Author Archives: Daniel

College Japanese Notes – 2001/06/25

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Since I’ve been home, I’ve spent a significant amount of time going through all my worldly possessions and – sometimes at the insistence of my mother, sometimes at my own insistence – throwing out what I don’t need or want anymore. I weeded out all the unnecessary books. Most of the stuffed animals can go. All my toy figures can go. I’ll try to sell some of the comic books. One thing I will keep is my college notes. Not all of them, but the ones that matter, and my Japanese notes definitely fall into that category.

I hadn’t studied Japanese before college, so I can pinpoint the day I began to study the language – June 25, 2001. For some reason I chose to study Italian my freshman year. Halfway through the first year, I knew that I’d made a mistake and that I really wanted to be studying Japanese. Initially I looked for study abroad programs, even going as far as asking my Italian professor to write me a letter of recommendation (!). In the end I signed up for the intensive summer course, because it was the only way I could get credit for the work.

I had class from 9AM to 1PM five days a week. Additionally, we were supposed to do six hours of study and preparation outside of class each day – 10 hours a day! I remember calculating the workload at some point, and each day amounted to a week of study during the normal school year: it was a challenge, but I really enjoyed it, and it enabled me to catch up with my classmates.

It’s been 超懐かしい to look through my old notes. The image above is the first page of my first legal pad. As you can tell, nothing got by me:

I also found the very first hiragana I ever wrote:

And my very first kanji:

I’ll be digging through my notes over the next few months to see if I can glean any nuggets of wisdom that I’ve forgotten over the past nine years.

Ret’s Rink – KFC, Pervs, Boring People, Cheap Hotels

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Yes, it’s that time again – Japan Pulse rinkage time.

“KFC goes for finger-lickin’ health-conscious goodness”

I did KFC for Christmas in Japan once, and it was thoroughly disappointing. The most disappointing part was that it wasn’t sold out. I heard from friends in Aizu that you had reserve it weeks in advance, and a guy on my exchange program at Waseda said the same thing (and he wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere). So I was super surprised when I strolled up at 1:30PM and there was chicken to be had for anyone and everyone – I wanted special, reservation-only Christmas chicken! Oh well. All in all, probably the most disappointing Christmas meal ever. This is instructive, however. Ritual is an important part of Japanese culture; not just performing the ritual, but also drumming up the spirit to perform the ritual at an appropriate level of excitement and ensuring that others have this same level of excitement – this is something that I am good at. Damn I was excited for Christmas chicken, and damn did I eat it up. To be honest, though, I prefer to create my own rituals (which involve spending lots of money on oysters).

I love Subway’s 野菜のSUBWAY slogan. I think it’s brilliant. I’ve previously written about Subway’s “hot peppers” as well as their “veggie” dog.

Oh, and does anyone know how the new KFC turned out? Or how the new McDonalds is going? Am I the only one who thinks they’ll probably end up just as dirty as the normal Shibuya/Shinjuku places?

“Passion for ‘garage kit’ models mounts at Wonder Festival”

I knew almost nothing about garage kits before writing this post and was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. The garage kit community, although perhaps a little pervy, is impressively homegrown and self-promoting. It’s even more impressive that the companies have made as many copyright concessions as they have; imagine J.K. Rowling attending a fan fiction convention and judging the best Harry Potter knock-off – that’s the literary equivalent.

“iPhones become ice-breakers at gokon dating parties”

I think I broke a gokon rule once. I organized one with a girl not too long ago as a favor for another girl, and I was actually interested in the girl I organized it with. Anyone know if that’s a big no no? I can tell you one thing – it was unsuccessful. I spent too much time paying attention to my friend instead of the friend she brought, who while very attractive was pretty uninteresting. Oh well.

I can say one thing about these iPhone apps – if you are drinking alcohol and need ANOTHER crutch to catalyze conversation at your group date, you are probably very boring.

