The Japanese Test of Communication (JTOC) - pronounced "Jay-talk" is a 200-question Japanese language proficiency exam.                              

Introduction: Press Play

Sample Question

Cuba Gooding, Jr. Academy Award Winning Actor Expands his Creative Boundaries

With his mother being a singer with the Sweethearts and his father the lead vocalist of The Main Ingredient, Cuba Gooding, Jr. was introduced to the world of entertainment from a young age. Tokyo Journal Executive Editor Anthony Al-Jamie talked to the film star, who won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for “Jerry Maguire,” about his roles in historical civil rights films as well as his aspirations to become a screenplay writer and director.

TJ: What are you doing in New York?
GOODING: I flew in for a couple of reasons, one of which was to meet with my agents and present them with my new screenplay. I’ve been writing scripts for the past year and I’m on my next one, which I’m really excited about.

TJ: Can you tell us about that?
GOODING: Well, I think I got into writing scripts because the last eight or nine years of my career I’ve been doing a lot of independent films. A lot of the financing has been contingent on my involvement, so I wound up in a producer capacity developing these scripts - actually choosing first-time directors, working on shot lists with directors, and seeing them through the process, including the editing room and post production by putting the final product together, looking for distribution and starting relationships with distributors and financiers. I think I found that the most important part of filmmaking is the director and I think that’s now my goal - being an actor/director. I think the easiest way for me to show my capability as a director is to bring the material, so it got me to thinking…working on scripts and finally turning out a screenplay. I went to Broadway for a production of “A Trip to Bountiful” with Cicely Tyson last year for seven months. I grew so much as an actor, as a filmmaker, as an artist period. When I was in that creative headspace, it made me want to continue to create even past what I was working on then, and that was when I wrote my first screenplay. So this is just a natural progression of things. I got another idea and wrote it down and now I’m working on that second one. Eventually, I will present this to buyers and see if there is any real interest in turning it into a screenplay. But right now I’m just allowing my creative juices to dictate what I do.

Fashion Design by Junko Koshino

Tokyo's Fashion Queen and Tony Award-nominee Junko Koshino, renowned for her cutting edge clothes, costume and uniform designs, shares the latest in Tokyo's fashion scene.

IT was five years ago that I saw the Ryukyu Kaiensai Fireworks Festival, which celebrated its 11th anniversary in 2014. I was visiting Okinawa and heard that there was a fireworks festival at Gino Bay, Futenma. That was the beginning.

At the time, I wondered, “How wonderful would it be if fireworks came together opera?”

Los Angeles Cosplay Contest at Nagoya Day

Join the contest or just come cheer and experience Nagoya

No entrance or contest fee

Cosplay Contest
Sunday, August 10th
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
The Grove in Los Angeles
189 The Grove Dr., Los Angeles CA 90036
At the main park between the fountain and Nordstrom

1st Prize includes a Round trip airline ticket
Los Angeles - Tokyo on All Nippon Airways (ANA)!

Emcee:
- Ivan Van Norman (Season One Contestant from TBS's King of the Nerds)

Judges:
- Paola Alejandra
(Cosplay / Video Game Journalist)
- Kristine "Space Invader" Carr
(Designer/Professional Seamstress)
- KC Mussman
(Makeup & Special Effects Artist)

REGISTER to take part in the COSPLAY CONTEST

Free registration by email: [email protected]
Limited on-site registration available
No entrance or contest fee

> Click here to see L.A. Cosplay Contest Rules

Nagoya Day Activities

Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Celebrate 55 years of sister city relations between Los Angeles and Nagoya, Japan

• - Cosplay Contest with exciting prizes
• - Sushi demonstration
• - Samurai Warriors
• - Japanese cultural crafts
• - Japanese dance
• - Special guest judges
• - Special guest appearances

Cosplay Contest produced for LANSCA by:

Tokyo Journal / Authentasia

Presented by:
City of Nagoya
Los Angeles Nagoya Sister City Affiliation (LANSCA)

FOLLOWING the record-breaking bouts of snow that hit Tokyo and the east coast of North America in 2014, we await cherry blossom season anxiously. Soon, Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park will be full of revelers basking in the glory of its many cherry blossom trees. Yoyogi Park is of course the location of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Village and the iconic Yoyogi National Gymnasium.

Kyung-sook Shin

Interview with the Award-Winning Author

Kyung-sook Shin is a celebrated author in her native South Korea. She made her literary debut in 1985, winning the Munye Joongang New Author Prize for her novella Winter Fables. She recently came to international attention as a result of her latest book, “Please Look After Mom,” being translated into many languages and set for distribution in 33 countries. The book is about a mother who disappears and the family’s desperate search to find her. It won the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize for 2011, the Asian equivalent of the Man Booker Prize. Both the first Korean and the first woman to win the prize, she beat celebrated Asian authors such as Haruki Murakami and Anuradha Roy. TJ’s Hong Kong correspondent David Nunan caught up with Ms. Shin at the recent Hong Kong International Literary Festival where she was a featured speaker.

After the Inferno

by Donald Richie

In this installment of a series, Donald Richie recalls a poignant post-war moment with Nobel Prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata

It was 1947 and the Sumida River, silver in the winter sun, glistened beneath us. Yasunari Kawabata and I were on the roof of the Asakusa subway terminal tower, looking out over downtown Tokyo, still in ruins, still showing the conflagration of two years earlier, the burned concrete black against the lemon yellow of new wood.

Donald Richie’s Reflections on Novelist, Yasunari Kawabata

by Peter Grilli

Whenever I think of Donald Richie’s early life in Tokyo, somehow the very first image that always springs to mind is of his rooftop conversation with Yasunari Kawabata.

It was a chilly morning in the early spring of 1947. Richie, the tall 23-year-old American GI journalist, dwarfed the frail Japanese novelist, who was older and far wiser, at more than twice his age. They stood high above Asakusa, gazing out over the ruins of a city that the older of the two knew intimately and the younger was just beginning to love.