The Hopeless Romantic

Advertisement Japanese: Awesome School Poster

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:52:28 PDT

Alright, here is the first of a series of posts I hope to do where we will tackle the Japanese in advertisements I spot about town. But I have a feeling we won't see one like this first one again, a poster for a girl's school in my town. Click to zoom in--this is an iphone-taken picture, and the resolution was surprisingly large.

Ad Breakdown:
Top left verical line, 第三十三回 :
"33rd time". 第 is the "rd" (or "th" or "nd") suffixes to numbers, called ordinals. 回 refers to repetitions of an event.

Top left big characters 鈴懸祭:
The name of a cultural festival held by the school. I don't know how it's pronounced, but I'm guessing suzuka-sai, from 鈴懸の木 (Plane Tree or Tree of Hippocrates, which interestingly enough has festival associated with it in Greece), one of which stands in the courtyard of the school.

The flag, 熊谷女子高校:
"Kumagaya [my town] girls high school", called 熊女 (bear girl) for short. Hey, now the character rampaging about and holding the flag makes sense!

The right vertical text埼玉県立+aforementioned 熊谷女子高校:
the second part you can see translated above, but the first part means "Saitama prefectural" (立 is the postfix that adds "al" (established by) to words like 市立 (municipal) and 町立 (townal, only that ain't a word in English so we say "established by the town").

Area below the bear with an umbrella, 熊姫:
"Bear-princess". A play on the school's nickname.

Area right below that, 乙女の道は一本道:
"The path of the maiden doth not deviate". I took some liberty with 一本道 (straight path). It seems like this is a famous saying (or a variation of one, that one being 女の道は一本道), so I poetrified it. I won't even get into the implications of how 女の道 can mean red-light district too, because our bear princesses are pure! If you don't believe it, they'll claw your eyes out.

The leftovers are just dates, so no need to go into them.　All kinds of interesting things in this poster eh? Not to mention the art. I hope you enjoy this series, because I must admit I'm happy with all I learned this time around.

The Emperor's English Teacher

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:52:13 PDT

From the vaults:

Click To Enlarge/Read the J Article

学習院中等科 (Gakushuuin-chuutouka, the middles school division of a prestigious school) in Tokyo-- This old photo shows the current Japanese emperor, Akihito (emperors don't have last names in Japan), on the far left, beaming a smile, and his English/Western Thought tutor, Elizabeth Vining, who is conduction some sort of spelling competition.
I looked up Mrs. Vining and found out that she taught the then prince for four years, and was the only foreign guest at his wedding. She was probably one of only a handful of native English speaking teachers in Japan at the time.
It is said that Mrs. Vining had a strong effect on the young Akihito, who she called Jimmy instead of the more formal "crown prince" title he at first wanted, instilling in him a sense of independence and courage to break with tradition. Long before she died in 1999, she wrote a book about her time with the prince, entitled Windows for the Crown Prince, and another, Return To Japan. Looks like they've been out of print for a while, but I hope to pick up a used copy.
--
Bonus info about emperor names:

While they don't seem to have a family name, the imperial family can be referred to as 皇族 (kōzoku, from the kanji emperor+family).

While it's okay for us to refer Akihito by his name in English, in Japanese they always have to call him 陛下 (his majesty) or 天皇 (emperor) or the like. In the linked article, they referred to his then princely-self as 皇太子明仁さま (crown prince lord Akihitio). I think calling him Jimmy is reserved for Mrs. Vining ;-)

Emperors get new names when they die that supersede the old ones. Lately, the convention is to rename emperors after the era that they lived in, which happens to start and end with their lives. Just remember that Akihito will become Emperor Heisei after his death.

天皇 translates to emperor in English, but within the Japanese language is only used to refer to Japanese royalty, not other kings or emperors. Incidentally, Japan is the only country in the world with a living emperor.

A Few Pics from Japan

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:43:35 PDT

Finally, I am free to inflict my crappy videos upon Japan again! Talking very briefly about the JLPT and other things, which I've taken shots of.

Promised pics from the video (click to zoom):

Gay sailor curry

High grammar on a urinal.

EDIT: I've made a new post dedicated to translating this one
Awesome school festival poster.

A Tanabata tree. Kind of like a mid-July Christmas tree. But totally not.

