And Sometimes Why

Author: David

  • Milestone 0.004 & JLPT 4

    I recently read a sentence in Japanese and fully understood every word.

    It was no big deal, just a piece of labeling on a pamphlet accompanying some classy souvenir sweets, but I realized after reading it that it was the first sentence in Japanese (standard kanji and hiragana mix not simplified or intended for learners) that I’d read and understood. It was one of those slow motion realizations that only hits you a minute or two afterward. I was particularly proud of myself because I just learned most of the kanji in the last few weeks running up to the JLPT.

    I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m sitting for a national Japanese test this Sunday. It’s called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT for short), and it’s the national certification method used to gauge one’s Japanese ability. There are four levels (4-kyu through 1-kyu), and I’m taking the lowest one, level four.

    I had my last Japanese lesson before the exam this morning, and it went reasonably well. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been taking practice exams in my lessons, and steadily improving my scores. I think I’ll pass the test with a decent margin.

    In other news, I came to the realization that unless I blog more often than I do interesting things, I’ll never catch up. It’s in that vein that I’m making this post right now. I have a huge backlog of pictures and potentially interesting things to describe, but they’ll have to wait until at least next week.

    Hey, just be glad I posted this. 😉

  • Kristin’s tattoo

    When I was working for Silver State Helicopters, there was a young woman working as the administrative assistant for the IT department named Kristin. Kristin had (and presumably still has) a tattoo on the back of her neck of two kanji. She requested the kanji because the shop told her they meant “angel.”

    Many Americans seem to be fascinated with the idea of getting something ancient tattooed on themselves, adding history and significance by association with indelibly-marked symbols and ideas. Many people get tribal tattoos from tribes they’ve never met (or that never existed), military symbols from armies of which they’ve never been a part, and writing in languages they don’t speak.

    The problem with this of course, is that if you’re not actually in the group with which you’re associating yourself, you can’t really be sure of all the baggage that comes with the symbology- or worse, that the symbols you’ve chosen to mark your skin for life mean something wholly different than what your tattoo artist told you they mean.

    Kristin thought she was getting a tattoo of the Japanese kanji for “angel,” and I’m happy to report that she basically got what she paid for. I asked my school’s office manager to look at the photo Kristin kindly let me take of her tattoo, and she said that while the kanji certainly says “angel,” it doesn’t look Japanese, but likely a script form of older Chinese kanji. The modern Japanese print form is on the left.

    If you’re interested, the first symbol is 天, often pronounced “ten,” and is the symbol for “heaven” and “sky.” It’s also the first part of the word “tempura.” The second symbol is 使, with many different readings, most of which are a derivation of “messenger” or “envoy.” Thus 天使 means “heaven’s messenger,” or “angel.”

  • The Cake is a Lie


    Still Alive (Japanese Version)
    Download free mp3 | Download free music

    I just finished playing through Portal. (If you’ve played it, you probably figured that out from the title of the post.) It’s a fun game, and certainly deserving of most of the hype it’s received. A friend of mine recently said that it was nice to see a good 3D engine used for something other than a First Person Shooter, and I agree.

    It’s a great puzzle game that consistently reminded me of Zelda (Ocarina of Time, specifically). It has a good learning curve right up until the last two levels, each of whose difficulty easily dwarfs all previous levels combined.

    Like many good puzzle games, it’s strangely addictive. I get simulator sickness from playing most 3D games, and Portal was no exception. I have a headache and an upset stomach as I write this, in fact. It was a mild effect though, unlike some other games I’ve played. Anyway, my point is that the game was good enough to play through the slight dizziness.

    If you’re at all interested in Portal, go play it.

  • Engrish threads

    Since there’s no way I’m going to let a whole month go by without a blog post, I thought I’d toss up a quick post about clothes here in Japan. Specifically, clothes that have Engrish on them. There seems to be no market for clothing with correctly written English, as it’s used almost exclusively as a design element rather than a method of conveying meaning. That, combined with the facts that English is “cool” and that the vast majority of Japanese people can only derive a rude meaning from a string of English words, means that there are a lot of Japanese people showing off their “English” (and very often pseudo-American) clothes without knowing what abuses of the English language are actually written on them.

    When I see English in Japan, I’m genuinely surprised if it isn’t rife with errors. I couldn’t possibly hope to document it all, but when I have my camera, I try to capture the gems. The first few pictures you see are pictures of my students I took in my classroom. You can’t really read all of them in the scaled down versions, so I typed out the contents. I tried to help as much as I could through punctuation, though it didn’t often help.

    LEFT: Surf riding goodstream, Professing skilled profession
    RIGHT: Stinson Beach, California: The Wave is Forever
    From left to right:
    Individual For Pleasure Only
    Guaranteed to fit better D.O.Daddy 65
    Twist frontside [Remainder illegible due to shirt fold]
    It takes a little more to make a Champion. Champion authentic athletic apparel
    STAYING, you are on the verge of salvation! You are on the verge of salvation! When it is made to revive vividly, ground at a sense beyond the word stands up and appears that shaft line the world.
    LEFT: [New York Yankees logo on polo shirt breast]
    RIGHT: SAMURAI Japan
    Impregnerade SAMURAI säkerhets-tandstickor safety matches
    LEFT: Wask 22
    RIGHT: Pour les enfants hushush Avoir le coeur leger

    Included just because they’re goofballs. 🙂
    Long and [obscured] condition (?) PARADISE for the sake of attaining SUNSET BEACH, surfing least much comes
    The Eastboy go in the future begin to walk. The words that give me hope. A friend in need is a friend indeed. When I was troubled, I encourage it. As for you, how many “friends” are there?
    Engrish isn’t limited to clothing, as this bag proves. I love the American Nutrition Facts label.
    IT’S NEW, Honey sweet. Would you like a NATIONAL BISCUIT? You will be crazy about Rich Flavor! Special Value
    Burger Special
    GLUTTONS Special mega burger
    From left:
    [top illegible] 1970 GRATEFUL ROSES: It’a [sic] Beautiful In Black
    Pia angel 08
    [upper French obscured] esprit de paris 1998, TRÈS BON!!
    GRATEFUL ROSES: It’a [sic] Beautiful In Black
    I certainly can’t fault my students for wearing clothes with broken English. Here’s what they have to choose from when they go shopping:
    CRESCENT- Full of energy, Galaxy Grobal [sic] Universe, Starry night, Catch your dream
    Cleared up, it is fine today. THE SKY CLEARED UP BEAUTIFULLY. The tree leaves glistened after the rain.
    Lustrous Cherry lips from you
    WIND PURSUE lack of ability
    Excellent Clear Sight, Magnificent Scenes
    I MADE A PROMISE WITH HER ON THURSDAY
    Artlessness & Fleckle
    Delight smile and friendly competing with each other
    Let me take a moment to give you an example of the “height” of fashion in Matsuyama. Note the “man bag” clipped to a belt loop, embroidered jeans (with bonus sewn-up hole) tucked into cowboy boots, and poofy, bleached “Lion King” hairdo.
    Rock the World with you [the text is from a song of this name]
    We gotta know we’re on the run
    I just grab your stuff, and in a minute we’ll be gone
    We’re gonna pull away like strangers,
    but soon the world will know
    How far this kinda love could ever go
    Remember what I say
    Baby don’t matter what they do

    There’s always more Engrish to be had, so I’m sure I’ll post plenty of it in the future. I need to get some sleep though, so I’m going to pull away like a stranger. 😉

  • Matsuyama Fall Mikoshi Festival

    Do you know how a sumo match works? Basically, the loser is the first one thrown out of the ring or the first one to touch the ground inside the circle with anything other than the soles of his feet. Now imagine for a moment that you’re watching a sumo match; except instead of a pair of 350 lb men, the competitors are 350 lb shrines carried on the shoulders of forty men. Now imagine that there are men standing on top of these shrines taunting the other team as they crash into each other at a full run. Does what you’re imagining look about like this?

    This is a picture I took yesterday at the Matsuyama Mikoshi festival, just before impact. A mikoshi is a portable shrine, a spiritual vessel used to carry around the patron god of a normal Shinto shrine once a year when it’s paraded through the streets of the surrounding neighborhood to bring its inhabitants and businesses good luck.
    Speaking of good luck, the chosen route for my neighborhood’s shrine took it right past my apartment on Monday night. I took this picture and video leaning out the window by my stove.
    They’re louder than I expected, but I still have no idea what they’re saying.
    The men’s shrine was followed shortly by these two teams of cute (kawaii!) kids carrying their smaller versions.
     
    Surprisingly, they left the shrine in the empty lot next to my apartment overnight before the matches Tuesday morning. Here’s the team about to maneuver the shrine into the place.
     
    Here’s the team actually setting it down.
     
    And there it sat until morning.
     
    So I took some more pictures.
     
    Most of the actual matches took place early in the morning on Tuesday. The crowds were thick on every available viewing place.
     
    What does it actually look like in action, you ask? Here’s a video I took of an actual bout taking place. You can see the initial charge with the whole team pushing on the backs of the men in front of them, the initial impact when the shrines hit each other, the teams slowly turning while each team is trying to push the other backwards (100 men in a giant disorganized pirouette…), and the shrines and teams pulling apart when the match is over.
     
    The winners were happy enough to do some crowdsurfing from the top of their shrine.
     
    After the bouts were all over, there was a closing ceremony with all eight of the shrines that were in the day’s competition.
     
    There were also some food vendors set up to catch the foot traffic.
     
    I bought a frankfurter on a stick and fresh french fries from two of the stands. Then, feeling rather weighed down by the grease, I stopped by a Lawson’s convenience store (it’s so much easier to just say “conbini”) and grabbed an onigiri rice ball and a drinkable carton of active-cultured yogurt. Walking away from the site, I was surprised to see some of the contestants and other event participants leaving in the backs of open-bed trucks.
     
    Overall, a highly enjoyable and exciting festival.

  • Hi Ho, Silver!

    Horse Meat Sashimi Last night I ate at a new restaurant with some JET folk. Like most restaurants in Matsuyama, the menu was in Japanese. Some restaurants have pictures, and luckily, this one had many.

    One of the things I try to do when I eat out is try many different kinds of food. If I’m eating out and can’t decide between two dishes, 99% of the time I’ll choose the one I haven’t had before. In fact, it was just recently that I had to start relaxing that guideline, as I ran out of untried dishes in the restaurants in my neighborhood. I like takoyaki, I’ve eaten whale sushi, I eat raw eggs over my gyudon, and I do actually eat plenty of squid, despite my earlier experience with squid heads. I’ve even had natto recently that I didn’t mind at all. (For the record, the only thing I refuse to eat is shrimp in the shell. I don’t mean “peel and eat,” I mean “eat the shell with the shrimp”— unlike Ms. Semba, who sees it as another opportunity to get Calcium.) I’m an active and avid explorer of the culinary landscape of Japan. 🙂

    Anyway, we went to a yakitori restaurant in the Okaido shopping arcade I’ve mentioned a number of times. I couldn’t read much of the kanji on the menu, so I just ordered by picture. I wanted a sushi dish to go with my chicken skewers and gyoza, so I ordered what looked like a deep red fatty tuna.

    When it came, I was a little surprised at how much more it looked like beef than the picture. Not the squeamish one though, I plunged in after a brief moment to consider whether I trusted the restaurant’s preparation. I was interested to see what beef sushi tasted like.

    It tastes exactly like you think it does. You know when you open a plastic tray of (fresh) raw beef from the supermarket, and you can smell the beef? It tasted about like that. Not really all that appetizing, but not enough of a turn off to not finish the three pieces I got.

    After the meal, I was flipping through the menu to see how much I owed for my three small dishes; and relaxing after my meal, I realized I could read more of the kanji than I originally thought. Looking up at my beef sushi, I couldn’t find the character for “beef.” After a few puzzled seconds, I realized what it did have though, was the character for “horse.”

    Yes, I ate horse sushi. My stomach turned just a little bit at the realization.

    I’m happy to report that I’m feeling no ill effects of last night’s meal- not that I really anticipated any. Overall, I’d say it’s worth trying just to do; maybe order one dish between a couple friends so everyone gets just one piece, though. I was piling on the wasabi when I thought it was beef. I think I would have needed twice as much had I known it was horse.

  • First night partying amongst the natives

    Tonight was a fun night. It started at Katrina’s apartment (where I was quite late due to the fact that I get off work at 9pm and everyone else had been partying for three hours already), then went to a little dive bar with karaoke, then ended at a gaikokujin bar near Okaido.

    This may make very little sense to you, and that’s okay, because here are my takeaway lessons:

    1. Japanese bars have the coolest karaoke machines. The tiny place we went had a WiFi remote for their karaoke machine. The remote had a touchscreen that let you search by song name or artist name, and the microphones were also wireless.
    2. As much as I may like (or not like, depending on my mood) my apartment, Katrina’s is better. She has three (albeit smaller) rooms to my one larger one, with a full-size couch (it’s a pullout!) and a regular western-style bed.
    3. Japanese people really know how to cut loose. At Sala Sol (the gaikokujin bar near Okaido), I saw a number of Japanese businessmen that were totally plastered. It was a little surprising, because although I’d heard of the stereotype, I’d only seen Japanese people during the daytime with their professional faces on. I was introduced to a whole new part of town, with a multitude of watering holes and stumbling suits.
    4. I discovered that there really is a foreigner contingent in this town outside of the JET ALTs. In Sala Sol, I met a number of native English speakers who have nothing to do with JET (okay, two, but that’s independently surprising just the same).

    Anyway, it was a fun night (morning!). It was my first real night out on the town since coming to Japan, and I was so very glad to have it (even if it did involve fixing Katrina’s computer). 🙂

  • I’m an uncle!

    I’m an uncle! My sister gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. 🙂

    http://www.newbabynews.net/hospitals/stj5/public/stj5birthannouncement.pl?babyID=h5-11091

  • Never ever buy squid heads

    Okay, maybe this goes without saying, but seriously? Don’t buy stuffed squid heads thinking you’re going to find some neat new dish just because your Japanese manager recommended them.

    I don’t know where you’re from, but the Karaoke Box establishments in Las Vegas serve squid-flavored snacks. Some people can’t stand squid-flavored anything, but I think they’re edible after a few drinks. Anyway, Ms. Semba recommended I try these stuffed squid heads that are sold in vacuum packs in the supermarket near my office. They’re hollowed out squid heads with the eyes removed, filled with seasoned, precooked rice. You’re supposed to boil them for five minutes and eat them, presumably with a knife and fork, as they’re not tender enough to pull apart with chopsticks.

    I knew as soon as I broke the seal on the plastic package that I’d made a tactical error, as the familiar scent of squid invaded my nostrils. As I already had the water boiling, I figured I might as well go through with it and just try it- who knows, maybe they’ll turn out to be great, right?

    No.

    No. I psyched myself up and took one bite of said squid, and that was all I could take. The outer texture was slightly less chewy than octopus sushi, and the flavor of the rice inside reminded me a little of kasha, but not in a good way.

    No, and though I turned on the fan over the stove, my apartment is now saturated with the smell of boiled squid.

    No, and I had to put the squid head I didn’t touch and the one missing a bite in a ziploc bag so the smell doesn’t linger any more than it already will.

    No, no, no. Oh my god, no.

    Here’s an appetizing picture of said squid heads after I sealed them for disposal. Each one fits easily in the palm of your hand. Or in the garbage can, your choice.

    Let this be a lesson to you. Don’t buy squid heads.

  • My business card

    English added for your reading pleasure.

    My meishi (name card/business card) has more Japanese than English. How cool is that?
    Even better, I can read 90% of the kanji on it. =)