The Hopeless Romantic

Karaoke: Star Wars Episode... Uh, One?

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:55:29 PST

Unfortunately, I could not find lyrics attached to a video, but the Uga Uga site has confirmed that they do have this song! I give you Star Wars with disco treatment, a small cantina diversion, and Japanese lyrics. Yay!

スター・ウォーズのテーマ～カンテナバンド

But if you are someone that can bust out a guitar and steal our girlfriends, I also have this for you:

帝国のマーチ

Japanese Study Links

I Need a Karaoke Hero

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:17:07 PST

I love finding Japanese translations of world-famous songs. See if you can recognize this one. Protip: I gave everything away with my clever title.

麻倉未稀　ヒーロー　（カラオケ）

Japanese Study Links

Claytonian Wrote a Children's Book? Introducing: Green Zombie Green Zombie What Do You See?

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:16:24 PDT

Everyone probably remembers Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? This book, which I made in Adobe Illustrator, is a send up of Brown Bear that is designed to be both spooky and educational. I use it to teach at an international preschool here in Japan, so the focus was on vocabulary and Halloween fun. It was a hit when I read it this morning from my Android Tablet; the kids made me read it twice!

View Green Zombie Green Zombie What Do You See? here.

A couple notes:
Unlike the original books, "looking at me" is not the verbage used in this book, but you can use it when you narrate to children if you don't like the verbs/pace I chose.

Rokurokubi is a Japanese monster. You may need to practice saying the name out loud. Ghoul is an Arabic monster, and it just means basically monster, goblin, or boggart in my mind.

I may add to this book next year (rainbow blobs, anyone?) as well as find a technical way to emulate brush strokes like the original book has. So check back next October too!

Japanese Study Links

億劫: In Japanese, Sometimes a Task Can Take Aeons.

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:02:43 PDT

Image ripped (lovingly) from the Buddhist Freedom Ledger.

Lately, I share a lot of kanji, words, and phrases from Japanese in my twitter stream, but today's word demands a bit more of an explanation. Plus it has one of my favorite units of time built into it: the kalpa.

How long is a kalpa, you ask? In Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, they explain it this way sometimes: Imagine an immense block of stone. Every century, an angel decends from heaven to give the stone a brief wipe with a silky cloth. That stone will be worn down a little at a time by this process. But the stone will be gone long before a kalpa can finish.

Less poetically, some clock a kalpa at 4.32 billion years.

Anyways, looking at today's word, 億劫 okku, meaning troublesome or annoying, we can see the kanji 億 (100 million) and 劫 (a kalpa). So it refers to a task that would take 100 million kalpas, or 4.32x10^17 years. Very troublesome indeed.
--
Bonus kalpa fun: A webcomic. The kalpa part comes around panel 31.

Japanese Study Links

California Komachi

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:01:25 PDT

I encountered these ladies in the streets of Shibuya after missing the last train home on Christmas Eve*. They were in full mouse (cat?) costume and handing out leaflets. Today I finally found their leaflet and looked them up. They go by the name of カリフォルニア小町 (The California Town-beauties). I never knew that small+town=town belle before I started this post. I'll teach you one more word:表現する (hyougen suru): to express a concept. In the video, they use gymnastics to create cheesy images of famous Indian things. Their artistic merits are moot, but I just think they should keep the masks off.

*Don't worry, I met random foreigners and we all went to the best room at Karaoke Hiroba. Excellent Christmas Eve, that.

Japanese Study Links

Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Lesson 1: Screw Aisatsu, Is That a Dog?

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:16:14 PDT

I'm not going to teach you aisatsu (greetings) with this, the first Japanese lesson of a series that will teach you every last thing about Japanese. Why? Because you will hear that crap a million times a day if you come to Japan or take in their media! Instead, I'm going to teach you some hiragana (syllabic characters) and kanji (ideographic characters) and even characters from one more writing system.

Sample conversation between two people:

Person 2 (In response to something person 1 said earlier):ああ？
That? [points to something which he expects the other party to look to]

Person 1: ん。　　。。。。えっ？！木？
Yup. ...What?! [realizes what they are really seeing] A Tree?

ええ。。。。
Yeah...

犬と。。。。
I thought it was a dog...

