Message from the Editor

This is your Web Editor here; I'm writing this note this month instead of your Editor-in-Chief Aurélien so that I can personally apologize for missing an entire month. Unfortunately this time I can't say something like "this is a good opportunity to explain about Japan's system of annual personnel change," since the reason this time was the changeover of JET Programme participants and the accompanying chaos.

I hope that you've made it through the hottest part of the summer without suffering from natsubate (夏バテ, summer heat fatigue). The temperature should be going downhill from here. I also hope that everyone will find something interesting in the big helping of articles we have this month, and especially the events list, chock full of late-summer festivals.

Find yourself sometimes free on weekdays during the day, and want to make some money helping a fellow English speaker? An deaf exchange student from America is starting studying International Relations at Tsukuba University, and the classes are all in English, but she needs someone to sit next to her and transcribe into a computer what the professor says. 2000 yen an hour, contact takahashi@uctsc.org.

New articles for September 2007

• September 2007 events at a glance
• Tarōsaka: returning to the tranquility of my home - Words from a famous German-born artist living in Ibaraki
• Monkfish/Ankō (鮟鱇 or アンコウ) - That tasty ugly squished-looking fish
• The origins of Isobushi (磯節) - The famous folk song from Ibaraki

Updated articles

• Ibaraki dialect - Understand Ibaraki old-timers
• World Culture Seminar - Seminars in English on a variety of international topics

Voices from the archives (recently resurrected articles from the paper Ibaraki Report)

• One-Eyed Fish - The story of the fish near Tōkai-mura
• Feudal Ibaraki - A brief local history and some anecdotes from feudal times
• Dos and don'ts of multicultural communication - Advice on working with people from different cultures
• The 2005 Japan-EU People-to-People Year - Work of a former French Coordinator for International Relations
• Mito UNESCO Association - An interview with the Association's representative, from Ibaraki University