Author Archives: Daniel

Katrina and the Quake

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A month after I arrived in Japan on the JET Program, Hurricane Katrina hit my hometown New Orleans. I had been placed in Nishiaizu, Fukushima Prefecture, a small town of 8000 people nestled in the mountains on the northwestern edge of the prefecture. My supervisor told me it would probably be okay to go back to the U.S. and help out if I needed to, but what could I do? A good portion of the city was under water, and my family had already evacuated to Memphis. I stayed and watched from afar.

At night I drank beer, watched CNN, and wrote angry Livejournal posts wondering why the O’Brien family of journalists had exchanges like these on international television:

Soledad: Clearly something is burning off in the distance.
Miles: It’s still burning. Clearly no sign of it being put out.

Clearly.

And now, nearly six years later, I find myself in the same position. I moved back to New Orleans last summer, so I’ve been forced to watch news from abroad and trace the paths of friends in Japan from Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds. Apparently, the journalists from outside are bad and the government response is slow, just like in New Orleans.

However, I’m confident that Japan will recover because I’ve realized that Japan is, secretly, just like New Orleans. They both pride themselves on the strangeness of their culture, they both eat really weird things, and they both love to drink beer outdoors. More importantly, they are both geographically exceptional; New Orleans was founded on the soft alluvial deposits of the Mississippi River Delta and Japan on the intersection of tectonic plates. If New Orleans can recover (and it has), then surely Japan can. Chin up, Japan.

The other reassuring part about being in New Orleans is that I’m in more of a position to help. Japan has a special place in its heart for New Orleans, as evidenced by the $44 million in aid it provided after Katrina. I don’t think New Orleans will approach that amount, but we can certainly try.

A consortium of Japan groups here in town has banded together to create the NOLA Japan Quake Fund. We raised over $8000 during our first day online, and that was without the assistance of any events. There will be a number of events all over town, so please follow @NOLA4Japan to keep up with the latest information. I’ll probably be broadcasting the information on my own feed as well.

Based on the response we’ve already had, we’re hoping to raise a good chunk of change – something approaching $100,000 if not more. This isn’t an impossibility. We already have many different groups who want to contribute to the fund. I’m involved with two in particular: Saturday, April 2 will be “Drink For Japan” at Avenue Pub, and on Sunday, April 10, Rock n Bowl will be hosting a celebration of prominent local bands that feature Japanese musicians – it’s going to be an all-start lineup, so be on the lookout for more information.

Please spread this info as widely as possible, especially if you are in the New Orleans area.

College Japanese Notes – 2001/06/29 Frequency Adverbials

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Another lesson from my class notes. Don’t confuse degree adverbials with frequency adverbials:

Clearly I was still getting the hang of the kana.

よく行きます                                                         [Subject] often goes
あまり行きません                                                [Subject] doesn’t go much
ほとんど行きません                                            [Subject] hardly goes
全然（ぜんぜん）行きません。                         [Subject] doesn’t ever go / never goes

Two that aren’t listed here and that both express inrequent visits are たまに and めったに:

たまに行きます                                                    [Subject] goes on occasion/every now and then
めったに行きません                                           [Subject] rarely ever goes

Tokyo Station City North Court – 利久

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During my trip to Japan over winter vacation, I was fortunate to experience the mid-December debut of North Court, the newest expansion of Tokyo Station City. I’ve written previously about GranSta (glowing reviews), which is in the basement just beyond the Yaesu Central Underground Entrance. North Court is similar in style and content but much smaller. It’s on the first floor close to the Yaesu Central Exit…right above GranSta, I believe.

One of the highlights is a Kinokuniya with a limited selection of quality beer and bento. For me, the best part was a branch of the famous Sendai-based restaurant Rikyu (利久), which is well known for it’s 牛タン – yup, beef tongue.

Japan introduced me to a wide variety of meats I’d never had the pleasure of enjoying before, and tongue was one of these. I first had thinly sliced cuts at yakiniku restaurants, but when I went to Sendai in 2005 to take the JLPT, a friend and I randomly bumped into a Sendai-based JET while shopping. We asked for a dinner recommendation, and he (she? I can’t remember) told us to go to Rikyu. We were not disappointed.

It became a ritual for me. I had it the night before I took JLPT 2 and the next year the night before I took JLPT 1. Passed both. I went for a job interview in Sendai a few years later, and sure enough I had it before the job interview. Which I subsequently passed.