Man Somehow Caught Pretending to be His Wife

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:01:02 PDT

I renewed my license earlier this year. I don't really know why I did it when I don't own a car anymore, but who knows what use it come to be of. Anyways, the interesting thing is, a guy that happened to be at the same place I had to go to renew my license was trying to put a license to a very different use and got arrested for it the other day. Que the "Pics from the Japanese News" music...

original J article & bigger pic

Saitama--A man was trying to renew and alter his wife's license so that he could have a license in his name that wasn't creditors' blacklist. Then he was probably going to acquire even more debt in a manner that landed him on the list in the first place. So he dressed as his wife and went down to the car center. Criminals are rarely smart (The disguise included the crafty use of water-balloons), and this boneheaded disguise was immediately caught out. He has confessed to his crime already, saying he thought the disguise wouldn't be found for what it was due to his expertise from working in a gay bar. I wonder if this guy lives in my town; we have a cross-dressing hostess club close to the station.

Japanese Slang: Hey We're Like Twins!

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:45:49 PDT

カブる (kaburu) comes from the game of mahjong. Its a term for when tiles of the same type pile up (from the verb 被る I think) on each other, that has since come to be used for people who act or seem similar. In the commercial below, I believe that kaburu is the term that Boss George Bush is using. "被ってる！"

Drink some tea to wash that feeling away.

[credit to James for finding the vids, see more of these commercials at the Probe]

J-Standup with a Korean Accent

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:07:22 PDT

It's hard to follow, but ya gotta love this guy for some reason. The look on his face when he answers the phone...

Kamen Rider Doubles Up for W

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:43:59 PDT

Click to see original J article/image

The latest in the long running Kamen (masked) Rider series will be called Kamen Rider W. In Japanese, the way W is pronounced "double-u" has made it take on the meaning of doubling. Cheesy, huh. Well Kamen Rider is a superhero of awesome cheesyness, so it's a good fit. The newest Kamen Belt (will carry two or three Kamen identities) to be combined in ways that will make the viewing children's heads asplode with rapture. But this example just seems to be the same costume on both sides slightly repainted. I mean, there is a lot of Kamen variety out there. For instance:

And that's in just one guy.

Prisoners do Thriller

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:37:14 PDT

The vid is old, but it seems to have been recently reperformed, because I saw it on the J News. The "girl" is my fav. Fabulous!

I found the prisoners do the Algorythm Switch of Japanese children's show fame and posted it a long time ago.

Dental Robot Freaks Clay Out

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:53:07 PDT

Look human, but slightly off! That robot! Robot scary! Robot bad! Robot with teeth badder! Don't hurt Clay! Clay be good slave to robot! Don't bite Clay!

Oh! Robot bited Clay! Is Clay become robot now? Clay feel crazy robot strength surge through Clay! Clay is robot now! Clay needs dental check! Dentist Scary!

Pepsi Shiso's Taste and Toys

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:37:39 PDT

About the Thing on My Butt

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:36:54 PDT

Provocative title gets.

So a couple years back I discovered a cool little shop in Sasebo, Nagasaki that was geared towards foreigners and run my an Indian immigrant. He gave me bargains and pants that fit (in retrospect I should have bought some shoes while there orz). It's also where I got my awesome phoenix-embroidered pants, pictured above.
The girl I was dating at the time warned me that I was wearing yanki style, but I could care less. These are awesome pants. I didn't see their like again until recently at a store called Method.
Last week I made a post at JibTV (please visit!) about this odd genre of clothes, and figured that if anybody was interested in getting their own Japanesy clothes, they might like to know that I've found one of the brands, 豊天商店, online at Rakuten. Click the image below to shop or just ogle, because, lets face it, most of these pants are too expensive to justify the risk of clothes that will either make you look cool or like a tool. And who buys clothes without trying them on anyways?

Finally, if you are still here, I don't believe I've shown the following video on the blog before. In it, I show off some of my shirts that have this theme.

Scanner Pen Translates Japanese as you Read

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:44:48 PDT

Here a guy-- that talks much like one of my entertaining students :-D-- shows off a pen that you can scan English or Japanese words with and get a quick definition. I believe the 2 in the name of the pen refers to it's two-second scanslation speed. I guess it's been out for a while, but it's new to me.

I have some reservations about this, starting with the price (about $300). I was also worried about being able to read the Japanese font, but it seems you can enlarge it, and it looks better in the Japanese language version of the above video anyways so I am satisfied. Hirigana seems like it works too. Actually these days it's the hirigana words that trip me up the most, so I am really curious as to how well they are covered.

You can download the manual and get other information at this site. I wonder if it could read E ink, or, in a pinch, a computer screen.

The ability to save my books from ugly underlined words (my current method is to underline and look up words after I have finished the current two pages opened before me) and get an instant definition is very appealing.

