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The Annual Japan Festival Saturday 28th of January at Háskólatorg

The Japan Festival will be held on Saturday 28^th of January at Háskólatorg, University of Iceland. The event is jointly organized by the Embassy of Japan and the Japanese Language and Culture Course of the School of Humanities at the University of Iceland.

This year marks the eighth time the Japan Festival has been celebrated since its start in 2005. One of the distinctive features of this festival is that many of the exhibitions are “hand-made” by the students, who have been planning, preparing, and working day and night.

The enthusiastic 60 students at the Japanese Language and Culture Course have put all their effort together and will present various themes of Japanese culture in a unique and creative way. The Japanese community in Iceland will contribute to the festival with a tea ceremony and Ikebana flower arrangement.

Guests are invited to experience Japan through various activities and presentations. They can sample the flavors of Japan at the food booth, learn to write their names in Japanese letters at the calligraphy booth, and become acquainted with the Japanese language at the language booth. Guests are also invited to attend a tea ceremony where they will taste traditional Japanese tea and to play Igo at the Japanese board game area.

The festival features a karaoke room, where guests can test their singing skill, along with rooms for Japanese popular music J-pop, trailers of Japanese films and TV-programmes, Japanese computer games, and Anime and Manga, where the guests can experience Japanese pop culture. A Japanese Quiz Show will take place onstage where the guests can test their knowledge of Japan. Life music will be performed both authentic  and Japanese pop music. This year there will additionally be a short play in the style of traditional Japanese theatre, noh. Finally, there will be a demonstration onstage of Budo (Japanese martial arts).

General information about the Japanese studies course and the various scholarships and exchange programs to Japanese Universities will be available during the festival, as well as information on the Iceland-Japan Society and the Japan Alumni Association of Iceland.

Admission to the Festival is free and open to the general public. The Festival will begin at 13:00 and will be open until 17:00. For more information, please visit http://www.japanfest.net/2012/ .

Design Competition for the Vigdis Finnbogadottir Institute of Foreign Languages

On behalf of the University of Iceland, The State Trading Centre in Iceland, has extended an open invitation to a design competition for the Vigdis Finnbogadottir Institute of Foreign Languages.
The building will be approximately 4 000 m² and the future home of the Vigdis Finnbogadottir Institute of Foreign Languages and will be located to the west of Sudurgata in Reykjavik. The competition will be organized in partnership with the Association of Icelandic Architects.

Time-limit for receipt of projects is 22.3.2012 - before 16:00. Further information, specifications and additional documents can be obtained from the contracting authority: www.rikiskaup.is 

Call for papers for the third volume of the VFI Yearbook.

The theme of this volume is “foreign literature” – but some papers on other subjects will also be accepted. We also encourage people to send in reviews on new books.

As before both peer-reviewed “scholarly” (double blind review) papers and “practical” (not peer-reviewed) papers will be published.

Anyone is free to compose in his/her native language or the language in which he/she instructs.

The total size of this volume is expected not to be more then 200–250 pages. The length of academic papers should be approx. 5000–9000 words. Along with each paper an abstract in English and Icelandic, of 100–200 words, shall also be submitted.

The deadline for submitting a paper is now 1st of August, 2011.

Guidelines for paper layout and format will be announced soon.

All questions, ideas, suggestions and reflections should be directed to Erla Erlendsdóttir (erlaerl@hi.is).

Attention: A provision for the publishing of this second volume is enough financial resources.