Author Archives: Daniel

Review – コーヒーもう一杯 (One More Cup of Coffee)

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The Japan Times has a short profile/interview of How to Japonese/me online today! Apparently they will be publishing it in the actual newspaper on Wednesday.

In the interview, one of the questions they ask is what Japanese books are good to read in order to improve spoken Japanese. Well, Murakami’s great and easy to read, of course, but I realized that manga are probably better than fiction since you are basically reading a script with visual cues.

One of my favorite manga is Naoto Yamakawa‘s 『コーヒーもう一杯』 published by Enterbrain. Yamakawa writes short coffee-themed manga and publishes one story a month in 月刊コミックビーム. The stories get collected into annual volumes which he intersperses with short prose poem type stories, also coffee-themed. He begins his first volume with one of these, explaining the title of the collection:

“One More Cup of Coffee” is the title of a song from Bob Dylan’s 1976 album Desire.
I started listening to Bob Dylan when I was a high school student, always listened to him after that, and listen to him even to this day.
When I first heard him I thought, “What the hell is this?” But as I kept listening, I got into the habit of listening to him and really came to like his music.
To give you an idea of how much I like him, sometimes I get on a train, see his name on a hanging advertisement, and get so surprised I almost lose my shit.
But when I look closer it doesn’t say Bob Dylan; it says things like volunteer (ボランティア) or body line (ボディ・ライン).
Beyond the title, this manga has no connection with Bob Dylan, but there are many pages I drew while listening to Bob Dylan.

The introduction perfectly captures the feel of the collection – coffee, like Bob Dylan’s music, is something that might take time to get used to, but once you start to enjoy it, it’s hard to live without. And because coffee is a daily ritual, it ends up being strongly connected to other experiences: people you went to coffee with, conversations shared over coffee, the intricate ritual of brewing coffee. The collection diagrams coffee as a social experience in modern Japan.

Brewing coffee is the theme of the first story of the collection:

coffee1
But it’s also a love story. The young man making coffee in the image teaches the other man how to make coffee, which puzzles him since he already taught him how when working as his assistant. Through the flashbacks we realize that the young man Mameta (豆太; Yamakawa often uses 豆 in his names as a joke, since it’s the character for “bean”) had a crush on Aoyama’s girlfriend Motsumi. At the end of the story after the two have coffee, Mameta walks Aoyama to a cigarette vending machine where they buy Hope cigarettes, and Aoyama confesses that he’s split with Motsumi. Mameta returns to his small apartment, brews another batch of coffee and sits down to process everything that happened while enjoying a cup:

coffee7
Yamakawa’s unique, warm drawing style is perfectly suited to the content. The stories are all sort of sad, strange and even nostalgic, but it’s a nostalgia for the present day – Yamakawa’s portraits of urban Japan are so romantic that they approach simulacra. He loves the coffee shops:

coffee4

Used bookstores:

coffee2

Apartments:

coffee3

And streets of Japanese cities:

coffee5

The illustrations in this series are a refreshing change from the kind of manga that gets translated and shipped abroad. I’ll take the back alleys of Shinagawa-ku over the bright lights of Shibuya any day of the week. I do frequent Dry Dock, after all, which I think is the closest I’ve come to a コーヒーもう一杯-esque location in the flesh.

I discovered the series while hunting for manga to read on a flight. I was actually looking for SOIL, also published by Enterbrain, but since they didn’t have it, I went for コーヒーもう一杯, and I’m sure glad I did. It’s perfect plane flight or train ride manga: the stories are short and manageable, fun to read, and beautiful to look at. Highly recommended.

Bonus link! Yamakawa has his own blog, through which I discovered that Volume 5 of コーヒーもう一杯 is the final volume. Probably for the best. All of the stories are good, but Volume 1 was by far the strongest.

How to Kyoto, Briefly

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I went to Kyoto last weekend and thought I’d write down a few thoughts:

– Use the bus. The bus network is extensive, well-air-conditioned and cheap if you use a daily bus pass. The Japanese you are looking for is 一日乗車券 (いちにちじょうしゃけん), and the passes can be purchased at convenience stores or directly from a bus driver. The locals use these, too – I saw several kids using them over the weekend.

