THE JAPAN SOCIETY

JAPANESE CONVERSATION GROUP

Meetings - 2009 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002 - 2001

In July, our ice-breaking game really mixed people up and moved them about the room. Everybody received - on their back and out of sight - a label indicating a person or object. Using gyes/noh questions and asking as many people as possible, they then had to find out what was written on the label. The fastest six people to discover their temporary identity received the grand prize of some Japanese confectionary. The organisers had a go as well but being dealt difficult-to-guess labels mostly failed miserably, and we even knew what some of the answers might be!.

In June, the event was another in our series of engaging pub-quizzes. The theme this time was movie or film trivia, and the questions were set by our very own film buff Michael who, we are sure, could give Barry Norman or Jonathon Ross a run for their money. Contestants had to match the English and Japanese titles, and answer other challenging questions on the silver screen. Would you have known that the recent Nick Parks animation gFlushed Awayh is called gMouse Town/Roddy and Ritafs Big Adventureh in Japan, or that gBonnie and Clydeh is gFor us there is no tomorrowh? No, well therefs always next time!

In May, the Conversation Group's Music Quiz had people tapping the feet and scratching their heads simultaneously. Four rounds of fiendishly difficult questions kept contestants guessing as they negotiated through a "Guess-the-song-from-the-introduction", "Guessing the album from the album cover (artist and titled deleted)", general music knowledge, and a final lyrics round. Songs featured were Utada Hikaru's "Automatic", "Robinson" from Spitz, "Forever Love" by X Japan, Kaji Meiko's "Urami Bushi", "Change the World" from Eric Clapton and Jamiroquai's "Little L". It all sounds easy doesn't it, but from the maximum of 31 points available, the highest score was only 15 points!

But the stiff competition was worth as it, as the winning team took home their T-shirts, and free Album and Single CDs courtesy of the emerging band Asobi Seksu. See the winning team photo to the left, featuring amongst others Ayami, Chirag, Jack, Jez, and Nozomi.

Asobi seksu are releasing their new album Citrus here in the UK soon, so watch this space!

In April, the Conversation Group gave expression to their creative side by creating a Hanami themed Yonkoma manga comic strip. The idea was to finish the comic strip in about 15 minutes, but everyone got carried away and 25 to 30 minutes later were still frantically drawing. We were really pleased with the results and found it very hard to pick a winning entry. Marks were given for plot development, as well as artistic skill and full use of the four boxes. In the end, a Jan-Kan Pon game broke the judge's deadlock. Attached below are some of our favourite (printable) entries:

Yonkoma 1: In which the, the cherry blossom turns nasty...
Yonkoma 2: In which, the effects of Kata omoi are explored...
Yonkoma 3: In which, we discover the ants emply a decoy....

March has not one but two patron saints days St David and St Patrick. We didn't know much about these saintly men before we started preparing the theme for March's meeting, but by the end we were expects. Four charitable visitors volunteered to play the part of each of the four British saints, St Andrew, St George, St David, and St Patrick, and reveal - in Japanese - clues about their personality to the different teams. Sort of like a Jiko Shokai without names. Each team had to guess which volunteer was playing which saint, but in the end, everyone did so well that a tie-breaker question was needed. The lucky winning team were given a prize and hearty applause for being so devoutly knowledgable.

Back to our regular numbers, February saw the upstairs room in The Clachan heaving with people. In February, we are always presented with a dilemma - should we base our event on St Valentine's day, or Setsubun. This time we opted for a comprise, and taking the format of last years Celebrity Couple game, presented an Oni-Hero (couple?) game. Momotaro, Kintaro and the Oni they fought were represented, along with a few classics like Ultraman and Reddo Kingu, and from England Doctor Who and the Daleks. See the attached answer sheet for more clues.

January's meeting had a much more intimate feel, as only a small number of people came to our event. A new year, a new venue, dark winter nights and Christmas over eating had all conspired to keep many of our regulars away. As a result, the happy few were treated to a sumptuous buffet that could have fed three times as many. Rather than hold our New Year's writing or Kakizome game, we opted instead for an unbroken evening of drinking, chatting, and eating. Not too bad after all!

Meetings - 2009 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002 - 2001

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