Any testimonials from people out there using this?
--
EDIT: Saw a vid for a Quiktionary 3, but it seems to be a non-Japanese learner-centered product

Japanese Slang: More Uniqlo Slang

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:30:54 PDT

You may recall when we explored yunibare, the word for when it slips out that you have been buying your clothes at the dasaiest of dasai clothing outlets. Here's another few words in that are related: ユニクローゼ (yunikurōze), ユニクラー(yunikurā) and ユニ隠し (yunikakushi).

Yunikurōze is a word for ladies that like shopping at Uniqlo (in Japanese unikuro). It's derived from the words Uniqlo (duh) and シロガネーゼ (shiroganēze, ladies that shop a lot in Tokyo), a slang word in its own right made from 白銀 (shirogane, silver and an area's name in Tokyo where these ladies live) and the Japanese pronunciation of Milanese: ミラネーゼ, (milanēze). Okay, so it's more like unikurōze isn't made from shiroganēze so much as imitating shiroganēze's imitation of an Italian word.

Yunikurā refers to the same thing as yunikurōze, but men can be in this category too. They took the yuniku from Uniqlo and added ラー, with is imitation of the English "er" that we put on words to make them into people (like work+er=worker etc). I'm lot aware if it is intentional or noticed by Japanese people, but it does sound like "yuni-cooler" to me.

Finally, yunikakushi means to try to cover up that you are wearing clothes from Uniqlo (read on a budget, read uncool). It is made from uniqlo and 隠し (kakushi, hide). If you don't ユニ隠し well enough, you will be ユニバレed. Or something. But Uniqlo is making efforts to seem really cool. "Like, I got this sweet music, guys. Watch me dance in my green hoody. Only 25 bucks! That's so cheap it's awesome. Hey, would you like a calendar? It's pretty cool..."

This is the weather for my town, but the pictures are from somewhere else. Actually, I kinda dig the music. Try clicking it on.
[J source]

Combos That Didn't Make the Cut

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:14:10 PDT

Click to zoom to a surprising degree.

I got a surprise illustration in place of the above photo when my latest article for JibTV showed up. A pleasant surprise though. They have to be cautious about showing packaging, but I don't! So here are some tasty things to titillate those of you that didn't get a belly-full of the Jib article.

Here we have the elusive double-weiner egg roll. That's a combo within a combo.

Here we have a pizza-egg-dog. Let's not even get into what you can put on pizzas in this country.

Next up is a melty-cheese-curry-doughnut. It tasted pretty much the same as any karepan (curry-filled fried bread popular in Japan) though.

So if you haven't done so yet, please visit the original article to support our JibTV blogging team! Subscribe to the RSS while you are there ;-)

Testing Green Tea Cola Taste

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:44:02 PDT

Take note, there is a link to my old Pepsi Cucumber video in this vid too!

Video of Robots Cooking Japanese Food

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:37:41 PDT

Haaaawesome. And very scary when severed-arm-sushi-bot comes out.

Robots demonstrate excellent “cooking skills” in the “FOOMA JAPAN 2009” exhibition of food processing machinery that opened on Tuesday, June 9 at Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo’s Koto Ward.

ねえ知ってる？Do you know about Mameshiba?

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:10:59 PDT

This is a playlist; it should keep playing all the CMs if you let it.

Perhaps no breed of dog is more common in Japan than the shiba-inu. It's very name can connotate the word dog for Japanese people. Enter the mame-shiba. Mame-shiba are cute little dog-bean crossbreeds that appear in very odd commercials, that stop you in your tracks with their jarring cuteness. The commercials usually have somebody about to each when suddenly out pops one of the mameshiba, who says "ねえ知ってる？" (Hey, did ya know...) and proceeds to relate a kind of gross fact that makes the poor listening character loose their apetite. Mame means bean, and shiba refers to a intrinsically Japanese breed of dog.

Bearing this phenomenon in mind, it was only natural that when I saw a gashapon machine with a Mame-shiba theme, I had to try it. I had no idea what would pop out, I had never bought a gashapon toy in Japan before, and as far as I knew, figurines usually pop out. To my surprise, a small, rather flat pouch was what I got. Inside were a few cute products.

First, this is pistachio-dog in paper-doll form:

And these are a couple trading cards that popped out. The one on the left has pop-out stickers. The one on the right says "Hey, did you know? If you shave a polar bear it turns black I heard."

Here's the back of the card, explaining the trivial knowledge our bean-dog has bestowed upon us. The card also explains that pistachio-dog is a very shy breed of bean dog.

If you live in Japan, keep an eye out for this collectible! I recently ran into them in toy form too; you can see one of the famous commercials playing in the middle of the display.

