Professor Meguro specializes in Japanese language pedagogy and Japanese Applied Linguistics. Her research interest is Interlanguage pragmatics, specially on Japanese refusal. She is interested in applying cutting edge technology into Japanese language education. In her courses, she incorporates language exchange using Skype and mixi and have students communicate native speaker of Japanese on regular basis. She is also the coordinator for the study abroad programs in Japan. Prof. Meguro’s multimedia Japanese learning website: http://www.welovejapanese.com

Professor Bates is a specialist in modern Japanese literature and film. His current research is on representations of a 1923 earthquake that destroyed Tokyo, but he is also interested in modernist fiction from that era as well.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Professor Bender has been doing fieldwork with taiko drumming groups in Japan since the late 1990s. This scholarship is the basis of his latest book entitled Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion (2012, UC Press). He has also examined the introduction of traditional musical instruments into public school music classes in Japan. Most recently, he has begun exploring the connections among discourses of demographic crisis, changes in elder care, and the development of robotics in Japan and Europe. Prof. Bender teaches courses on contemporary Japanese society, aging and demography, music, and popular culture.