アーア！
Oh come on!

And thus ends a conversation between two friends about how one mentioned a thing (before we overhear them), the other tried to clarify, then the first person at first just confirmed but then realized that the thing he thought was a dog was actually a tree, disgusting the second person. This conversation has probably never taken place, but that is not important!

Okay, so what's the deal? How do I read this? Well, I'm going to include a hiragana chart below this paragraph in the post. At some point, I'll redesign the site to have it float in a handy place, but for now consult the chart for each character. Can you find あ, ん, え, っ, 木, 犬, と, ア, and ー? Well, no, because two of these symbols, 木 and 犬, are not hiragana but kanji (also, two more symbols, ア and ー, aren't hiragana either, but hold on for them and look for all the other characters I listed). As for those pesky kanji, 木 is read き (consult the chart again) and 犬 is read いぬ (that's two characters for the price of one). We'll get to their respective meanings in the vocabulary if you can't tell from the translations above, but if you are smart, you have probably noticed a few other things about the moronic conversation of this lesson...

For instance, they have 。s instead of periods. Well, technically, 。s are only supposed to be used in vertical writing (traditional Japanese is read top to bottom, from the right side of the page to the left, or have you actually not already learned this from the Wikipedia article on Japanese before starting your very hard linguistic journey?), and Western style punctuation is supposed to be used when writing horizontally (which is read from left to right like English for reasons that elude me) but fun fact: Every last Japanese person has disregarded that rule of style for generations to the point it's not even common knowledge anymore.

The proceeding run-on sentence/paragraph/parenthetical-parse-monster was to emphasize a sad fact about studying Japanese: You won't get much help from J peeps when doing it. Seriously, most of them forget what verbs and nouns are, let alone period rules. You don't know what a noun is either? Then seriously, taking up a new language is not for you. I don't expect you to know the word parse (see sentence one of this paragraph-monster) however, but you will have to learn how to parse like a boss to figure out Japanese, so keep that in mind too. And like I said, no help from the natives. Don't even try.

You will also have to learn how to pic up on what people are talking about without using many subjects. If the subject is the least bit understood in Japanese, it is left out. Check out that first sentence, "ああ?" That sound means something like, "in yon way/style/manner/thingy?" Yeah, yon isn't used much in English these days, but it is a useful way to approach ああ. I'll teach you words for "this" and "that" some other time, but right now, the guy is talking about yon thing, whatever it is. Yon could also be an action or a concept. Of course, we would probably just say "that" in modern English, but I want to remind you that yon things are a little different from that things. Yon things are removed a bit from both the people in the conversation, either physically or psychologically.

How do you say ああ though? Well, exactly like あ, but for two mora instead of one. Mora is a word that kinda means a beat in linguistic terms (also, oddly enough, mora is totally an English word too; get used to learning English in these Japanese lessons). All Japanese syllables happen in the space of a mora, and generally, all moras uttered in one breath will be the same length if uttered by a native speaker. Utterly. There can be tones that alter the pitch, but I ain't planning on touching those as I have wooden ears. Lost them in the war.

But wait, at the end of the silly dog-tree conversation I see アーア. If I look on a katakana chart (for that's what these willy characters are called, as you can see below this paragraph), I see ア is also pronounced like an a sound, but I thought that was what あ does! Well, confused me, who is a stand-in for the audience, let me explain: Japan has two syllabaries that cover the same sounds. However, ー isn't likely to be found on either chart. But what it does is lengthen sounds. Usually just for katakana, but sometimes it gets hiragana fever too. So アーア is pronounced kinda like AaAh, if you interpret the captical a's as higher tones. Crap, I thought I wasn't gonna let myself get dragged into a tonal conversation. Monotone for me, thanks.

One more trick! っ is not the same as the hiragana chart つ. The little one is used in this case to indicate a kind of clipped sound, caused by a glottal stop of the sound of the character that proceeds it.

So to summarize, 3 writing systems combined in the same sentences, dropped subjects, implications everywhere, western punctuation can happen (but ellipses have four dots), everything said in even beats, yon mountains call to the dog. Or was it tree? Could have been trees. We'll get to the ambiguity of plurals in later lessons.
This is a beautiful way to begin an explanation of a super hard language to learn. Yes sir.