I picked up a bento to enjoy on the train ride up to Fukushima – it was fantastic. Unlike yakiniku tongue cuts, Sendai tongue is thick and beefy with riveted cuts to help the meat cook. They have that al dente texture that Japanese love (and some foreigners hate…especially when it involves things like tendons and cartilage).

Highly recommended if you’re ever looking to pick up lunch for your shinkansen trip.

Uncool 相槌 – はいはい

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If there were a God, I would ask it to bless the Internet. The Internet is the reason I haven’t lost as much Japanese as I could have over the past six months. When I got back to New Orleans in June, I went on Mixi, the Japanese social networking site, and put up self-introductions on the forum for every Community that was vaguely New Orleans-related. Saints communities, college communities, Jazz communities – if you look closely, you’ll probably find me there.

This effort has yielded results! In July I heard from a Japanese college student who is crazy about the Saints. He was visiting New Orleans to go see training camp. Would I want to meet up? Hell yeah! Thus, I found myself driving out to the Saints practice facility in Metairie at 6AM, speaking Japanese with Shohei. We watched practice, basked in the Yat-ness of the proceedings, and Reggie Bush walked straight up to where we were standing during the autograph session. It was most excellent.

Later, I heard from Aki who was moving to town with her husband, a French public servant who got transferred to the consulate in New Orleans. Would I want to meet up for coffee? Of course! So we started meeting for coffee every few weeks. The luckiest part is that she is the most talkative Japanese person I’ve ever met. She’s constantly losing track of the conversation topic and saying things like, “This is totally unrelated, but…” or “I forgot what I was saying, but…” Not that she’s ditzy; she just has a lot to say. I don’t mind at all. Just keep the Japanese coming.

We met up in November before I took my trip to Japan, and she was telling me a story about a Chinese woman who worked in her office in Japan. The woman’s Japanese was good, but she had a few quirks, one of which was the phrase はいはい, which she used indiscriminately as an 相槌 (あいづち) whether it was with the company president or with Aki. Not only did she double the standard phrase はい, she also added a slightly flippant-sounding tone (which I can’t find an example of online). “HAIhai” is how I would try to express the tone. Aki was telling me the president would get annoyed with the usage but never corrected the woman. Aki was thrown into the role of caretaker and tried to correct the usage, but it never took.

At the time I thought this was nothing more than a funny story, but when I went to Japan a few weeks later, I was having dinner and drinks with a friend –an older businessman, so I was on my best です／ます behavior – and I caught myself はいはいing! Dammit! My tone wasn’t as dismissive as the way Aki was producing, but I think it was still a little casual. Immediately I shifted back to a single はい and kept a close watch on my usage the rest of the trip.

The realization reminded me of this sign I often see in New Orleans:

The goal of learning a foreign language is to be able to use it naturally and smoothly, which means not having to consciously watch yourself all the time. At the same time, if you internalize mistakes, you’ll end up using them without realizing it, and in Japan it often goes uncorrected. Thanks to Aki I caught myself. (Also, I did have one friend correct me on my trip when I was saying 計算する instead of 量る for my weight, so there will be times when they will correct you.)

The moral of the story? Maintain vigilance. And ask folks to correct you. They’ll still hesitate to do so, but every now and then you’ll get a nice bit of help.

The second moral of the story? 敬語 isn’t just being able to say the right honorific or humble words. Sometimes it’s not saying certain words that are casual. Refrain from はいはい, ちょっと, and ハァ？ sez the Japanese Internets. Also, as long as you use です／ます consistently and avoid too many んでs, そうやでs, and other contractions, you’ll be able to schmooze your way into the confidence of most folks in Japan.

(In other news, while writing this post I learned that はいはいする means to crawl from a YouTube search.)

Kyoto Doughnut Plant

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On my recent trip to Japan, I stopped by Kyoto and stayed with some friends I knew from Fukushima. Before I got on the train back to Tokyo, I picked up some doughnuts at the new Doughnut Plant in the Yodobashi Camera a few blocks from Kyoto Station.

As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of Doughnut Plant in Japan. This time I managed to pick up the super rare 限定 Houji-cha doughnut that is only available in Kyoto.

Unfortunately it was very disappointing, especially after I had a fantastic Houji-cha latte at Starbucks (also only available in Kyoto). The doughnut had very little Houji-cha flavor. I really couldn’t taste the difference between it an a regular glazed doughnut. The carrot cake doughnut, however, was amazing.

Although this feels a little unfair, no? Is it legal to shape carrot cake into a doughnut and call it a doughnut? I guess so. Doughnut Plant shows off their expertise by threading cream cheese icing through the middle. Very nice touch.

And to top everything off, the weather was clear enough to see Mt. Fuji from the train.

Cool Adjective – 悔しい

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Well, all good things must come to an end. This post ends my 6+ week vacation from the site, and on Saturday the Seattle Seahawks ended the Saints’ hopes of repeating their championship last year. Our defense gave up 41 points – the most we gave up all season – and our offense was only able to score 36. If you had told anyone that the Saints would score 36 points, I’m almost certain they would have predicted a win. Alas, our defense was subpar all season, and no one was able to recognize this – almost every analyst picked the Saints, including the Wall Street Journal’s sports columnist, who remarked that the Seahawks had “no business in the playoffs.”

I only needed one word to describe the post-game feeling in Japanese:

悔しい

In English it would take a lot more to describe my feelings. I was totally broken, exasperated, depressed. It sucked. (The only upside is that, as a New Orleans Saints fan, I have years and years of practice losing, so I probably managed to go through the stages of grief more quickly than fans of other franchises. Bring on the 2011-2012 season!)

悔しい (くやしい) often gets defined as “vexing,” “regrettable,” or “mortifying,” but in practice it should never be translated this way. The most famous usage of the word comes from the comedian Ayumu Katoh of the group Zabunguru, who says the word and then makes a face that only he can make (if the YouTube link is broken, a Google Images search for 悔しい should suffice). The face completely expresses the feeling of 悔しい. I always think of it as an emphatic “This sucks!” or “It sucks!” depending on the context.

This is a good lesson to remember for other Japanese adjectives – うまい, おいしい, 痛い (いたい), 辛い (つらい) – whatever the adjective may be, you should never think of it as a one-to-one relationship with an English adjective. An emphatic うまい is more appropriately translated to “Damn, that’s good!” than “Tasty!” 痛い, of course, can be “Ouch” or “That hurts” – NEVER translate 痛い on its own as “painful.”

辛い is often close to 悔しい but involves more physical pain from the endurance of an uncomfortable situation (this is easy to remember: the same character for つらい gets used in 辛抱 [しんぼう], which is one way to say patience/endurance in Japanese). Something 悔しい just fucking sucks. Imitating Katoh’s phrasing is a good way to earn some laughs if you end up in a shitty position. Hell, might as well have a laugh.

Starbucks New Year’s Mugs 2011

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Happy New Year! When I was in Japan before Christmas, I was worried that I would have to ask a friend to buy me one of the Starbucks New Year’s mugs. I’ve collected them the last five years. Normally they go on sale December 26, and I was heading home on Christmas Eve.

Fortunately I stumbled into the Starbucks in Kyoto on Sanjo, one of the most famous Starbucks locations in Japan (second only to the one in Shibuya that looks over the スクランブル交差点?). For whatever reason, they, and a couple of other shops in Kyoto, already had the mugs and tumblers on sale.

I’m very impressed with this year’s design. I went with the black lined with vermillion. Each of the mugs has two images embossed in gold, and the larger image on the black mug is of a whale lifting up a boat with the Hinomaru. Interesting design. Slight dig at the Australian anti-whalers?

How to Japonese on NHK – Hermit Crab Survival Project

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A few months ago I was contacted by a Japanese producer to put together a short video about the local response to the BP oil spill for the television show ガッチャン. They have a segment called STUDENT EYE where college students from around the world introduce aspects of their culture or some sort of unique student activities.

The producer had located a woman on Grand Isle who had organized a volunteer group called the Hermit Crab Survival Project to clean hermit crabs who were stuck in the oil that washed up on the beaches. She was a park ranger at Grand Isle State Park, but unfortunately working with birds or mammals required some sort of federal license, so instead she helped clean the crabs.

The project was already complete by the time I started working on the video, but fortunately she had video of some of the activities, and I interviewed her. I also took a trip down to Grand Isle, a barrier island about three hours south of New Orleans, to talk to the locals and get some stock footage.

It was kind of strange – I’d gone down to Grand Isle earlier in the summer and run into the hermit crab folks. Too bad I didn’t get any footage then. All the pictures above are taken from the video I submitted. I know they’ve edited it pretty heavily, so who knows what the final product will look like, but it will be airing on NHK BS1 on Friday, December 3 at 6PM. If you’re in Japan, check it out and let me know how it looks! They should post it online after it airs – I’ll definitely post a link when they do.