Hokudai/Cast 90: Drama and Dorama

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First, if you download from iTunes there is a new mini-Hokudai/Cast called Cafe Hokudai. Just a little light jazz for your listening pleasure. With a few distorted pictures to look at on your iPod.

Second, you'll need Flash to listen to Hokudai/Cast. If you haven't got it, get it here.

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In Japanese 演劇 (engeki) means drama when you mean plays on the stage such as Shakespeare plays. If you mean drama on TV, the Japanese word is borrowed from English and it is ドラマ (dorama). There are many ドラマ on Japanese TV and many of them star pop singers.

One feature of many radio stations is the radio dorama or audio drama. These are usually short - sometimes less than 10 minutes - and often involve few speaking parts. Recently, radio dramas in Japan are used to build an audience for anime movies that come out a few months after the radio drama. (Anime is shortened from another word borrowed from English: animation but now it has its own meaning: Japanese animation.)

Anime is so big that the number of people who are voice actors grows every year. Voice actors in Japan are big stars. In Japanese they are called 声優 (seiyu). 声 is voice and 優 (yu) is actor. A male actor is a 男優 while a female actor is a 女優. (Male = 男; female = 女 )

Besides 演劇 and ドラマ, there are the traditional plays of Japan: 文楽 (Bunraku), 能 (Noh) and 歌舞伎 (Kabuki). By far the most popular are, of course, TV dramas staring pop singers.

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Hokudai/Cast: Your fun-service podcast for learning Japanese, English, and Chinese.

Hokudai/Cast 89: Get a Job

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Factory worker, office worker, and employer all have one thing in common. First, they are jobs and second, they all end in ~er. ~er is one of the groups of letters that end words that are related to jobs and jobs are important, especially these days when so many companies are laying off so many workers. Other words related to jobs that end in ~er are teacher, minister, and gardener.

Besides ~er, there is also ~or. Actor and doctor are two words that end in ~or that are related to jobs. Notice that when you remove the ~er or ~or, you have verbs (動詞). (except for doctor.)

Act, work, employ are all verbs.

By adding ~er or ~or to the end, you make a noun that is about a job. But it's not only ~er and ~or that can be added to the end of a word to make it about jobs. ~ian can also be used. If you add ~ian to the end of music, you get musician; if you add it to the end of politic, you get politician.

There is one more group of letters that can be used: ~ist. Dentist and artist are two job-related words that end in ~ist. While it is not exactly a job, you often hear the word terrorist in the news. This is another job-related word that ends in ~ist.

Lastly, a new word that has emerged from South Central Los Angeles is krumper. What is a krump? Someone who krumps. What is krumping? Watch this video:

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Hokudai/Cast: Your fun-service podcast for learning Japanese, English, and Chinese.

Hokudai/Cast 69: Take the Bus or Take a Bath?

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Hokudai/Cast 69 introduces us to 'take' (which should not be confused with bamboo: 竹 - take) and some of its uses: we can both 'take a bath' and 'take a bus' but we do different things with both. We can even 'take care.' 'Take' means more than just 取る.

Actually, there are three words that you should explore. These three words are very useful in speaking English. They are take, get, and go.

For example, we get up in the morning, we get breakfast, we get to the bus stop, we get on the bus, we get to work or school, and we get home after school or work, we get to bed at the end of the day.

When we take out the garbage, we take care not to mix burnable (燃えるゴミ) and non-burnable (燃えないゴミ) garbage. We take a bus to work or school. When we take a bath in the evening we take our time relaxing. And, when we are tired, we take a break.

Sometimes we go to work or school and get busy. We go to lunch or take lunch at our desk. We go to the bathroom and we go home after work or school. We go on vacation and we go to bed. On the weekends we might go shopping or go on a date. We might go back to our hometown and get caught up with family news.

I take it you can see that we can take a bath or go to the bathroom. These are two different things. 'Take a bath' is お風呂 and 'Go to the bathroom' is トイレ. Another word for 'bathroom' is 'restroom.' In English, the 'toilet' (トイレ) is the fixture - usually white - people sit on. The room where the toilet is is called the bathroom or restroom. ('Bathroom' is usually used for a トイレ in a house; 'restroom' is used in public places like restaurants and stores.)

If you take a look in your dictionary or go to the library you can get the meanings of all these different uses of take, get, and go. Get it? (分かりますか?) Good. Go for it!

Music is by Aldo Leopardi and it is called "Always Be" and can be found at Podsafeaudio.com.

Additional music is 'Lava' by Manzi, an indies band from Kanazawa.
Their guitarist is a Hokuriku University junior. (三年生)

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Hokudai/Cast: Your fun-service podcast for learning Japanese, English, and Chinese.

Hokudai/Cast 31: Ten Words and a Song

Today's Hokudai/Cast has: ten words in our three languages of Japanese, Chinese, and English. It also has an interview in English with the Chinese teacher who teaches us both English and Chinese. We also have a song by a singer who will be performing at Hokuriku University's School Festival October 6 and 7: 北大祭.

The ten words that we learn in English and Chinese are:

• 昨日
• 今日
• 明日
• 趣味
  
• 映画を見る
• 友達と喋る
• スキー
• 柔道
  
• スノボード
• 音楽を聴く

The music in today's show is "Weather Report" by Hitomitoi.
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Hokudai/Cast: Your fun-service podcast for learning Japanese, English, and Chinese.