So, homework time. Find a hiragana practice chart somewhere and print out something that you can trace. Make sure it includes stroke order arrows. Look up Japanese writing system on Wikipedia if you haven't already (don't try to memorize it; save some brain space). Enter the terms below into a memory system or program of some sort (*cough* Anki *cough*), and check their pronunciation using the audio at wwwjdic (linked in the right toolbar).

Next time, maybe I'll start feeding you kanji and verbs (Holy crap did I just do a lesson with out verbs? I see what I did there).

Vocab:
ああ yon (that way)
ん nasally grunt of agreement
えっ ejaculation of surprise
木 tree(s)
ええ sound of confirmation
犬 dog
と a particle that effectively quotes whatever proceeds it.
In this case, to give the sense that this person was thinking about a dog (the word thought is not said anywhere in the sentence though, as it is often dropped and this is the first lesson anyways).
アーア sound of exasperation

Questions? I promise this silly post was not a trolling of you, and it will get easier to grok, but maybe I can answer some queries in the comments section of this post.

Japanese Study Links

On absences and the future

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:06:02 PDT

If you are someone who checks this site via RSS, then you likely haven't noticed my absence. If you are one who checks personally, you probably noticed then stopped checking, making the rest of this post moot, but I go on.

The main reason I never blog anymore is: lack of a comfy chair. I need some lumbar support.
Other reasons include:
The beauty of sharing via google as oppossed to writing a whole post
Being very tired from teaching 3 year olds every day
Trying to keep something of a social life going
Trying to read all the things
Trying to play all the things

But if you would like to make a request for future topics, feel free to do so in the comments. Much more pressure with a visible audience. You can make your comments here or on buzz or Google+ or Facebook or wherever you see this post.

I have been toying with the ideas of 1)writing a comprehensive guide to Japanese from the ground up and 2)writing more roleplaying ideas. Obviously those don't belong in the same blog, but my extra blog sites always fall by the wayside.

Also, bout time I redesigned the blog. There is already a mobile version active. Maybe "The Hopeless Romantic" needs to be changed for a new title too. Whadoyathink?

Japanese Study Links

Evil Magistrates of Japan Past 悪代官

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:39:58 PDT

There has been a bit of an in joke in Japan that I have been thinking about for a while now but not really sure or the details. Basically it goes like this, there is an evil magistrate, called the 悪代官 (akudaikan: aku, evil+ daikan, magistrate). He appears in many period pieces and plays, but I can't find any evidence so far of an actual TV show about the character. He is deprived and lecherous, the epitome of corruption by power.

His signature move is the sash-pull, or 帯まわし (obimawashi: obi, sash+ mawashi, spin), where he pulls the sash off a poor kimono wearing girl from the local area. This is actually supposed to be funny, and his abashed victim always screams out あれ？！ (are, the sound of surprise) while being helplessly spun around. Everybody in Japan seems to know the joke, and you will sometimes see it referenced in pop culture.

The evil magistrate character stars in his own video games as well. In the video below, I've set it to start at the end of his sash-pulling mini game, so you can see the results.

You can also see the slot machine version here, which features things like cosplay, tickle-torturing kunoichi (ninja women), and the youjinbou (bodyguard) character.

And for extra credit, study up on Evil Magistrate sayings here.

Japanese Study Links

Frogs is the Craziest Peoples カエルのこころ

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 23 May 2011 02:26:43 PDT

I can't recall where I ran across this one, but while going through my photos, I found that I had snapped a pic of a frog in an anthropomorphized position. After a little googling,it seem that these images come from a postcard book available on amazon. If you like frogs doing people stuff--who doesn't?!-- or if you would like an odd taste of the everyday in Japan through a froggy perspective, maybe this book is for you.

Here is a post with more of these frogs/books.
I also found カエル国へようこそ！ (Welcome to frog country).

Japanese Study Links

Why I'm Not Leaving 'Till I Start to Glow Green

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:47:15 PDT

The 20-20 hindsight! It does nothing!

My post on not leaving Yokohama during these turbulent times has been published at the JibTV site. Check it out.
Also, I post for them occasionally, so enjoy some backlogs.

