Speaking of Speaking Japanese

[Steve Bildermann]

No shame in making mistakes Rakugoka, lawyer raise laughs with language-learning reminiscences

The Daily Yomiuri hosted an evening of comedy and discussion Thursday last week to mark the 10th anniversary of its Kansai edition.

Diane Orrett, a British rakugoka who goes by the stage name Diane Kichijitsu, and Mitsuyo Ohira, an Osaka-based lawyer, described their personal experiences of learning a foreign language.

Orrett advised the audience of about 160 readers gathered at The Yomiuri Shimbun's Osaka headquarters not to be afraid of making mistakes when speaking English, adding that she had made many mistakes when speaking Japanese after she arrived from England in 1990.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20030924wo32.htm



All about Rakugo

Rakugo.com in Japanese

The Laughing Buddha Lounge

English Rakugo with Diane Kichijitsu

[Caustic Saint]

Orrett advised the audience of about 160 readers gathered at The Yomiuri Shimbun's Osaka headquarters not to be afraid of making mistakes when speaking English...

I had the hardest time convincing my adult students of this. I told them they'd learn more if they tried and made mistakes than if they only spoke when they knew they had the right answer. A few of them got it, and ended up being the best students in the class.

[Steve Bildermann]

There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

Failure is an event, never a person. ~William D. Brown, Welcome Stress!

The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything - and it works. ~William Strong

If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ~Thomas Edison

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

There is no failure except in no longer trying. ~Elbert Hubbard

Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. ~Mary Pickford

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure... it just means you haven't succeeded yet. ~Robert Schuller

One fails forward toward success. ~Charles F. Kettering

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake. ~Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him. ~Elmer G. Letterman

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own? ~G.K. Chesterton

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward. ~Thomas Edison

There are defeats more triumphant than victories. ~Michel de Montaigne

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God. ~Charles Horton Cooley

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what happens when he says, "I am a failure." ~S.I. Hayakawa

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience. ~Elbert Hubbard

No man is a failure who is enjoying life. ~William Feather

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. ~Henry Ford

Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage. ~George Horace Lorimer

You can't have any successes unless you can accept failure. ~George Cukor

There is no failure. Only feedback. ~Robert Allen

Failure changes for the better, success for the worse. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success. ~Max Beerbohm, Mainly on the Air, 1946

You always pass failure on your way to success. ~Mickey Rooney

Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure. ~Kenneth Boudling

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

It is a mistake to suppose that people succeed through success; they often succeed through failures. ~Author Unknown

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed. ~Lloyd Jones

[kamome]

Wow, thanks for the quotes, Steve. It's illuminating to see the collective wisdom of so many people from different time periods and walks of life all commenting on failure and success.

[Mulboyne]

Asahi/IHT (no link): Rakugo's been called Japan's sit-down answer to the stand-up comedy of the West but, until recently, the jokes were lost on those who don't speak the local lingo. That's changed thanks to Rakugo performers like Kimie Oshima, Shofukutei Kakushow, Katsura Kaishi and Katsura Asakichi, who present their comic monologues in English. They'll present their best material at a show to be filmed for DVD by Victor Entertainment.
April 15th (Friday) at 7:00pm in Somido Hall in Tokyo's Ginza Sony Building. Free, but donations will be accepted for tsunami victimes in India and Sri Lanka where the group will tour later this year.
To attend, send an email to info@english-rakugo.com with your name, phone number, email address and number in your party.
Visit http://www.english-rakugo.com

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Exec wins raves for English rakugo

English rakugo performed by amateur storyteller Romane Kontei is gaining popularity in her local community of Habikino, Osaka Prefecture. Kontei, 51, whose real name is Masayo Kondo, is the managing director of Kawachi Wine Co. She began learning English rakugo a year ago, and will make her first performance in French in August at a Kyoto hall, bringing her a step closer to her dream of performing rakugo in France, where her namesake Romanee Conti, one of the world's most respected wines, is produced. Kondo took over the business operations of the wine firm after her husband died. She became interest in rakugo in September 1994, not long after his death, after watching a performance of the storytelling form at a warehouse she had remodeled into a small hall. When she saw how enthusiastically the audiences responded to the rakugo performances she organized at the hall, she began to think of taking to the stage herself.

Discovering that traditional rakugo stories were difficult to master, she decided to perform rakugo in English, which she regularly uses in her business, thinking that even an amateur such as herself might be able to establish a new category of the storytelling form. Having performed at her own hall and in Wahha Kamigata, a prefectural-government-run hall for Osaka-based rakugo and manzai performances in Chuo Ward, Osaka, she was invited to perform at a dinner to mark the 40th anniversary of the sister-city relations between Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, and Launceston, Australia, in May. Her performance won praise from the mayor of Ikeda. At a performance in Kyoto on Aug. 20, Kondo will perform a story called "Garo nite" (At an Art Gallery) for the first time in French. "For me, rakugo is like entering an international cultural exchange," said Kondo, while taking a break during rehearsals. She also hopes to use her proficiency in French in her main business of making and selling wines.

[kamome]

Check out that Oshima-san, one of the rakugo performers:



I'd hit it - multiple times.

[kurohinge1]

* bump *

You can now learn Japanese sit-down stand-up in English.

Comprendes?

[SIZE="4"]Studying English just for a laugh[/SIZE]

Ripples of laughter flowed from a room at the Asakusa Kokaido hall in Taito Ward, Tokyo, late last month. Inside, an audience was enjoying a performance in English of traditional rakugo comic storytelling. Even when the performers found themselves stuck for words and tried to remember their lines, they were received with warm laughter.

The performers were not professional rakugo artists--known as rakugoka--but amateurs who appeared on stage after having practiced for months at a rakugo school in Adachi Ward. Opened in 1991 as a school for amateurs to practice the art of Japanese sit-down comedy, Canary Rakugo School has offered an English rakugo course since October 2007.

Although English rakugo has been performed in and outside Japan, mainly by certain rakugoka, Canary's course is the only one of its kind available in the Kanto region for amateurs, according to Tatsuya Sudo, 49, the operator of the school.

The public presentation was for nine of the students--including an Indian and an American--who took the course's six-month class. Early last month, there was another event for eight others from the same class, with a first-year and a third-year middle school student among the performers.

"That means, if you know junior high school-level English, you can perform rakugo in English," Sudo, the first of the storytellers on Sept. 28, said to the audience.

Rakugoka teach the school's Japanese-language course, and Sudo himself serves as lecturer for the English-language course. A freelance interpreter and translator, Sudo also teaches English at several universities and vocational schools.

Courses run from April to September and from October to March. During the six-month term, students join one of the three practice sessions held each month near Kita-Senju Station in Adachi Ward. Each focuses on one particular story, which usually last for 15 minutes, so they are able to perform at the end of each class under their own stage names.

"It took three to four months to remember the story I was given," said Takayuki Kurihara, 36, who presented the story Kohome, or Praising a Child at the event.

. . . Sudo first began studying rakugo in 1984, when he enrolled in a course for amateurs run by Tatekawa Danshi. He was further inspired when listening to English rakugo performances by Katsura Shijaku (1939-99), an Osaka-based rakugoka who pioneered the field.

In Osaka--the other major home for rakugo--there is also an English rakugo course for amateurs, which was launched in April 2007 by language school chain operator ECC Corp., after seeing success with its Japanese-language rakugo course in 2002. It is taught by several rakugoka, including Katsura Kaishi, who has been performing rakugo in English for the past decade.

. . . Canary has just begun a new English rakugo course, while ECC will start a new one next week. Call Canary at (090) 2909-3796 or ECC at (0120) 988-062 . . . more.