h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd prefer to see a paragraph or two on the history. You can put the link to that other entry at the appropriate place within that paragraph, rather than just on the word "years" in the first sentence of this entry. That would be more obvious to the reader.

what about the language and religion?

I missed your mentions of religion. These are probably enough.

On language, most of your section headed "language" is actually about the writing, so it would certainly be a good idea to say a bit more:

"Although basic Japanese is simple, lacking such complications as distinctions between singular and plural, it has a complicated system of 'honorifics', where words change depending on the relative status in society of the speaker and the listener. This is difficult for westerners to grasp."

You could put this in before the paragraph on the different dialects.

Where you have "(or any other language, for that matter)", change it to "(or almost any other language, for that matter)", because I've discovered there is one other language (Ryukyu) which is related to Japanese.

Updated

History, Language and Religion now sorted.

can it be sent to peer review yet?

Hi Opti. You've done great work on this and it is nearly ready for Peer Review. A few points:

I'm not very impressed with the history section (sorry). It is a list of dates and Japanese names, but it doesn't really tell me very much. I'd prefer to see the most important points only: when did people arrive, was the country always ruled by an emperor, did Japan stay to itself, try to conquer other countries, repel invaders from China, etc. I think you'd be better leaving the history out altogether than to provide it in the form it is in at the moment.

I think you should mention that Geisha are women.

The English still needs to be tidied up a bit. Two things that jumped out at me:

1.

"When Japanese children aren't playing computer games or sport. They may be seen taking part" -- this should be one sentence:

This is one of the ones I was telling you about. If you read the first sentence on its own:

"When Japanese children aren't playing computer games or sport."

you'll see that it doesn't make sense. It should be:

"When Japanese children aren't playing computer games or sport, they may be seen taking part"

2.

Here's another one:


"As are graphic novels (manga) and animated films (anime)."

That doesn't make sense on its own. Combine it with the previous sentence:

"are popular too, as are graphic novels"

There are other problems with the English but I haven't got time to give it a detailed read through at the moment. There aren't a lot of them, so I wouldn't mind sorting them out in Peer Review.

The current Japanese Prime Minister is quite a character. He's a massive Elvis fan and has recorded a CD of Elvis songs. I mentioned him in A11814888 Elvis Impersonators
and he's on the main BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5132376.stm
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5038686.stm

<>

That's taken from my entry and you can use it as is, if you want Opti

A12590462 updated except history section