Japanese Study Links

More Crisis Vocab

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:07:26 PDT

Edit: corrected a couple things in this post and the last. Commenter wanted to remain anonymous, so I'm deleting what they said...

We'll start on a term related to the last in our previous post. Keep in mind I don't know why these words were chosen, and I haven't necessarily heard them, but I am putting them into my own English and context, and confusingly mathematical looking meaning breakdowns. I hope you remember junior high math order. Also, for some practical nuclear words, check out this list.

天譴論 (tenkenron, (heaven+reproach)+theory) the belief that heaven is punishing us for our iniquities. 天譴, tenken, on its own means divine punishment.

水火 (suika, water+fire) flooding and fire. Used in 水火の苦しみ (suika no kurushimi) to mean great hardships. xの苦しみ is a common pattern in times like these; just fill in the x with the bad situation of your liking.

漏洩 (rouei, leak+leak) leakage. Especially recently, of radiation.

待避 (taihi, wait+avoid) wait for danger to pass, or make way for emergency vehicles.
退避 (taihi, escape+avoid) run away or take shelter from danger. Note this is a homophone for the previous item.

被災漁船 (hisaigyousen, (incur+calamity)+(fishing+boat)) a boat in the the wrong place at the wrong time that falls victim to a disaster. Like those ships that got swept inland by the Tsunami.

殺処分 (satsushoubun, kill+(dispose+portion)) killing off animals to avoid zoonoses (disease that humans can catch from animals). I think this one comes about because a lot of people can't donate blood if they lived in mad cow disease-laden countries. Unless I missed yet another bird flu story recently.

私利私欲 (shirishiyoku, (self+profit)+(self+avarice)) selfish desires. 私欲, shiyoku, and 私利, shiri,can mean self-interest on their own too.

Which brings us back to the governor of Tokyo, who said that we are suffering a form of tenken for our shiyoku. He apologized, but someone may well satsushoubun him from his political party if he's not careful with what he says. He'd better taihi until this scandal blows over.

Japanese Study Links

Vocab from the 2011 Quake and Fukushima Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:04:32 PDT

I'm just going to provide some short translations of interesting words I found on the Practical Japanese blog, which has many helpful topical entries each day. Sub it if you know how to read Japanese. Here we go!

安否 (anpi, safe+no): safety, well-being. Think safe or not.

耐震性 (taishinsei, (x-proof+quake)+nature): Earthquake-proofness.

憂慮 (yuuro, anxious+fear): anxiety or concern. The sentence 憂慮すべき状況 would be "disturbing circumstances," or more literally "things are in a state you should fear."

空焚き (karadaki, empty+cook): heating an empty vessel that would usually have water, or that has lost it. Seen in 空焚き状態, the reactors being hot last night without an incoming water supply to cool them.

不透明感 (futoumei, opaque+ kan, feeling): Unclear feeling. Being unsure what to do next. Indecisiveness.

点検漏れ (tenkenmore, (spot+examine)+omission): Something that was overlooked during a check. A blind-spot in the prevention plans. Like a tsunami taking out your generators after an earthquake.

多選 (tasen, many+election): Being elected many times. I think this one refers to the crazy governor of Tokyo.

Well, my lunch-break is over, so more later!

Japanese Study Links

Me in Yokohama, a Few Days After the Quake ＊wobble＊

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:53:48 PDT

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The Quake: A Video with Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:26:45 PST

I'm fine, but many are not.

Japanese Study Links

Tweeting the Great 2011 Japan Earthquake

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:07:17 PST

I am fine so far. If you want to see events as they happen, I have been tweeting constantly since yesterday.
My twitter.
ALSO a large collection of Japan earthquake tweeters is here: http://twitter.com/#!/redjoe/japan-quake-3

Japanese Study Links

Homeless Japanese Dudes Really Like Me

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 06:37:42 PST

Well, I suspect they just like Western-looking people in general. The reason being somehow they caught on to the fact that Western culture has a strong tradition of charity. Japan, on the other hand, has a culture of 恩返し (ongaeshi,gratitude+return). Someone gives you a gift and then you try to return it or pay it forward to someone lower on the pecking order.

