Author Archives: Daniel

Collabo-Ramen – ほん田

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Brian and I thought we’d covered Tokyo Ramen Street last year when we finished Collabo-Ramen videos for the first four shops, but then they went and expanded this past April, adding four more shops which we felt the need to cover for completion’s sake.

We finally made it to the last shop this past Friday – Honda has slight variations on traditional bowls of shoyu and shio along with shoyu and miso tsukemen. Brian and I had the tsukemen. Afterward we went over to Kanda to have beers at Devil Craft, one of the newest bars on the Tokyo craft beer scene. The store is somewhat small but not uncomfortable – we made a reservation for five and were able to fit six at one of the tables upstairs. They also have a nice beer selection that isn’t monopolized by high ABV beers:

Collabo-Ramen – 本田 Honda from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

I have to admit I was skeptical when Brian first suggested that we review the restaurants on Tokyo Ramen Street. I’d been reading his blog for a while and knew that he was the Ramen Adventurer: I wanted to trek out into shitamachi neighborhoods in search of Ganko-style secret ramen shops. But he had much more experience recommending ramen to readers of his blog, and he insisted that Tokyo Station is easily accessible for most tourists and that the stores on Tokyo Ramen Street have great bowls.

There’s definitely an extensive selection, and working with Brian has expanded my palette, which I think has enabled me to appreciate some of the bowls more. Definitely check out these stores if you have to be passing through Tokyo, especially Junk Garage, since that brings the Saitama-based mazemen into the heart of the city. Here are links to all the Tokyo Ramen Street Collabo-Ramen episodes:

The first four:

Rokurinsha
Hirugao
Mutsumiya
Keisuke Nidaime (lobster ramen, currently a crab ramen which Brian and I gave a pass)

And the new four:

Shichisai
Junk Garage
Ikaruga
Honda (you’re reading it)

サークル ≠ circle (Join my 会話サークル!)

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Well, I’ve been on Google+ now for a week or so, and it’s pretty cool. You can find me here, and my Public posts will probably be along the same lines as my Twitter feed.

I still haven’t made any major adjustments to my Circles just yet, but I’m about to start sorting them into Input and Output Circles, interest group Circles, ridiculous GIF poster Circles, et ceteraz.

I imagine that in the near future there will be public Circles or at least publicly visible Circles, so I’d like to create some useful ones for students of Japanese that I plan to open up publicly when/if that feature becomes available. One of the biggest problems for me back in New Orleans is that there are only just over 100 Japanese folks in the whole state of Louisiana, and only one of these 100 is willing to speak with me on a regular basis: I need Japanese speaking partners. The Google+ “Hangout” feature is a perfect way for groups to get together and practice speaking Japanese.

I plan on having three Circles at first – 日本語サークル初級, 日本語サークル中級, and 日本語サークル上級. I’m thinking this all up on the spot, so I’m not sure exactly how it will work, but the basic idea is to get a group of folks together who are at a similar ability level to speak Japanese. For the beginners, I’ll try and give explanations and keep things simple. Intermediate folks I think should focus on speaking more accurately and increasing the sentence patterns they can use actively. And the advanced folks can chat about whatever they want.

Maybe I’ll have set times during the week to host hangouts. Maybe I’ll just do it randomly (more likely). Who knows. So let me know if you want in to one of these speaking Circles, and if so, which Circle you would like to be placed in. You can either DM me on Twitter, email me, or leave a comment on my Google+ feed and I’ll sort you out. Ideally you’ll be able to add yourself to these Circles in the future.

I don’t plan on spamming any of these circles with anything except the actual Hangouts themselves, so you can join with the assurance that I won’t be overfilling your G+ streams.

And a wee Japanese lesson for you today as well. Did you notice the pun above? In Japanese サークル is based on the English word “circle,” but サークル ≠ circle. The Google images evidence is overwhelming: サークル, circle. サークル in fact means “club.” Schools, particularly universities, use the term to refer to student-run interest groups. When I studied abroad, I helped teach an 英会話サークル. Basically, I’ve made サークル Circles.

So, once again, mind yer inequalities.

Collabo-Ramen – Junk Garage

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There’s never too much Junk in the trunk of a big fat bowl of mazemen. Brian and I checked out Junk Garage on Ramen Street:

Collabo-Ramen – Junk Garage from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

Six down, two more to go. (Oh, and we also tried the crab ramen over at Keisuke – I’d recommend against it. It comes in a bowl shaped like Hokkaido, and there’s a layer of oil on top about a centimeter deep.)

Game Lingo – クリア ( = clear?)

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My handy set of inequalities doesn’t always hold true when it comes to video game terminology. I realized this last Friday when I was checking the translation of a video game manual. The word クリア is always used to mean “complete (a goal, level, task),” and the translator had left it “clear” (e.g. “when you have cleared easy mode”).

I’m always torn with this one. I often change it to something a little more natural (in my opinion) like “complete,” but in this case I left it “clear” and made a note to reconsider my decision after I’d finished looking through the entire manual. Then I could go back through and see how many times it was used throughout the whole manual. If it was used just once, then I’d feel comfortable making the change. If it gets used repeatedly as a sort of set term, then it should probably stay as is.

I am realizing now the decision might already be made for me – we have the in-game text and if I go in on Monday and find an instance of クリア = clear in the text, then I have to 統一.

This game has already had one frustrating example of 統一. The Japanese ミス has been rendered “miss,” which just feels dirty and wrong. Initially I was surprised that the translator made the decision to translate it that way because he is one of our more reliable translators, but then I found an instance of ミス = miss in the in-game text and quickly realized that he had done a thorough job of checking back and forth between manual terminology and in-game terminology. Which leaves some terrible sentences like “You completed Level 1 without a miss!” Ugg. Time for a shower.

ミス is closer to “mistake,” as noted by スペルミス – spelling mistake – and depending on the circumstances it could be anything from a mistake to a failure to an error and should be translated in context.

Collabo-Ramen – 七彩

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In April, Tokyo Ramen Street expanded to eight stores. The original four are still there (although Keisuke now serves a crab miso rather than the past lobster miso) along with four new spots. Brian and I checked out 七彩 (Shichisai), which serves a Kitakata style ramen – a light shoyu or shio soup with amazing chashu pork:

CollaboRamen – Shichisai from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

For three years I lived in Fukushima Prefecture about thirty minutes away from Kitakata. I ate in famous Kitakata shops a number of times, but it never really made an impact on me until I tried Shichisai. Sure, I noticed the pork tasted great, but until Brian showed me what to look for in different bowls, I always erred on the side of miso and went for hearty, savory bowls of Hokkaido style ramen.

I was also intimidated by the huge amount of pork that some chashu-men bowls offer. Shichisai has the perfect amount of pork on its 喜多方肉そば – not too much, not too little – and the soup was light and delicious – I finished the whole bowl, which is a rarety for me.

One of the neat parts about this shop is that there are windows into the kitchen area, so you can watch them cook while you wait.

Brian ran into some guys from the Tōno, Iwate-based Zumona Brewery at the Daimaru department store giving out samples of their German-style beers. After the earthquake, a group of twenty-one Japanese craft breweries created their own relief effort under the title “Re-Fermenting Japan.” Illustrator, author, and overall Japan beer guru Hiroyuki Fujiwara created the slogan and the graphic that’s being used on posters and bottles.

Sasaki-san, the Zumona brewer, will be at Daimaru until Tuesday, June 28th, so be sure to drop by to try some out and pick up a few bottles. We covered the basement of Daimaru in a past Collabo-Ramen video – they’ve got a decent selection.

Cool Web Thing – Drop Down Box of Prefectures

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I hate filling out web forms. Ever since I applied to grad school, my browser has memorized ten different combinations of my personal information. Even when I use the autofills, they are rarely correct. One of the most annoying parts of a given web form is selecting the country. I never know where to look for the U.S. Some forms put them at the top of the drop down box (AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!). Others file them at the bottom under U. Some even put them under A for America? (This I’m not sure of, but it wouldn’t surprise me.)

Selecting Louisiana is a little easier. It’s the only state that starts with L, so I open the drop down box, hit L, and Louisiana pops up.

I love the way they take care of this in Japan. Every Internet drop down box for prefectures looks like this:

Have you figured out why? No, they don’t do 五十音順. No, it’s not alphabetical.

It’s even more awesome: the prefectures are listed in geographical order from north to south. It starts with Hokkaido in the north, works its way through Tohoku and Kanto, continues through Kansai, and finishes with Kyushu. It’s a brilliant way to create a textual representation of the island through the prefectural names. It’s almost like one giant pictogram made up of words. I love it. (And dammit all, wouldn’t you know that now that I’ve professed its brilliance, I find an exception that lists the big cities separately on the top. Most of them are like this, trust me.)

I guess this is just as arbitrary as alphabetical order, really, but it is more visually pleasing. So learn your north-to-south position on the island. It’ll make these forms easier to fill out.

Video Introduction to All Hands Project Tohoku

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Former Google employee and All Hands Volunteer Ryo Chijiiwa gave a talk at Google Japan before he flew home late last week. He starts out with a quick introduction to his path to volunteering (which includes a very interesting look at the hut he built in northern California) and then moves on to some of the activities that All Hands has been doing in Ofunato on Project Tohoku. Highly recommended viewing.

Game Lingo – 鎧

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I’m realizing now that it’s been more than a full year since I’ve posted anything about video games. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I haven’t worked at a video game translation company for more than a full year as well. I’ve been away from the material. I’ve lost my game, man.

No longer. I’ve spent the last two days with my eyeballs frozen on LCD screens full of Japanese game text and passable English translations. It’s been incredibly tiring. Tiring in a completely different way from the satisfying physical exhaustion of digging ditches and shoveling mud. Good in its own way, though.

I’ve learned/refreshed a good bit of Japonese, and one of the coolest words I’ve come across is 鎧 (よろい) – armor. I have no idea where it derives from, but the clear mnemonic for this character is “a metal bean that holds up a mountain can armor you against ANYTHING!”

I don’t think the kanji gets used all that often unfortunately. I’ve seen it as both よろい and ヨロイ, although the latter seems to refer to attributes of certain characters rather than armor itself. So keep your eyes open for this one. It should come in handy when they start releasing the next set of Final Fantasy remakes for the Nintendo 3DS or Wii U.

Day 10 with Project Tohoku in Ofunato

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Last day in Ofunato. I went with Keith and two other guys to take up the floor on a small house and disinfect the soil underneath with EM spray. The house was interesting. It was a small wooden house with only two rooms – a bedroom and a storage room. Very old. So old that the boards of the house had dried up and brittled into a gray color. At first I thought it was connected to a newer structure whose occupants were giving us instructions, but actually it was an entirely separate building. The resident was gone for the day. The newer building was just built in a way that wrapped around the older building. The gap between the two couldn’t have been more than six inches.

We removed everything from the bedroom and took up two boards to get a look under the floor. Because the boards were so old, we decided to rake the mud from outside of the house rather than risk breaking any of the floor. Underneath the house was a treasure chest of old wood and bamboo, possibly from when the house was first built fifty or sixty years ago. Once we dragged all of the stuff out, we raked a bit of the mud, sprayed the EM disinfectant, and then moved on to the newer structure which had actually taken more water during the tsunami. The front room of the building had about a foot or so of water, so we removed the boards from part of the front room and sprayed underneath a hallway. We also had to go back and spray a small additional bit of the older house.

We managed all that in the morning, so in the afternoon we joined up with the team working the ditches. The ditch team was an appropriate way to end my time with All Hands – that’s what I did my first day. The team has made significant progress since that day. They are within a block or two of the local NTT building – much closer than when I first got here.

Keith and Norm, an older Scottish/Engishlman, were racing through some of the ditches, and we really made a lot of progress in the short time we were there. Supposedly our ditch digging and canal cleaning have made quite an impression on the local authorities. They’ve asked All Hands to do 4km more of the ditches – 2km on either side of a road.

I gave a short farewell at the evening meeting, and we hung around the Sakari Base drinking beers for a little while before walking back to the Fukushi no Sato Center.

Although I’m leaving tomorrow (after I spend the morning doing housekeeping at the Fukushi no Sato Center), Project Tohoku will be in Ofunato for a while. All Hands just announced an extension from July until September. Knowing that the Haiti project is still going strong, who knows how long Project Tohoku will continue if funding isn’t an issue. So definitely send in your information to the project to keep up with the latest information, and donate if you have the cash. As far as I know, they are prioritizing Japanese and Japan-residing foreigner volunteers over international volunteers, but if you can speak Japanese and English somewhat fluently, you can help do important interpretation and they’ll probably consider your application. Japan has given me so much over the past ten years, and I was really glad to give back, even if it was just for ten days. Maybe I’ll find a way to come back and help out again. Hopefully some of the people I’ve met here will still be around then.