This week’s East Asia Studies will focus on minority groups in Japan. On Monday we will have a seminar on Burakumin, a group of people whose feudal ancestors were involved in sociably less desirable professions, such as leather tanning. On Thursday we will have a seminar on permanent ethnic Korean residents of Japan, a group of people with their own particular diaspora. Both of these group have become increasingly vocal about social discriminatory practices which continue to this day.

A few weeks ago, some of our students spent their weekend with some homestay families in Shiga prefecture. Evan Thomas was taken to a Yabusame (Japanese horseback archery) demonstration. Please click here to watch this video (this is 9 mb file).

Jessica Smith contributed the following paper on cycling in Kyoto.

Cycling Kyoto

I wake up before my alarm goes off, to the sound of a screaming child (a phenomenon that occurs internationally) and run downstairs to eat. Breakfast is a cross cultural combination of brown rice with pickled plum, salad, miso soup and bread all arrayed on a single low table. My host father asks me “What time do you leave for college today?” I look up at the clock and answer, “now”.

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