Odd image via Nippon Cinema

When NOVA went under, we started to hear stories of out of work English teachers getting food from their former students. But a lot of those students then sat themselves or their child down for a free English lesson. Expecting something in return is not charity, so if you want charity a foreigner is a good person to go to.

Often I am accosted by gentlemen of the homeless persuasion at larger train stations around here. They always address me in English to ask for money. I, having mixed feelings about what they will spend their money on, often counter with, "おにぎりは?" (How about a riceball?). They always walk away, though I genuinely am offering.

Tonight I walked into my local Dokihotei to buy some weights. A rather unwashed-looking gentleman followed me in, said "HELLO!" and thrust out a left hand, bedecked in fungusy nails, for me to reluctantly shake. I tried to wave bye-bye, but he followed me throughout the store, cornering me near my quarry, a set of adjustable dumbbells. After a weird show of strength with forearm exercise pincers, he started to ask me in Japanese for money. I gave my usual onigiri counter offer, and he raised for bread. Deal. He wanted to carry my heavy purchase for me, but as I am not from an ongaeshi culture, I couldn't let him. Maybe that was insensitive of me; I don't know the rules that well. Anyways, he got the bread, and I got to to thinking, so the end result is a blog post.
--
Virtue is its own reward.
徳はそれ自体が報いである。

Japanese Study Links

Free Porn at McDonald's Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 06:00:56 PST

Controversial subject matter, much Clay? Well I haven't blogged for a while so had to come back strong, right?

Our story begins with me trying to not deported by visiting my old town, Kumagaya, in Saitama to take care of some paperwork. I notice that there is now a McDonald's next to the station, so I stop in for a quick lunch.

Oh, what have we here? Free literature for perusing whilst consuming. How thoughtful of the establishment. The title of this periodical is something like Literature Monthly (Bungeishunjū, 文藝春秋). Surely deep stuff. As you can see, the store's name is on it to let the reader know exactly who the literature belongs to.

Hmmm. A pictorial piece? The title is 怯懦なわたし (Cowardly Me) by Kishin Shinoyama. Hmmm. That name sounds a little familiar. Reading on...

Oh. (Censored, because unlike MickyDees, I don't give this stuff away for free)

Now, the true irony of finding this in a McDonalds where anybody can see it, is because the accompanying interview is basically about the controversy of Shinoyama's work (nsfw link). See, he got in trouble recently when he took some of his nude shots in very public locations. So, despite what the title of this blog post says, some would argue that it is not actually porn, but art. Try telling that to your wife when you flick through the mag while sitting next to your kids, dads.
Further reading in Japanese.

Japanese Study Links

Tama Hoooooooooooooome

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 07:38:57 PST

Japan rips off Deep Purple. I rip off Japan. Vid:

So you can see one Tama home CM in that video, here is a new one where they prove my point and replace Tama Hooooooome with chirashi (flyer, as in the damn flyers I get shoved in my mailbox everyday):

If you want more of the Kuraray CMs, visit this post.

This isn't the only vid I've made with a guest recently by the way. This one stars butt biting bug of Japan fame more prominently:

Japanese Study Links

A Couple TRICK CMs Starring Yukie

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:57:05 PST

Two things remain constant: My love of the dorama TRICK and the willingness of Japanese celebrities to appear in commercials. These combine into the embedded videos below, two of which star Nakama Yukie.

First we have a tricky cup noodle CM, which came out in time to promote the new movies this year:

Here we see Yamada utter a variation on her famous line "I see what you did there!" (I may have changed the nuance on that line a bit ;-):
And no, I can't tell you how something made out of wheat and hops is different from beer.

And next an ad for the DS game. I need to get that.

Japanese Study Links

Japanese Horse Guy Buys Himself a Very Special Present

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 05:26:00 PST

I am scheduling this post way ahead of time, so if I die or something and it shows up, know that I am not posting from beyond the grave. Yet.
Anyways this is technically a Christmas video in which a guy buys himself all the energy drinks and tries to drink/eat them.

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Karaoke: The City Lights Make One Yearn for Companionship

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:14:45 PDT

While perusing my copy of 常識として知っておきたい日本語 (Japanese Everyone Should Know), I ran across 巷の灯り (chimata no ikari, the lights of the streets). It refers to the glow of a city at night, and maybe worldly delights/the profane (I'm not always clear at what the author is getting at because he waxes poetic about phrases).

It's not a phrase that lends well to googling the nuance thereof, but I did discover an nice old song with a related title: 街の灯り (machi no akari, the lights of the streets). Yeah the titles are one kanji apart and the nuance I can only guess at, but the song makes me feel all good and lonesome, especially as I sit here trying to figure out what to do for Christmas break and lament the lack of blog readers that could fill me in on the nuances of 巷 vs 街.　Make my linguistic Christmas dreams come true, Hopeless Readers.

So a karaoke vid is embedded below (my preferred singer is here in case you need to know how to sing it):

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Karaoke: The English version vs the Japanese

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 12:20:17 PST

Check it: The English language version of Save the Last Dance for me:

Versus the Japanese:

A bit different. Sing those back to back for fun.

Japanese Study Links

Japanese Zombies Are the Standard

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:16:53 PST

I used to think the plethora of anime out there represented the fact that the Japanese are creative. Then I taught their middle schoolers, who couldn't imagine their way outside of an... imaginary... box thing. After that I started to look at anime and Japanese culture a little more scrutibly. I scruted the heck out of it. My conclusion is that the culture stifles creative impulses. But such impulses are human nature, and so they will come to the fore in some way while still remaining true to the national idioms. I leave you with video evidence, but before I do, let me make it clear I still love living here. One friend of mine said something understandable on the subject: "I love living in Japan, but I hate the boring Japanese people I have to live in it with."

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About Being an Extra in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:30:24 PST

The teeming masses of readership of this blog (my aunt) have been bugging me for a while to share my extraing experience. I've done only one gig so far. I didn't even get paid for (not) appearing in Zebraman II.
But here is the video:

And now some pics cause I just talk in my entertainingly quaint way in the vid:

A view of the track field and camerateers

A view of your protagonist getting ready for his big scene in the bleachers

In the train on the way home I spotted a Takashi Miike spot on a tabloid advertisement. As his film was the first thing I ever extra-ed on, I thought it a nice nod by the universe. Sup, Universe! I see what you did there.

Japanese Study Links

In Japanese, White People Have No Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:31:16 PST

What? The post title sounds like what-ism? Wait, I haven't even talked about the black people part. Hello? Did you just hang up in the middle of my blog post? How do you even do that?

This time I am going to talk about something that was one of those things where I turned to the J girl I was dating and was like, I bet x is true about the Japanese language. And she was like what are you talking about. And then I looked it up and was all, yeah I was right! Kind of. For the dumb luck reasons. And then she's like, huh.

See there is this word, 素人 (shirouto) that means beginner, and this other word, 玄人 (kurouto) that means expert and they are antonyms. Know that the 人 in both of them means person. Based on their pronunciation*, I figured that they were at one time written as the much more intuitive 白人 and 黒人. Of course, if you can read simple Japanese you know that 白人 and 黒人 mean white person and black person respectively, and these days they refer to races. But back in the day they referred to beginners and experts.

From the sources I looked into, it's not clear how 白 (white) became 素 (foundation) (I had just figured it was to avoid confusion once white dudes started visiting Japan, but don't see any support for or against that). 素 could refer to the baseness of the beginner. The character for white used back in the day referred to a white-painted performer (I would hazard they mean geisha-like performers).

I also folk-etymologized myself into thinking that one gets a little dirty with experience. Nah, they just used the opposite kanji character than that of white.Gogen says that 玄 has "profoundly not plain" nuance, as opposed to 黒 (black). Even though Gogen wasn't sure about why they switched up the white kanji, it's cool with the reason for the black one.

白人 and 黒人 came along later, I guess, but it's amusing to this white boy to note that 白人 is still listed as being both a racial classification and a reference to beginners even to this day. Also, prostitutes. 黒人 is just a race. Or at least a skin color; I don't know if it implies geographical or anthropological concepts. Race is kinda silly and divisive concept anyways.

*: To summarize phonetic and kanji changes:
白人 shirohito -> 白人 shirauto -> 白人 shirouto -> 素人 shirouto
黒人 kurohito -> 玄人 kurouto

Japanese Study Links