Montag, 16. Mai 2011

First thoughts on the group project


The aim of this group project is still quite undefined. All three members are going up North to stay for 9 days helping in the relief effort of a town in Iwate Prefecture.
Obviously our research method is going to be primarly “participant observation”, and as such we have no idea of what we are going to find or how we are going to relate it to the class. But this first hand experience will provide substantial information to work with.
One of our objectives, if possible, is to get media footage (in the form of videos and pictures) and even try to interview some of the people working there for the NGO. However, this remains uncertain since we do not know if we will be allowed or actually have the means to do it while we are working with the relief effort.
So, to sum things up, the members of this group are going to help as volunteers in the relief effort in Iwate, and we will take it from there.

Samstag, 14. Mai 2011

Some useful links some related to our group project

JAR's homepage:
http://www.refugee.or.jp/en/

Generell information and videos about the situation in Japan from NHK World (in English):
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/

A short introduction from wiki about NGOs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization

Wiki also explains about refugees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for more generell information:
http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/incidents/index.html

And even more up-to-date METI (Ministry of Economic, Trade and Industry)
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/index.html

This page shows the damage in Rikuzen Takada (the city we are assigned for):
http://www.360cities.net/image/damage-in-rikuzen-takada-iwate-pref-11-japan?utm_campaign=clickback&utm_medium=embedded_hotspot#339.80,13.20,70.0

Official homepage of Rikuzen Takada (just Japanese):
http://www.city.rikuzentakata.iwate.jp/

And one more wiki link for general information about Rikuzen Takada:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikuzentakata,_Iwate

A German perspective on the disaster (Tagesschau, tv news) unfortunately just in German:
http://www.tageschau.de/ausland/fukushima496.html
http://atlas.tagesschau.de/index.php?mode=news&country=japan