– A couple of itineraries that work with the buses:
1. Kinkaku-ji → Ryoan-ji → Ninna-ji → bus back to Kawaramachi Shijo to eat and recover
2. Sanjusangendo → Kiyomizu-dera → Ginkaku-ji → Gion → bus back to Kawaramachi Shijo to eat and recover

– Set aside plenty of time for Nijo Castle. Ideally it’s the first thing you see in the morning.

– When you get to your tourist destination (e.g. temple, museum), the first thing you should do is check the departing bus times. Figure out where you’re heading next and check the bus sign to see when your options are. The buses don’t run as frequently as subways and trains in Tokyo, and knowing the departure times can help you maximize the sights you can see in a day.

– That said, knowing when to use the subway is helpful. I’ve only ever used the subway once so I can’t say anything for certain, but that one line that runs east to west can be pretty handy if you’re looking for a quick way to get across town.

– Sanjusangendo is the most underrated temple in Kyoto, which means it ranks high on the short list of underrated temples in all of Japan. Not that it gets ignored – many people love the place, and there are always lots of visitors. But when people think of iconic temples in Kyoto, Kiyomizu-dera and Kinkaku-ji are always the first two listed. Personally I think Kinkaku-ji is disappointing. Other than the Golden Pavillion itself, there is hardly anything else exciting about the place. If Ryoan-ji weren’t so close, I think it would be extremely overrated. Kiyomizu-dera is nice, but the crowds can be a drag. So can the hill. Sanjusangendo is an excellent combination of scale (1000+ statues), beauty (the statues are just incredible, especially considering how old they are…if you stare at them long enough, they look like they are about to jump over the railing and attack something), and size (the Kannon in the middle is pretty sizable). Highly recommended. The National Museum across the street, however, can be skipped.

号外 – Kurodahan Press Translation Prize

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A small bonus post today to make up for the skimpy post earlier. Kurodahan Press is having a translation contest. The story for translation is titled 「メルクの黄金畑」 by 髙樹のぶ子, and can be found in her collection titled 『fantasia』. It’s only 15,000 characters long and the deadline is in October, which means you have plenty of time. Professional translators usually translate somewhere from 2000 to 5000 characters a day depending on the type of material. Literary translation should probably take a little longer, but still, the finished product will only end up being somewhere around 8000 words or so. The prize isn’t that much money (30,000 yen), but the winner will get published, it’s a great way to promote Japanese literature, and it would be good goal to set if you are an upper-level intermediate student or lower-level advanced student.

Definitely plan on tossing my hat in the ring. I picked up the book of stories last week and have only paged through the contest story, but it looks like a neat little book of travel stories set in Europe. Fun!

Cool Kanji – 日食

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nisshoku

A pretty obvious post for today – the kanji for solar eclipse. It’s pronounced にっしょく, and I guess literally means “eat/swallow the sun.” Pretty cool stuff.

I found this link on how to enjoy the eclipse in Japan via a friend’s shared sites on Google reader. Remember, don’t look straight at the sun or you’ll end up like Radioactive Man. Looking straight at rain clouds, on the other hand, will do nothing to you but may ruin the day of small children with giant expectations.

クリーム ≠ cream

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Well, at least not always:

クリーム = cream2

cream      = cream1

The Japanese クリーム often refers specifically to the whipped variety that goes on top of cakes or inside tasty treats, most notably the シュークリーム. I often see this romanized on packages as “chou cream” for whatever reason. For those of you who can’t read Japanese, it actually sounds like “shoe cream,” which is a funny thought.

The Japanese and English Wikipedia entries are subtly different. In English, whipped cream is only listed below under “Other cream products,” whereas in Japanese whipped cream gets its own section and the photo at the top of the entry is a photo of a bowl of whipped cream.

I rest my case.