“Pulse Rate: ikyu.com”

This website struck me as a Rakuten Travel for very expensive hotels. Most of the accommodations on ikyu.com are super high-end, even with the 60% discount that some of their deals get. Rakuten, on the other hand, is more affordable and incredibly useful. They have cheap rooms all over the country, and for most of the hotels you don’t have to pay in advance. You also earn points that you can save up and spend at any Rakuten shop. When my mom brought a couple of friends to visit Japan, I used Rakuten to book nearly all of our hotels and accumulated something ridiculous like 20,000 yen worth of points, which I blew on beer.

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

Ret’s Rink – Mixi, Free Rent, King’s Quest, Murakami

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Time for another round-up of what I’ve been writing for Japan Pulse.

“Mixi helps users socialize with new apps”

It took Facebook a while to break into Japan, but when it did, Mixi was slow to react. It looks like they are starting to get the idea. Every time I log in (which has been somewhat infrequent), I see new features and designs. The good news is that it hasn’t changed too much – it’s still a great place to interact with real, live Nihonjin. I put up messages on a couple New Orleans communities and got a reply from a Japanese couple that will be moving from France to New Orleans in July. My brain thirsts for 会話.

“Pulse Rate: ‘Free rent’ pricing aims to fill up empty apartments”

When I moved back home, I was worried it would be tough to find material for Pulse. I shouldn’t have worried – if you give to the Internet, it will give back to you. I keep the Google Keywords feed in my RSS reader and try to take a look at them every now and then. I’m convinced that TV plays a huge part in driving the ebb and flow of keyword searches (and also trends in Japan), but this was the first time I was able to prove it. I found a website describing how the term “free rent” appeared on Gacchiri Academy. Several hours later, it was at the top of the keyword search. I was able to find the official site, which has the segment almost line by line, and figure out what the deal was. Perhaps the inflexibility with rent pricing will eventually lead to the abolishment of all key money. I’m sure everyone would appreciate that.

“Big (Only) in Japan? ‘Greensleeves’”

King’s Quest! I played this back in the day on my dad’s Amiga…or maybe it was the Commodore? I can’t remember. I do remember being frustrated by the game. My dad copied it from a friend, so we didn’t have any of the manuals or anything – I had no idea what to do. My brothers and I just walked the character around, pulling carrots out of the ground, leading the goat around and falling into wells. I also remember the music – Greensleeves is the name of the tune. It was a surprise to encounter it so often in Japan.

This post was a little weak to be honest – it was fun to highlight the phenomenon (which, surprisingly, no one on the blogosphere has done yet), but I wish I could have dug a little deeper and figured out exactly WHY Greensleeves gets used as hold music. There must be someone who knows.

“Who will feed the Haruki Murakami fans online?”

Man, someone at Random House needs to be fired. Who decided that their author websites need embedded music? First of all, check out Murakami’s official English site. Yeah, the music is kind of spooky and cool…for the first five minutes or so. In the words of Mitch Hedberg, it’s like pancakes – all exciting at first, but by the end you’re fuckin’ sick of ‘em. At least Cormac McCarthy’s site doesn’t autoload the music. But, yeah, it also has music. It’s easy to excuse these guys for being born outside of the Internet generation, but come on! Their editors or publishers clearly haven’t thought this through. Maybe the editors and publishers are all old dudes, too? Oh well. William Gibson gets it. Steven Hall (granted he’s young) gets it. Their blogs take a hit when they are writing, but it’s awesome to read their posts when they do write them. Gibson had a stretch earlier this year just after he finished his latest novel where he answered a ton of reader questions about the way he writes. Very interesting stuff. The lesson is this – learn how to own your identity on the Internet. You don’t have to be a Zuckerbergian and tweet what you had for breakfast, but you should know how you’re being represented

So, yeah, hire me to do the News section on the Murakami site? I know I could do better than what they currently have. The release of 1Q84 in Japanese deserved a mention as did all the announcements about the translation release schedule and whatnot. Random House is asleep at the wheel. Inexcusable.

I’m curious to know exactly how much Murakami has to do with the Japanese 1Q84 site. Some of the posts are focused only on the people in the publishing section. Strange that Murakami would be so controlling about keeping plot details under wraps and then let other folks post freely on the official site for his book.

This user-submitted illustration of the Little People walking into someone’s mouth was my favorite. Too bad that wasn’t the reason he called the book 1Q84.