Monthly Archives: July 2010

Fansub FAIL

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I’m cursed for some reason. Whenever I try to watch the movie Paprika, I’m always interrupted. I’ve made it halfway through several times, but inevitably something comes up and I’m forced to pause it, promising to finish at a later time. Last night I only made it 15 minutes in before I realized I would have to bail. That was still enough time to see this fansub failure:

Sure, it’s an accurate translation from a certain point of view – it is what comes out of her mouth (the line in Japanese is 「イッツ・ザ・グレーティスト・ショータイム！」) – but clearly the film is referring to the Ringling Brothers’ famous slogan “The Greatest Show on Earth,” so I think a better translation (that takes into account the philosphy underlying my inequality posts) would be “Time for the Greatest Show on Earth!” Or, if you don’t want to trample on the Ringling Brothers’ intellectual property, “Time for an amazing show!” “It’s the greatest show time” is a failure of English.

I must finish watching this movie soon. I’ve vowed to finish watching it before I see Inception so that I can figure out if it inspired any of the movie. And I should probably see Inception before school starts. So in the next week or two.

Cool Input – Nippon Archives Man’yōshū Podcast

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I was hunting for Japanese podcasts recently and came across the Nippon Archives Man’yōshū podcast. I was surprised when I clicked on it – not only is it sponsored by JR (If you don’t love the JR, I’m convinced you are a miserable, unhappy person), it’s a video podcast that introduces poems from the Man’yōshū. You can watch the podcast, which gets released the second and fourth Wednesday of each month, then read the explanation of the poem on the website. There is a direct transcription of the explanation (an excellent way to check listening comprehension), and you can also click 原典付き詳細解説 to see the modern reading (現代語訳) of the poem and the old school original text (校訂原典) with kanji only. Pretty awesome.

On top of all that you get amazing video of the Japanese countryside with sad Japanese music played over the top. What more could you ask for? Nippon Archives has a few other podcasts worth checking out – a Kyoto-themed podcast about the “24 solar terms,” a Nara-themed podcast about “beautiful Japan,” and a Shizuoka-themed podcast about Mt. Fuji.

I took the image above from Scroll 1, Poem 28 a nice and easy summer-themed poem that many of you should be able to understand.

号外 – Lagunitas Hop Stoopid Ale

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Style: American Double/Imperial IPA
ABV: 8%
Grade: A-

The final beer from my Japanese beer trade with Drew over at 365 Beers! Thanks for humoring me this far – this is it for foreign beer reviews.

Poured the entire contents of this bomber into my usuhari über-pint glass. The aroma is a bit of hops but mostly malt at this point – I think the month the beers spent sitting in my fridge muted the aroma profiles of a lot of the beers Drew sent me. The bittering hops are all still there, a really nice balance with the malty body. This one reminds me a lot of the Alpha King, but with a stronger hop bite. It disguises the alcohol well, so the 8% goes down relatively smooth. Unfortunately this beer is not available in New Orleans, so this is it for a while. I saw it for sale at a supermarket in Kansas City for $3.99 – fantastic value.

I’m not sure what I did to get this photo to look so cool. The bottle and the pint glass both look like they are leaning in diagonally. Maybe getting so close up fish-eyed the shot a bit.

Check out Drew’s reviews of Japanese beers:

Yona Yona Ao-oni IPA
Takashi Imperial Stout
Sapporo Royce Chocolat Brewery
Fujizakura St Valentine’s Chocolate Wheat
Baird Beer Dark Sky Imperial Stout

号外 – Great Lakes Brewing Co. Blackout Stout

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Style: Russian Imperial Stout
ABV: 9%
Grade: B+

Second to last beer. I knew that Drew is a huge fan of Imperial Stouts, so I was looking forward to this beer. Also, Great Lakes Brewing is based in Cleveland, Ohio, so I’m sure a lot of residents are swilling this at the moment to distract themselves from their NBA free agency woes.

Pours thick with a big creamy head – in my Yebisu taster it looks like Yebisu black, but it’s much, much thicker. All roast, chocolate and alcohol in the nose. No sign of hops at all. No hops readily apparent in the taste either. There’s a slight alcohol burn at the beginning, then the roastiness and finally a bit of sweetness at the end. Perhaps I’m mistaking a trace of hops for sweetness. Great example of the style – a beer that should be taken slowly, preferably in cold weather. Fortunately the air conditioning in New Orleans make it feel like an eternal autumn.

Check out Drew’s reviews of Japanese beers:

Yona Yona Ao-oni IPA
Takashi Imperial Stout
Sapporo Royce Chocolat Brewery
Fujizakura St Valentine’s Chocolate Wheat
Baird Beer Dark Sky Imperial Stout

Updates 2010/07/08

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A couple of updates to old posts. If I added them to the actual posts at this point, no one would notice, so I thought I’d make a separate post.

“Project Management Lingo – 改行”

In the comments Arline reminded me of one of the commands that can be used to count characters in Microsoft Excel and Open Office. “=len(target cell)” will count all of the characters in the target cell. Note that this is all the characters regardless of line breaks. If you’re working with material that has line breaks within cells, then the easiest way might be to open up a separate file, do the translation line by line counting the characters with =len, and then pasting the final result back into the cells of the original file.

“Underrated Phrase – そうですね”

Check out the final Collabo-Ramen video! Did you notice the way that Komuro-san was answering my questions? For each of the two questions I included in the video, she begins her response with そうですね. Note the tone that she uses – this is exactly what I was referring to in the Japan Times article. Using this そうですね when responding to questions will make your Japanese sound much more natural.

“Who will feed the Haruki Murakami fans online?”

Since I wrote this post about Murakami’s/Murakami’s publisher’s Internetal ineptitude, I noticed that my Facebook profile was devoid of Murakami. That’s strange, I thought, I could’ve sworn I had him as one of the two authors I like under the “Books” section of my profile. (The other being Barbara Tuchman. “The Zimmerman Telegram” was a weird combination of all my interests/ethnicities – intrigue between U.S., Mexico, Japan and Germany. My father’s family is Mexican-American, and my father’s mother’s family were Germans who immigrated to Mexico.) I searched for Murakami on Facebook, and sure enough, the unofficial page had been deleted. There is now an official page run by Knopf, AND it’s being updated frequently. This has all happened in the past week and a half, however, so we’ll have to wait and see if it gets properly maintained or ignored like the Random House site.

号外 – Tröegs Nugget Nectar

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Style: Imperial Amber
ABV: 7.5%
Grade: A

Although the bottle claims this as an Imperial Amber, the color is nice and coppery, even slightly lighter than the Three Floyds Alpha King Pale Ale. Nice combination of hops and malt in the nose, and this is matched equally well in the taste. I like the fact that this “Imperial” beer is 7.5% alcohol – very restrained, and it shows in the overall balance. The caramel malt remind me of the Arrogant Bastard, but that has slightly higher caramel. (There are different grades of caramel – I believe 20, 40, 60 and 80. They are increasingly roasted and produce a darker, more robust caramel flavor the higher you get. I discovered this by adding too much caramel 60 to a batch I made once.) The hop profile is also restrained – nice and piney, but not over the top (“treacly,” as my friend Paul would say) like some beers (ahem, Green Flash West Coast IPA). Not sure if I’ll be able to find this again, but I could see myself being in the mood for this every now and then.

While I’m thinking about it, why not make official categories for Imperial beers? Put session beers in the 0.00% to 3.5% range, beer in the 4.0% to 5.5% range, Imperials in the 6.0% to 8.0% range and then create a double Imperial category for anything 9% or higher. There’s got to be a way to wrangle this overexuberance for ABV. When I am king, so shall it be.

Check out Drew’s reviews of Japanese beers:

Yona Yona Ao-oni IPA
Takashi Imperial Stout
Sapporo Royce Chocolat Brewery
Fujizakura St Valentine’s Chocolate Wheat
Baird Beer Dark Sky Imperial Stout