From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Moving discussion of life in Japan to fj
Date: 13 Aug 92 23:02:34 GMT
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

ecovingt@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Maiko Covington) writes:

>Hmmm. I agree that it would be nice to have a group dealing with
>life in Japan. However, I sort of wish it didn't have to be in the
...
>
>	Well, my sysadmin is not subscribing to the fj hierarchy
>because there are not enough people at this university who read
>Japanese to make it "worthwhile". Add to this the fact that I do not
>have a nifty workstation - just a "dumb terminal" in a large room -
>and getting the fj stuff is pretty much impossible.

I believe it is possible to get fj stuff by mail, although I don't
have any details. (Does anybody else know how you can do this?)

I don't know what kind of "dumb terminal" but you can read/write
Japanese on any AT class machine with DOS 5.0/V and software that
uses the BIOS (WordPerfect, Telix, etc).  Further, I have heard (but
can't confirm) that you don't really need all of DOS 5.0/V, just the
fonts and dictionary as the rest of the system is the same as plain
DOS 5.0. Last, somebody has said there is a Shareware/Freeware/PDS
something as well (but I have not information on that at all). For
sure you can run the PDS WTERM on an AT and read Japanese as it has
it's on kanji fonts (can't post, though). 

Maybe you don't have the money, but new 386SX AT machines can be had
for about $1,3000 from Taiwan and that includes $160 FedEx to Japan.
Then you throw on a modem and dial-up some place which provides what
you want. Lots of people do, you know... 

>	I suppose I really have no right to request reading stuff
>that is supposed to be for people living in Japan, but it would be
>nice if not all these sorts of discussion moves to the new group, or
>if there was another group (soc.life-in-japan or something li'dat?)
>that I could read, that some stuff could be crossposted to.

While it's not been formalized yet, according to an article by
kuno@gssm.otsuka.tsukuba.ac.jp (Yasushi Kuno) on 29 Jul 92 06:54:56:

Suggested Goal of the Group:

G1. To attract the topics related to foreigners in Japan and
    information they need, and increase the opportunities for discussions
    and exchanges of information.

G2. To increase the opportunities for foreigners in Japan with
    difficulty in writing/reading Japanese to communicate with public
    in whatever language.

G3. To increase the opportunites for Japanese who are prepared to
    communicate in non-Japanese languages to interact with foreigners
    in Japan.
----------------------------

This may look innocuous enough but there has been heated discussion
on this in fj.news.group and elsewhere in Japanese (sorry, I can't
tell you what they are talking about as I don't understand Japanese).

IMHO the main events are 1) that it will be in 'whatever language'
(many people here whose main language is Japanese are dismayed by
this) and 2) the topics are to be related to living in Japan (not
politics, history, etc.). 

I don't think there is any desire to exclude people outside of Japan
as some of the people that are taking part in the current discussion
are non-Japanese nationals in other countries, and Japanese
nationals who are no longer living in Japan. 

The problem with putting such kinds of multi-language discussions in
soc.xxxx is that many people outside of Japan are dismayed when they
see Japanese on machines which don't have any kanji-capable
hardware/software (thus I haved edited out all the Japanese in the
above quote from Kuno). And people here would rather not post in
Japanese as they say they have been flamed for doing so in the past.

Dave

--
Dave McLane 
JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan