Misaki's Journal is an interactive Japanese Graded Reader. This means that each journal entry has printable materials and well as digital and intractable resources available for students to use alongside their reading experience.

Please also check out the Teacher's Notebook and Misaki's Journal in the OER Japanese Grader Reader (Misaki's Journal).

Noh, the oldest surviving Japanese dramatic form, combines elements of dance, drama, music, and poetry into a highly stylized, aesthetic retelling of a well-known story from Japanese literature, such as The Tale of Genji or The Tale of the Heike. This lesson provides an introduction to the elements of Noh plays and to the text of two plays, and provides opportunities for students to compare the conventions of the Noh play with other dramatic forms with which they may already be familiar, such as the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles. By reading classic examples of Noh plays, such as Atsumori, students will learn to identify the structure, characters, style, and stories typical to this form of drama. Students will expand their grasp of these conventions by using them to write the introduction to a Noh play of their own.

This course centers on mechanisms of civilian control of the military. Relying on the influential texts of Lasswell, Huntington, and Finer, the first classes clarify the basic tensions between the military and civilians. A wide-ranging series of case studies follows. These cases are chosen to create a field of variation that includes states with stable civilian rule, states with stable military influence, and states exhibiting fluctuations between military and civilian control. The final three weeks of the course are devoted to the broader relationship between military and society.

The United States experienced extensive economic and geographical expansion during the 1840s, as the spirit of Manifest Destiny drove Americans west across the North American continent to exert their influence over new places and peoples. Influenced by this expansionary philosophy, political leaders sought to expand American trade relationships worldwide. One of the first targets of this campaign was to open diplomatic and trade relations with isolationist Japan, which had been closed to western traders for centuries. In 1852, President Millard Fillmore ordered Commodore Matthew C. Perry to lead an expedition to secure Japanese trade and access to Japan’s ports for American ships.

This article describes online artifact collections available through the Arctic Studies Center, a part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The collection includes artifacts and background information about the peoples of Alaska and Northeast Siberia.

Distinguished social scientist and public intellectual Chalmers Johnson, President of the Japan Policy Institute, joins host Harry Kreisler for a conversation on the nature of the American Empire and its costs and consequences for the future of American democracy and power in the world. (58 min)

This class is divided into a series of sections or “modules”, each of which concentrates on a particular large technology-related topic in a cultural context. The class will start with a four-week module on Samurai Swords and Blacksmithing, followed by smaller units on Chinese Cooking, the Invention of Clocks, and Andean Weaving, and end with a four-week module on Automobiles and Engines. In addition, there will be a series of hands-on projects that tie theory and practice together. The class discussions range across anthropology, history, and individual development, emphasizing recurring themes, such as the interaction between technology and culture and the relation between “skill” knowledge and “craft” knowledge.

Culture Tech evolved from a more extensive, two-semester course which formed the centerpiece of the Integrated Studies Program at MIT.  For 13 years, ISP was an alternative first-year program combining humanities, physics, learning-by-doing, and weekly luncheons.  Culture Tech represents the core principles of ISP distilled into a 6-unit seminar. Although many collections of topics have been used over the years, the modules presented here are a representative sequence.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Real-world data and real-world evidence are terms widely used in the field of health care. In fact, various stakeholders are showing increasing interest in using real world data and real world evidence. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, use real world data for various purposes—from the early stages of development to post-launch. One hot topic focuses on using real world data and real world evidence to support regulatory decision making to deliver drugs faster to patients with high medical needs. This has been the subject of active discussion in the US, Europe, Japan and other countries, leading to regulatory reform and improvement of the implementation environment. However, there are barriers to the regulatory acceptance and use of both real world data and real world evidence. Real world data should be evaluated not only for quality but also for data relevance. There is a lack of universally accepted methodological criteria..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Students study how geology relates to the frequency of large-magnitude earthquakes in Japan. Using the online resources provided through the Earthquakes Living Lab, students investigate reasons why large earthquakes occur in this region, drawing conclusions from tectonic plate structures and the locations of fault lines. Working in pairs, students explore the 1995 Kobe earthquake, why it happened and the destruction it caused. Students also think like engineers to predict where other earthquakes are likely to occur and what precautions might be taken. A worksheet serves as a student guide for the activity.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Wet age-related macular degeneration, or wet AMD, occurs when newly formed blood vessels leak or bleed into the center of the retina, resulting in poor vision. Proactive treatment with intravitreal aflibercept has produced good outcomes in clinical studies. The treat-and-extend dosing strategy in particular has been shown to produce similar visual outcomes to fixed dosing every 4 or 8 weeks. And real-world evidence suggests that patients treated proactively in real life show outcomes similar to those observed in clinical trials. In the ALTAIR study, investigators explored how to fine-tune the proactive treat-and-extend approach in Japanese patients. The study aimed to identify the optimal extension interval for individual patients and individualize treatment with optimal extension to reduce the treatment burden for as many patients as possible. Ideally, treatments would be as infrequent as once every 16 weeks—with fast extensions made in 4-week increments—while maintaining initial vision gains..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Poster showing two Red Cross nurses, one cradling in her arms a child on a litter, between the flags of Japan and the United States. Text also in Japanese.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Exotic species are a big problem worldwide. While the mechanisms of invasion vary from one exotic species to the next, researchers can tease out patterns that are useful for understanding and ultimately managing invasion. A new study published in the Journal of Biogeography reveals how one team has applied an emerging method known as the phylogenetic field approach to do just that for exotic plants in Japan. The results offer critical insight into how ecology and evolution influence the dynamics of invasion. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species marked the first time biological invasion had been addressed using the principles of evolutionary ecology. But followed to their logical end, these principles yielded two contradictory hypotheses. The pre-adaptation hypothesis states that exotic species successfully colonize assemblages with native species that are ecologically similar because both require the same set of environmental conditions to thrive..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this video segment adapted from NASA, students in Matsuyama City, Japan, interview Expedition 8 Commander and NASA Science Officer Mike Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri about life and work aboard the International Space Station.

This course examines relationships between identity and participation in Japanese popular culture as a way of understanding the changing character of media, capitalism, fan communities, and culture. It emphasizes contemporary popular culture and theories of gender, sexuality, race, and the workings of power and value in global culture industries. Topics include manga (comic books), hip-hop and other popular music, anime and feature films, video games, contemporary literature, and online communication. Students present analyses and develop a final project based on a particular aspect of gender and popular culture.

Students will learn to describe people and items using learned descriptive vocabulary. Students will practice guessing items and people based on the descriptions provided.

This study abroad guide is designed to help students prepare for their study abroad experience in Tokyo, Japan. This interactive journal contains a list of important information alongside photos and authentic materials such as train tickets, traffic signs, menus, and bank ATMs. It also provides cultural tidbits and personal experiences that are intended to assist students in adjusting to Japanese culture and society during their study abroad.

At age twenty-seven, physicist Philip Morrison joined the Manhattan Project, the code name given to the U.S. government's covert effort at Los Alamos to develop the first nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was also the most expensive single program ever financed by public funds. In this video segment, Morrison describes the charismatic leadership of his mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the urgency of their mission to manufacture a weapon 'which if we didn't make first would lead to the loss of the war." In the interview Morrison conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Dawn,' he describes the remote, inaccessible setting of the laboratory that operated in extreme secrecy. It was this physical isolation, he maintains, that allowed scientists extraordinary freedom to exchange ideas with fellow physicists. Morrison also reflects on his wartime fears. Germany had many of the greatest minds in physics and engineering, which created tremendous anxiety among Allied scientists that it would win the atomic race and the war, and Morrison recalls the elaborate schemes he devised to determine that country's atomic progress. At the time that he was helping assemble the world's first atomic bomb, Morrison believed that nuclear weapons 'could be made part of the construction of the peace.' A month after the war, he toured Hiroshima, and for several years thereafter he testified, became a public spokesman, and lobbied for international nuclear cooperation. After leaving Los Alamos, Morrison returned to academia. For the rest of his life he was a forceful voice against nuclear weapons.

This course is a study of the history of theater art and practice from its origins to the modern period, including its roles in non-western cultures. Special attention is given to the relationship between the literary and performative dimensions of drama, and the relationship between drama and its cultural context.