しばらく (Updated)

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One of the recent themes of this blog has been alternate versions of basic phrases. In the past I’ve given nuanced versions, but today it’s just a straight up replacement. 久し振り (ひさしぶり, most often as 久しぶり) is the phrase that everyone knows, and it can quickly be replaced with しばらく, which literally means “a little while.” A couple of notes:

– Thinking about しばらく made me realize that leaving the です off of 久しぶり probably sounds really weird and unnatural to Japanese people. For whatever reason, 久しぶり feels like it can stand on it’s own (possibly because of that adjective-like り・い sound on the end?), whereas しばらく, to me, does not. Nice reminder not to drop your copulas.

– I think this is an old people phrase. Useful if you like to add to your 渋い aura.

– しばらく is also often used as an adverb. “Do something for a little while.” しばらく何かをする。しばらく休みましょう being a nice one. 久しぶり can also do this, but needs a にon its end. I believe both of them can act as adjectives with the assistance of の.

Update: – Matt’s comment made it clear to me that there is a slight difference between the adverbs. When used alone in the “long time no see” sense, 久しぶり implies a positive verb (久しぶりに会う。) whereas しばらく implies a negative verb (しばらく会っていない。). Very cool.

Cool Toy – Lost Kubrick Figures

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As I kid I collected lots of figures. It all started with G.I. Joe, but I expanded into Marvel when they started releasing some of the awesome characters from X-Force. Fortunately my interest died off before I could get too excited about anime. Still, ever since coming to Japan, I’ve always thought the Kubrick line of toys is really cool. The figures are small, cubed versions of popular culture themes – movies, TV shows, comics – and you don’t know which character you get until opening the box. The name is a homage to director Stanley Kubrick, but it also puns on キューブ, the Japanese word for cube. Medicom Toy, the makers, have a cool website where you can get updates on new releases and limited editions.

I was showing a friend around this past weekend and we went by Kiddy Land in Harajuku:

kiddyland1
where I came across this cool LOST Kubrick set!:

lostkubrick1
The side shows that you have chances of getting Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Locke or Charlie:

lostkubrick2
And the back suggests that you might also be able to get Desmond and all his wonky eyeballness:

lostkubrick3
I was hoping for Locke but ended up with Hurley, one of rare ones. Not too shabby:

lostkubrick4

Cool Links – Beer Resources

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Not much time for an update today, so you’ll have to entertain yourselves with the ridiculous amounts of great beer information at Chuwy’s blog Drinking My Brains and Homebrewjapan’s blog…er Homebrew Japan. They both have impressive tolerance (and deep wallets!) and know heaps about beer. Love Chuwy’s comments on Pivo at Pivovar (still need to get there), and I wish I’d known about this incredible list of resources when I lived in the countryside.

Reading Strategies – Skimming and Kanji Compounds

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By my third year of Japanese study, my classmates and I had gotten to the point where we could express a lot of basic ideas, but for whatever reason – probably class chemistry more than anything – we were all really quiet. Everyone was hesitant to take a chance and speak up. So the professor implemented a participation grade, probably one of the cleverest techniques any of my Japanese teachers ever used. This same teacher also emphasized storytelling (through 接続詞), relaying information (〜そうです), and skimming (速読). It was a landmark year in my study of the language. Really gave me a solid foundation.

I think the skimming exercises were especially effective. Someone (one of the higher up professors?) had done research showing that skimming was just as valuable if not more valuable than slogging through passages looking up the definition for every word. Several times a week, she would hand us a slip of paper with a Japanese newspaper article on it. First she gave us five seconds or so to look at the headline and we would take a minute to talk about the topic of the article. We made guesses about the content, and the professor asked us to explain why. Then she gave us 30 seconds to look at the first few paragraphs of the article. We would kind of desperately run our eyes over the squiggles, looking for X月XX日, X氏, and other hints. The she asked us machine-gun style the who what where when of the article. And that was it. We never went into much more depth than that. The exercise was predicated on the idea that short, fast repetitions are important to get your reading up to speed.

However, skimming is really only effective once you have a basic grasp of kanji and compounds. We must have known 750 kanji at least, maybe even closer to 1000, but knowing how the kanji work in compounds was even more important. This same teacher drilled us on the different categories of compounds. I think there were five categories. Here’s a brief rundown of the ones I can remember:

Synonyms and Antonyms – compounds in this category are two kanji with similar meaning or opposite meaning lined up together.

早速 (さっそく) – fast + fast = right away!
重複 (ちょうふく) – overlap + multiple = redundant (unsure if this isn’t in the Verb + DO category which is outlined below)
姉妹 (しまい) – older sister + younger sister = sister
兄弟 (きょうだい) – older brother + younger brother = brother
変化 (へんか) – change + change = change

上下 (じょうげ) – up + down = up and down
左右 (さゆう) – left + right = left and right
和英 (わえい) – Japanese + English = Japanese to English
英和 (えいわ) – English + Japanese = English to Japanese
売買 (ばいばい) – sell + buy = buying and selling
攻防 (こうぼう) – attack + defense = attack and defense

Prefix + Kanji – the kanji in these compounds all have prefixes that modify the other character. 非, 無, and 不 are the obvious negatives ones. There must be some positive ones…超 comes to mind, but I can’t think of any two-character compounds.

無職 (むしょく) – no + work = unemployed
無色 (むしょく) – no + color = colorless
無教 (むきょう) – no + faith = atheist
不良 (ふりょう) – un + good = bad
非常 (ひじょう) – non + normal = abnormal/unusual/emergency
超能力 (ちょうのうりょく) – extremely + ability = superpower/ESP

Adjective + Noun – in this category, the first kanji modifies the second kanji, forming a larger compound noun.

朗報 (ろうほう) – cheerful + information = good news
朝食 (ちょうしょく) – morning + food = breakfast
残金 (ざんきん) – remain + money = balance/remaining money
近所 (きんじょ) – near + place = neighborhood
笑顔 (えがお) – smile + face = smiling face

Adverb + Verb – in this category, too, the first character modifies the second, but this time it modifies the way the verb is performed.

速読 (そくどく) – fast + read = read quickly/skim
朗読 (ろうどく) – clear/cheerful + read = read out loud
悪化 (あっか) – bad + change = get worse
強化 (きょうか) – strong + change = make stronger/fortify/enhance/reinforce

Verb + Direct Object – these kanji are Chinese in origin, I think, so they come in the Chinese grammatical order, the second kanji being the direct object of the first, which is a verb.

上京 (じょうきょう) – go up + capital = go to the capital
帰国 (きこく) – return + country = return home/repatriate
送金 (そうきん) – send + money = send money
回想 (かいそう) – spin + thought = recall/flashback
消火 (しょうか) – erase + fire = extinguish
返品 (へんぴん) – give back + item = return something

Not every compound will fit into these categories, but thinking about kanji this way will often give you an advantage when you encounter a new compound made of familiar parts. So go on! Go out there and get reps! Skimming is all well and good, but the goal is to build up endurance and recognition so that you can tackle longer material.

Cool Fireworks – 線香花火 (Updated)

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線香花火 (せんこうはなび, literally “incense fireworks”) is a type of Japanese fireworks that usually gets translated into English as “Japanese sparklers.” They are slightly different from the usual American variety of sparklers in that you hold them facing down toward the ground rather than up toward the sky. Once lit, a small ball of what can only be described as “magical molten fire stuff” creeps up the thin thread of the sparkler, sending out random flashes of fractal-like sparkles. They are incredibly hypnotic to watch. (See photo at the Japanese Wikipedia site or in this video with music from Amano Shigeru.)

Once the ball gets to a certain point, it fizzles out quickly, which gives it the idiomatic meaning “flash in the pan” or “to fizzle out quickly.” You often see 線香花火のよう(に・な) and sometimes 線香花火的.

Belated Happy 4th of July!

Update: Commenter robert found this great video showing exactly how they sparkle. Looks like there are more videos searching under “senkou hanabi” than “線香花火”.