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    Chronomobility of international students under COVID-19 Australia
    Dhanji, SD ; Ohashi, J ; Song, J (FRONTIERS MEDIA SA, 2023-12-08)
    This article investigates the chronomobility of international students in Australia going through COVID-19. Existing literature on international students approaches them largely in two manners: a market or victims. Using Shanti Robertson's chronomobility, the study focuses on international students' coping mechanisms and strategies for their next moves. Drawing from 15 in-depth interviews with international students formally enrolled in Australian institutions in Melbourne, the longest lockdown city during the pandemic, the authors find various ways of short-term coping mechanisms through meditation, physical exercises, virtual escapism and counselling. Furthermore, despite pandemic immobility, students presented a high level of resilience in making future decisions for post-pandemic mobilities. We conclude that family support and social networks are key to realise full potentials of international students as skilled migrants and valued members of society. Our manuscript contributes to the field of migration and mobility by enriching Robertson's concept of chrono-mobility and adding the empirical case study from international students in Australia during the latest pandemic in 2020-2021.
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    What motivates Japanese language learners in Australia and beyond?
    Ohashi, H ; Ohashi, J (Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2023)
    Language is an interactive, social, and relational tool that is constantly evolving; reflecting the history, values, and socio-cultural context of the place in which it is spoken. Thus, each individual language provides learners with opportunities to interact with other users of the language and to access different perspectives. We question the common promotional discourses of ‘employability’ and ‘international trade’ used to characterise the value given to Asian languages by policymakers and universities in Australia. We argue that such discourses do not reflect learners’ motivations, ultimately undermining the potential educational values of language learning.
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    Why did Australia lose international students to Canada?: Trends in Chinese students explained by numbers and their real voices
    Ohashi, J (Society for Oceanian Education Studies, 2022-11-01)
    This paper attends to the voices of individual students, not the numerical "Chinese students" spoken of in statistics and other media, i.e., not the main source of income for the Australian higher education export industry, but as voices of students as individuals with their own personalities. While there are many studies and reports that quantify the impact of the pandemic on Australia's education export industry, few focus on the voices of actual international students. This paper presents the actual voices of Chinese international students, including what they have experienced, the choices they have had to make, and the emotions they have felt as a result of the pandemic. While the number of international students in countries such as Canada and the UK has been on the rise since late 2020, the number of students coming to Australia remains stagnant. The paper explores the reasons for this through the voices of Chinese students, which reveal a fundamental problem that Australia needs to face. It revisits what international students mean to Australia and re-examines the role of higher education institutions.
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    Dire straits: Chinese students in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic
    Ohashi, J (Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2022)
    This article examines the experiences of Chinese students after Australia closed its national border on March 20, 2020 in an attempt to stop COVID-19 entering.
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    Natural Conversation Reconstruction Tasks: The Language Classroom as a Meeting Place
    Ohashi, J (University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), 2009)
    This paper, drawing on Pratt’s notion of ‘transculturation’ and Bhabha’s ‘third space’, presents an example of language learning tasks that empower learners’ agency and promote their cross-cultural awareness and sensitivities to a different set of cultural expectations, using a naturally occurred Japanese thanking episodes. The paper discusses the merits of Natural Conversation Reconstruction Tasks (NCRTs) as a practical method for helping L2 learners develop this ‘intercultural competence’. It is based on a qualitative study of the results of one NCRT created for use in the context of teaching Japanese as a L2 in a multicultural society. It suggests the NCRT encourages the learners to explore the intersection where language use, speaker intention and L1 and L2 cultural norms meet. Such a process helps the learners become aware of socially expected patterns of communication in L1 and L2 in terms of the choices of speech act, formulaic expressions, sequential organization and politeness orientation. The learners’ comments suggest that the NCRT helps learners transcend their cultural boundaries by overcoming their narrow understanding of ‘thanking’ as ‘expressions of gratitude and appreciation’ and by cross-culturally widening their views of what counts as thanking. The NCRT with rich contextual information promotes the learners’ intercultural awareness, sensitivity to context and intercultural exploration in the space between L1 and L2, where they have authority and freedom of making sense of conversations, and pragmatics is fully integrated into language pedagogy.
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    Learning Asian languages is about much more than trade and employability and universities should convey this
    Ohashi, J ; Ohashi, H (Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2021-08-16)
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    ACE1 polymorphism and progression of SARS.
    Itoyama, S ; Keicho, N ; Quy, T ; Phi, NC ; Long, HT ; Ha, LD ; Ban, VV ; Ohashi, J ; Hijikata, M ; Matsushita, I ; Kawana, A ; Yanai, H ; Kirikae, T ; Kuratsuji, T ; Sasazuki, T (Elsevier BV, 2004-10-22)
    We have hypothesized that genetic predisposition influences the progression of SARS. Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE1) insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism was previously reported to show association with the adult respiratory distress syndrome, which is also thought to play a key role in damaging the lung tissues in SARS cases. This time, the polymorphism was genotyped in 44 Vietnamese SARS cases, with 103 healthy controls who had had a contact with the SARS patients and 50 controls without any contact history. SARS cases were divided into either non-hypoxemic or hypoxemic groups. Despite the small sample size, the frequency of the D allele was significantly higher in the hypoxemic group than in the non-hypoxemic group (p=0.013), whereas there was no significant difference between the SARS cases and controls, irrespective of a contact history. ACE1 might be one of the candidate genes that influence the progression of pneumonia in SARS.
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    Polymorphisms of human leucocyte antigen genes in Maonan people in China.
    Ogata, S ; Shi, L ; Matsushita, M ; Yu, L ; Huang, XQ ; Shi, L ; Sun, H ; Ohashi, J ; Muramatsu, M ; Tokunaga, K ; Chu, JY (Wiley, 2007-02)
    We examined human leucocyte antigen (HLA) gene polymorphisms in the Maonan people from southern China. HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 alleles were determined in 108 healthy unrelated Maonan individuals by the polymerase chain reaction-Luminex method, and haplotype frequencies for HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 loci were estimated. The most frequent HLA-A alleles were A*1101 (35.2%), A*0203 (17.6%), A*0207 (13.4%) and A*2402 (13.4%); HLA-B alleles were B*1301(19.9%), B*1502 (14.8%), B*4601 (13.4%) and B*4001 (13.4%); HLA-DRB1 alleles were DRB1*1202 (17.1%), DRB1*1602 (13.0%) and DRB1*1401 (10.7%). The most common haplotypes were A*0207-B*4601 (10.6%), A*1101-B*1301 (10.0%), A*1101-B*4001 (8.4%), B*1502-DRB1*1202 (12.0%), B*4601-DRB1*1401 (5.8%), A*1101-B*1502-DRB1*1202 (7.1%) and A*0207-B*4601-DRB1*1401 (5.3%), profiles that are also found in populations from the southern region of East Asia. Phylogenetic and principal component analyses revealed that the Maonan people belong to the southeastern Asian group and are most closely related to the Buyi people.