Let's Yoji: The road ahead

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:59:45 PDT

前途 (zento) is a word that expresses one's prospects, or the path in life that lays ahead. It shows up in a few interesting yoji, so let's take a look at some breakdowns. I'll separate them into first the statements of a tough road, and then the statements of a more optimistic future.

前途遼遠
前 zen: front
途 to: road
遼 ryou: distant
遠 en: distant
遼遠: remote, far off
gloss: one's goal is far off; the dream has a long way to go
part of speech: keiyoudoushi (na-adj)
--
前途多難
多 ta: many/multi
難 nan:hardship
多難: many hardships
gloss: grim prospects; the road ahead will be tough
PoS: keiyoudoushi

I'm sure people follow these two yoji up with, "...でも頑張りましょう" (but hey, let's do our best!).

Here's some positive ones. They are all about the same, so I combined the gloss. Also note all the shared kanji and definitions within these words (多 appeared above).

前途多望
望 bou: ambition, hope, aspirations, etc.
多望: promising
PoS: keiyoudoushi
--
前途有望
有 yuu: exist, possess
有望: promising
PoS:keiyoudoushi
--
前途有為
為 i: advantage, benifit (and many more)
有為: promising
PoS: keiyoudoushi OR no-adj
--
前途洋々
洋 you: ocean
々: ditto mark
洋々: vast (doubling up words is a kind of plural in Japanese)
--
gloss of them all: to have a bright future

If we want to look outside of the 前途, we can also make a bonus yoji that shares kanji with the above, 有為多望, which is a synonym for our optimistic words.

One last one that is very close to these but lacks a 途 is:

前程万里
程 tei: extent, degree
万 ban: myriad, everything
里 ri: the Japanese mile
万里: a great distance
gloss: bright future, limitless possibilities.

Entertainers Burn their Unmentionables with Medicine

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:09:00 PDT

As the Japanese TV often warns, 家ではこれをまねしないでください (don't try this at home, kids).

Followup: Why is 仙台 Named so Strangely?

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:24:01 PDT

Yesterday I neglected to include 仙台 (Sendai, a city in Japan) in the magical hermit post*, because I thought it didn't match at all. But when Alex brought it up in the comments, I decided to look in Wikipedia. It says,

At this time, Sendai was written as 千代 (which literally means "a thousand enerations"), because a temple with a thousand Buddha statues (千体, sentai) used to be located in Aobayama. Masamune changed the kanji to 仙臺, which later became 仙台 (which literally means "hermit on a platform"). The kanji was taken from a Chinese poem that praised a palace created by the Emperor Wen of Han China, comparing it to a mythical palace in the Kunlun Mountains. It is said that Masamune chose this kanji so that the castle would prosper as long as a mountain inhabited by an immortal hermit.

Turns out that the city's name has a pretty cool back story after all. Learning gets.

BTW on the kanji above, 体 is a counter for humanoid forms, such as statues. 臺 is just the old form of 台.
--
* Magical hermit post is so the next blogging craze.

Japanese they don't teach: Hermits

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:50:41 PDT

I've been studying a lot lately, and during my breaks I often spend a few minutes (and I do try to keep it to just a few) exercising lightly or playing old Japanese Snes games to let my brain rest a bit. A recent game I've been into is a fung shui room builder/rpg game called Chaos Seed which is kind... unique. Anyways, I noticed the kanji 仙 (sen) gets throw around a lot, so I thought I would tell you about some of it's uses that I found.

First off, its basic meaning is hermit, which in Asian culture seems to also mean wizard or immortal. I recall finding when I read about a mosaic at a Bangkok palace that within the omnipresent monkey king-related traditions of Asia hermits seem to crop up a lot and they often have magical powers. I think it's the influence of ancient Taoism with its immortals. Immortals, like hermits, often dwell in the mountains, so I think this is why they are equivocated. This is all my armchair-summation of Asian mysticism, but I think I got the gist of it.

So here are some of the interesting words I found after 仙 started to intrigue me:

◆ 仙人 [sen'nin] (n) (1) immortal mountain wizard (in Taoism), mountain man (esp. a hermit), (2) one not bound by earthly desires or the thoughts of normal men.
◆ 仙窟 [senkutsu] (n) enchanted cave
◆ 仙女 [senjyo] [sen'nyu] [sen'nyo](n) fairy, nymph, elf
◆ 仙丹 [sentan] (n) the elixir (of life) [there's that immortality I'm talking about]
◆ 仙薬 [senyaku] (n) panacea, elixir (of life)
◆ 仙境 [senkyou] or 仙郷 [senkyou] (n) fairyland, enchanted land
◆ 仙術 [senjyutsu] (n) wizardry, secret of immortality
◆ 仙界 [senkai] (n) dwelling place of hermits, pure land away from the world
◆ 登仙 [tousen] (n,vs) becoming a saint, death of a high-ranking person
◆ 羽化登仙 [ukatousen] (n) a sense of release (as if one had wings and were riding on air)
◆ 神仙 [shisen] (n) (1) mountain wizard, god

