
London, considering everything. Physical
rest I can get wherever I go, but what really tires me out these days when working
in Tokyo is probably not my long working hours but the psychological stress I
am subjected to due to the effort that I have to make to adapt myself to the
general ethics prevalent in the society there.
I have of late been finding it increasingly harder and harder to do even
the simplest things there, e.g. shopping.
If you read in Japanese and are interested in the country’s contemporary
culture, the culture of today’s Japan,
it might be of some interest to you to read what I have been writing in my
Japanese homepage, where you will find a series of short essays, some of which
are about the contemporary Japanese culture as I see it. (Please use the link at the bottom of this
page.) During the last term, while I was
in Tokyo, I felt that something about the society was reaching a critical point
and started reading in Japanese on Japan on a regular basis—something I had
never done before. I felt I had to do
it. In some ways it did me good, helping
me become more articulate about what I would otherwise have only vaguely felt
and got myself confusedly stressed about; in others it saddened me, in that it
hindered me in pursuing what I would have wanted to pursue. It can be interesting to observe at a
distance how Japan is changing the way it is now, but it is quite a different
story to be actually involved with it.
Now I have got only less than two months before I will have to get back
into the scene, and that is one of the things that I am not feeling all too
happy about right now. 22.2.2007
I am currently in
This page is still
under construction, but I thought it might not be too bad an idea to throw a
few things in here about what I am currently up to, if only to let those
friends of mine who know of my existence but are too busy to or simply cannot
be bothered to ask me…, anyway, only to let them know of what kinds of feeble efforts
I am making in terms of my reading and writing activities. Right now, I am not doing anything apart from
what I absolutely have to…which is, have a bit of rest and read whatever I feel
like reading…which sounds too good to be true.
It is, in fact, not very good, or won’t be good in a few weeks’ time
when I will be put back on the treadmill, though the fact that I am not reading
anything I don’t want to read is true—as of today. The miscellaneous reading I did in spring on
some English novels (some of which I certainly didn’t feel like reading) has
not been utterly pointless, as it has contributed to the publication of a book
(in Japanese), which I personally think has come out rather nicely. Apart from the regular updating of my meagre
knowledge on Victorian fiction and its criticism, I am currently working on a
paper which will be called “Memory and Narrative in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me
Go,” and a paper for oral presentation called “The Translatabilitiy
of P G Wodehouse and the English Sense of Humour.” With the latter I thought I might be on
rather shaky ground, but I thought, what the hell, I would just have a go at
it, if no one else was going to do it.
In fact, I am not giving you an accurate representation of my feelings
about the very same project of mine. I
am quite excited about it—perhaps apart from the historical research I have to
do with the past translations of Wodehouse’s works (into Japanese, of
course). 23.9.2006
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© Kaz Ando 2006-2008. All rights reserved.