A couple that don't have much to do with the running theme:

◆ 歌仙 [kasen] or 詩仙 [shisen] (n) great poet
◆ 酒仙 [shusen] (n) heavy drinker [drunken master? Nah, that would be 酔拳 (すいけん, drunken fist)]

I also found talk of the 八仙 (hassen, the eight immortals) on Wikipedia. They remind me of the 七福神 (shichifukujin, seven gods of good luck) of Japan. Oh and speaking of them, once I made a mistake asked an old lady shopkeep how much her 七面鳥 (shichimenchou, meaning turkey, which quite far from a god of luck) figurines cost. We had a good laugh at that.

If you are in term overload, maybe this movie about immortals will recharge your brain. It's like a Chinese lord of the rings.
And yes, there are more parts to this movie on YouTube.

EDIT: Hope you didn't miss the follow-up post.

Green Tea Cola

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:22:32 PDT

Seems a new flavor of Coke will soon be with us. Like a soon to debut Pepsi product, it too has the flavor of a green leaf, but of a different species. It has no calories (which means it will taste even weirder), and has catechin. Catechin is a thing in green tea that helps people be skinny in Japan. It comes out on the 8th. I'll try one out.

I was recently offered 100 bucks to send six bottles of the aforementioned new flavor of Pepsi, which is the flavor of shiso, to an associate in the states. We often get shiso leaves with traditional Japanese dishes, such as sashimi. I've only ever seen one person eat them, and she was a foreigner. In any case, I think the tea cola will beat the shiso cola.

More info, in Japanese, about the new coke is here.

Yummy

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:40:19 PDT

This is a 狛犬 (koma-inu, or lion-dog) they often guard Shinto Shrines, but this one is on house duty. He had really bad breath, even for a dog.

Let's Yoji: 屍山血河

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:52:35 PDT

Yesterday I brought news of the Evil Dead Japanese musical. I can't help but wonder if the Japanese Ash will utter the word 屍山血河 (shizanketsuga) after carving a swath through some deadites. Tell us what the words mean before we kill you Clay! Okay! Time for the B-b-b-b-breakdown!

The breakdown for 屍山血河
屍 shi: corpse (an uncommon kanji)
山 san (rendakued to zan): mountain
血 ketsu: blood
河 ka (rendakued to ga): river (an older character than the usual 川)
collective gloss: mountains of corpses and rivers of blood
rank: super rare= impress your Japanese friends
alternative spellings: 尸山血河
alternative readings: しざんけっか

Though this yoji has little practical application, I find it cool. That first kanji, 屍, is found in some good words for us supernatural buffs. For instance 僵屍 (kyonshi, usually written in katakana because them kanji is teh hards) which is the word for Chinese hopping vampire. You may enjoy a post I did recently about the Hopping Vampire boom of the 80s.
Another cool word is 生ける屍 (ikerushikabane), meaning the living dead. I found a book named 生ける屍の死　(death of the undead) that looks promising; I'll tuck it into my wishlist for now in preparation for when my life gets resurrected from study hell.

Another cool yoji that shares the concept and this 屍 character is 死屍累々(shishiruirui).

The breakdown for 死屍累々
死 shi: death
累 rui: accumulate, trouble
々: kanji ditto mark
累々ruirui: in heaps
collective gloss: piles of bodies
rank: common enough to be understood

This one easy to remember because of how it's said. I think these days you'll see it used most in video games or to describe the reader count of this blog.

[J source]

Evil Dead the Musical in Japan!

claytonian@gmail.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:50:56 PDT

As I am studying for the JLPT, I have not been going out lately. I am so tempted to make an exception for this show, which is running right through the day of the test. Maybe I could get a ticket for that night (July 5th) to reward myself for so bravely facing the horrors of the test yet again.

Ikebukuro, the Sunshain Gekijyou (Sunshine theater)--
Sam Rami's classic has been remade as a musical. Already a success off broadway, it has come to Japan too (6/25 through 7/5). Bruce obviously is out on this one, so the star is this pretty boy. You can speck tickets here.
[J Article]

Interestingly the Japanese title of the Evil Dead series is 死霊のはらわた, which translates to corpse guts. The third film in the series became--I kid you not-- キャプテン・スーパーマーケット (Captain Supermarket).

Since I seem to be addicted to embedding YouTube vids, here is an old Japanese promo for the second movie: