<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><rss xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0"><channel><title>The Hopeless Romantic and His Adventures in Japan</title><link>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/</link><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WVXf" /><description>Peccadilloes in Nippon and Nipponese with a Quixotic Perspective. Coming at you from Yokohama, near Tokyo.</description><language>en</language><managingEditor>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</managingEditor><lastBuildDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 21:29:33 PDT</lastBuildDate><generator>Blogger http://www.blogger.com</generator><openSearch:totalResults xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">1089</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><feedburner:info uri="blogspot/wvxf" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><item><title></title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/rj_qANPndbM/a-lot-of-these-characters-are-not.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 15:38:05 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-8526481928835790405</guid><description>A lot of these characters are not really used in Japanese, but this is one of the quickest guides to how kanji work I've seen.
&lt;center&gt;
&lt;iframe src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/shaolan_learn_to_read_chinese_with_ease.html" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;
&lt;center&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;
&lt;center&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&lt;/center&gt;
&lt;center&gt;
&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;
Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/rj_qANPndbM" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2013-05-10T07:38:05.961+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-lot-of-these-characters-are-not.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Karaoke: Love is Blue</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/hb_9rLA80Xc/karaoke-love-is-blue.html</link><category>nostalgia</category><category>karaoke practice</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:04:05 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-652929876650303462</guid><description>Older readers may be familiar with Paul Mauriat. He is a composer that was very big in Japan. Japan made superstars (in Japan) out of many instrumental music makers (see the popularity of &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.jp/2010/08/karaoke-ventures-actually-are-perfect.html"&gt;The Ventures&lt;/a&gt; in a previous karaoke post).&lt;br /&gt;
I only became cognizant of him after being intrigued by a track of his in the 20th Century Boys movie. But the man provided the background music of my childhood. Here is one of songs, that was a hit in America, in three languages&lt;br /&gt;
Japanese:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="375" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Uwi4hz71nbs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
French:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nD4ib9-laGY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
English:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m8PJxkGdMac" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Or perhaps you are a purist and just want &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9FYD1dlw4E"&gt;the orchestral version&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;
I have a French-fluent coworker, so I think we will tag-team this song. &lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/hb_9rLA80Xc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2013-03-29T11:04:05.467+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/Uwi4hz71nbs/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/05/karaoke-love-is-blue.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Karaoke: Webster City Connection Found</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/7M0VCvIuAog/karaoke-webster-city-connection-found.html</link><category>karaoke practice</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:49:32 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-3225581264190616923</guid><description>I just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that this song existed. I &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.jp/2009/04/karaoke-practice-webster.html"&gt;already blogged that part&lt;/a&gt;, but I have now confirmed it is available at your closest Utauga karaoke outlet. You can look for it by the name シティコネクション (shite konekushion *snort*) or look for his other songs under エマニエル (emanieru).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YPcXV5m-jFE?fs=1" width="459"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Which is more impressive, this or that time &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHFDsTgZ7mA"&gt;Pink Lady had an American TV&lt;/a&gt; show? In any case, history is weirder than we were aware.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
BTW, yes, I know that most of the old karaoke posts on this site have been milleniumcopyrightact-axed. I'll try to work on fixing them. 
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;
&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;
Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/7M0VCvIuAog" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-03-29T23:49:32.690+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/YPcXV5m-jFE/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/03/karaoke-webster-city-connection-found.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Bless This Bathhouse from Thievery</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/8UjFqjnGrHA/bless-this-bathhouse-from-thievery.html</link><category>Sign and Ad Japanese</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:09:11 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-2915414648035060795</guid><description>After consulting with the girlfriendal unit, I determined that going to a sento may be the best way for me to get over this week-long stiff neck. A sento is a traditional Japanese bathhouse. I've been to onsens (hot-spring water bathhouses) plenty of times, but this was my first time to a sento. I could take a bath at home, but it would be very hard, and maybe the cost in gas would be about the same as the 450 yen to access a sento (I don't know).&lt;br /&gt;
One thing to keep in mind if you visit a bathhouse is that unlike most onsens, you need to take your own towels and soaps. Outside the sento doors, we discovered an interesting charm stuck to the wall. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KYQhF5JLLoQ/T28sKYEiNHI/AAAAAAAACRc/xTTrzmaM8Fw/s1600/-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KYQhF5JLLoQ/T28sKYEiNHI/AAAAAAAACRc/xTTrzmaM8Fw/s320/-1.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
It reads:盗賊除神璽 touzokujyoshinji, burglar abolish imperial?/divine-seal (this bathhouse is under holy protection from thievery). That last character usually refers to an emporer's seal, but 神璽 can refer to either the emporer's seal or &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Regalia_of_Japan"&gt;the Three Divine Regalia&lt;/a&gt;. Ultimately, it comes from 天(あま)つ璽(しるし) (The Mark of* Heaven), so I think this is actually referring to something like that in this case. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Also of note is that both 璽 and 盗 don't have the standard amount of strokes on this sign. Older/alternative forms, I'm guessing. &lt;br /&gt;
--&lt;br /&gt;
*つ is really old Japanese for の (of, the genitive particle).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/8UjFqjnGrHA" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-03-26T03:09:11.210+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KYQhF5JLLoQ/T28sKYEiNHI/AAAAAAAACRc/xTTrzmaM8Fw/s72-c/-1.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/03/bless-this-bathhouse-from-thievery.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Why Dost Arnold the Negger of Schwarze Say Chichinbuibui?</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/AE5SHFz1Hmk/why-dost-arnold-negger-of-schwarze-say.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:09:08 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-1859836881075451781</guid><description>Because that is what you say in Japanese instead of abracadabra. Video insanity:
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iU26Lm3Sf4Q" width="480"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;

&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;(visit the original post if you can't see the vid) Alright, he actually mispronounced it on purpose (a first in foreign celebrity CMs) to evoke the product name and cast a spell on your wallet.

&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;What is that phrase all about? Well if you scrape your knee, your Japanese mom will say ちちんぷいぷい、痛いの痛いの、飛んでけ Pain, pain, go away come again another day. She is invoking an ancient imperial spell! And she is Japanese, which may come to you as a shock unless that was already her ethnicity in which case business as usual, you Asianoid (is my fake word offensive? I wanna be Asianoidish... or Ahnoldish).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;As I said, it can be used as a generic magical phrase, but some think it originates with &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Kasuga" style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;the wet-nurse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;* of one of those Tokugawa dudes, who said to her young shogunling, "知仁武勇は御代の御宝".&amp;nbsp; And 知仁武勇 is pronounced ちじんぶゆう－ (I don't know why Wikipedia put that bar after a う, but let's just roll with it) which got mumbled enough to change euphonically. The phrase means "wisdom and military might are the treasure of our fine imperial house, so shut up and go to sleep".&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;Others think it comes from an old Buddhist word, 七里結界 (shichiri keikkai) which seems to be the establishing of 7 ri's† between you and the worldly world mcworld. Or really wanting to get away from people you hate (no really that is the second definition; I look all this crap up).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;BTW, abracadabra, presto-chango and the like are called おまじない in Japanese. ♪&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;i style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;The more you chant!&lt;/i&gt;♪&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
--&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
*funny thing, wet-nurse is pronounced mama in Japanese. Well, among other things and probably not properly, but still.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: normal;"&gt;
†:2.44 miles. Duh.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;
Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/AE5SHFz1Hmk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-03-09T02:09:08.106+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/iU26Lm3Sf4Q/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-dost-arnold-negger-of-schwarze-say.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>I always feel like a dancing camcorder is watching me</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/nuQSadXhooU/i-always-feel-like-dancing-camcorder-is.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:48:37 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-2383302315636411981</guid><description>If you have visited a Japanese theater in the last few years, you have seen the odd anti-piracy notice below. I was always perversely tempted to film this thing. Luckily someone else illegally put it on YouTube.
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bE5YhHn5WMI?fs=1" width="480"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Some wedding parties are starting to riff on it too.
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dg1x7LhErrM" width="480"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;

Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/nuQSadXhooU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-03-04T19:48:37.165+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/bE5YhHn5WMI/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-always-feel-like-dancing-camcorder-is.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>What Edan's Partner Was Singing About</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/aPIrwJ3XaKU/what-edans-partner-was-singing-about.html</link><category>J poetry/songs</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:56:10 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-5670450983628919545</guid><description>Today I finally solved a mystery that has been bugging me for like 10 years. What the heck was that kid singing about in Edan's old song Sing It, S***face?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/z4zjsZ4IGv4" width="480"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Turns out it was an old children's song called Futa'atsu (Doublings or just Two drawn out in a sing-song-style). The lyrics: ふたあつ （tune/山口保治・lyrics/まどみちお）&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
一、&lt;br /&gt;
ふたあつ　ふたあつ　なんでしょね&lt;br /&gt;
There are two, two, right?&lt;br /&gt;
お目々が　いちに　ふたつでしょ&lt;br /&gt;
One eye and two, &lt;br /&gt;
お耳も　ほらね　ふたつでしょ&lt;br /&gt;
And one ear plus two, eh.&lt;br /&gt;
二、&lt;br /&gt;
ふたあつ　ふたあつ　まだあって&lt;br /&gt;
There are another couple of things&lt;br /&gt;
お手々が　いちに　ふたつでしょ&lt;br /&gt;
One arm and another&lt;br /&gt;
あんよも　ほらね　ふたつでしょ&lt;br /&gt;
and two widdle wegs.&lt;br /&gt;
三、&lt;br /&gt;
まだまだ　いいもの　なんでしょか&lt;br /&gt;
But there is still another good thing&lt;br /&gt;
まあるい　あれよ　かあさんの&lt;br /&gt;
Those ro-ound things mom has&lt;br /&gt;
おっぱい　ほらね　ふたつでしょ&lt;br /&gt;
Breasts, see? There are two, aren't there.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
J children's songs have no compunction about mentioning breasts (or maybe flashing them with the final line?). See the theme song for dragon ball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
Also, in case you are wondering, all the body parts save for mammary glands in the song are mentioned in baby-language, which is usually a doubling of a given word, but anyo (legs/walking) is an exception.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
J Lyrics via &lt;a href="http://www.after-days.net/douyou/06_ha/06_3_20futaatsu.htm"&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;, where you can also hear the tune.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: left;"&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;
&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;
&lt;b&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/b&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/aPIrwJ3XaKU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-02-19T23:56:10.825+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/z4zjsZ4IGv4/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-edans-partner-was-singing-about.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Karaoke: Star Wars Episode... Uh, One?</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/3kuMViIi4EA/karaoke-star-wars-episode-uh-one.html</link><category>karaoke practice</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:55:29 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-575152461896690032</guid><description>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! &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;スター・ウォーズのテーマ～カンテナバンド&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fioVXnCgQ-U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
But if you are someone that can bust out a guitar and steal our girlfriends, I also have this for you:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;帝国のマーチ&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bq7dEAcfAx0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/3kuMViIi4EA" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-12-29T18:55:29.685+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/fioVXnCgQ-U/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/12/karaoke-star-wars-episode-uh-one.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>I Need a Karaoke Hero</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/jy7-LT-Pp2s/i-need-karaoker-hero.html</link><category>karaoke practice</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:14:07 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-2680769305198480438</guid><description>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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8PiJlflNPs&amp;feature=related
麻倉未稀　ヒーロー　（カラオケ）&lt;br /&gt;
Edit: video got copyrightslapped, so I found a new version.
&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;
Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/jy7-LT-Pp2s" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2012-03-10T16:14:07.538+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-need-karaoker-hero.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Claytonian Wrote a Children's Book? Introducing: Green Zombie Green Zombie What Do You See?</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/Lo9v4yg0hL0/claytonian-wrote-childrens-book.html</link><category>Recommended books</category><category>Japanese Mythology</category><category>art</category><category>blog firsts</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:16:24 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-3314820435995737896</guid><description>Everyone probably remembers &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805092447/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thehoperomaan-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=0805092447"&gt;Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thehoperomaan-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0805092447&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /&gt; 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!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://goo.gl/N9K4r" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="226" width="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Im4biz-hgxg/Tp7g7XBOEUI/AAAAAAAACMY/gOx-XUHYlf0/s1600/1Green-Zombie.png" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
View &lt;b&gt;Green Zombie Green Zombie What Do You See?&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href="http://goo.gl/N9K4r"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A couple notes: &lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/Lo9v4yg0hL0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-10-21T07:16:24.708+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Im4biz-hgxg/Tp7g7XBOEUI/AAAAAAAACMY/gOx-XUHYlf0/s72-c/1Green-Zombie.png" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/10/claytonian-wrote-childrens-book.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>億劫: In Japanese, Sometimes a Task Can Take Aeons.</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/oMpAlC3k7Hg/in-japanese-sometimes-task-can-take.html</link><category>Japanese Phrases/表現/ことわざ/sayings</category><category>漢字</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:02:43 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-9025512848661183828</guid><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pofV5T4-jCk/Tmy7-KzT9GI/AAAAAAAACL8/aV7zm6K95aM/s1600/kalpa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="253" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pofV5T4-jCk/Tmy7-KzT9GI/AAAAAAAACL8/aV7zm6K95aM/s320/kalpa.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Image ripped (lovingly) from the &lt;a href="http://blog.livedoor.jp/miracakoto/archives/51527195.html"&gt;Buddhist Freedom Ledger&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Lately, I share a lot of kanji, words, and phrases from Japanese in &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=ClaytonianJP"&gt;my twitter stream&lt;/a&gt;, 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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Less poetically, some clock a kalpa at 4.32 billion years. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
--&lt;br /&gt;
Bonus kalpa fun: &lt;a href="http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/jain/01.html"&gt;A webcomic&lt;/a&gt;. The kalpa part comes around panel 31.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/oMpAlC3k7Hg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-09-11T23:02:43.839+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pofV5T4-jCk/Tmy7-KzT9GI/AAAAAAAACL8/aV7zm6K95aM/s72-c/kalpa.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/09/in-japanese-sometimes-task-can-take.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>California Komachi</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/jIMgcpNQaL4/california-komachi.html</link><category>J Lang Vids</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:01:25 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-8122210635691160066</guid><description>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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6LmATtukGH0?fs=1" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="295" width="480"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
*Don't worry, I met random foreigners and we all went to the best room at Karaoke Hiroba. Excellent Christmas Eve, that.&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/jIMgcpNQaL4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-08-16T23:01:25.928+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/6LmATtukGH0/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">3</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/08/california-komachi.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Lesson 1: Screw Aisatsu, Is That a Dog?</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/1xBeTVi62qE/comprehensive-guide-to-japanese-lesson.html</link><category>A Comprehensive Guide to Japanese in 2000 Simple Lessons</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:16:14 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-2594172487764487966</guid><description>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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Sample conversation between two people:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;Person 2 (In response to something person 1 said earlier):ああ？&lt;br /&gt;
That? [points to something which he expects the other party to look to]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Person 1: ん。　　。。。。えっ？！木？&lt;br /&gt;
Yup.  ...What?! [realizes what they are really seeing] A Tree?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ええ。。。。&lt;br /&gt;
Yeah...&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
犬と。。。。&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was a dog...&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
アーア！&lt;br /&gt;
Oh come on! &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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... &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-muIlI2Bl8G0/TkKQEAIxcoI/AAAAAAAACLg/3txnWtKYX6Y/s1600/hiragana-chart.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-muIlI2Bl8G0/TkKQEAIxcoI/AAAAAAAACLg/3txnWtKYX6Y/s640/hiragana-chart.gif" width="256" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F0Txo8i2l4Y/TkKSRM6QTgI/AAAAAAAACLo/RKtB-zouoWU/s1600/katakana-chart.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F0Txo8i2l4Y/TkKSRM6QTgI/AAAAAAAACLo/RKtB-zouoWU/s1600/katakana-chart.gif" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
This is a beautiful way to begin an explanation of a super hard language to learn. Yes sir.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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 &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system"&gt;Japanese writing system&lt;/a&gt; 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* &lt;a href="http://ankisrs.net/"&gt;Anki&lt;/a&gt; *cough*), and check their pronunciation using the audio at &lt;a href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=wwwjdic"&gt;wwwjdic&lt;/a&gt; (linked in the right toolbar).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Vocab:&lt;br /&gt;
ああ yon (that way)&lt;br /&gt;
ん nasally grunt of agreement&lt;br /&gt;
えっ ejaculation of surprise&lt;br /&gt;
木 tree(s)&lt;br /&gt;
ええ sound of confirmation&lt;br /&gt;
犬 dog&lt;br /&gt;
と a particle that effectively quotes whatever proceeds it.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;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).&lt;br /&gt;
アーア sound of exasperation&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/1xBeTVi62qE" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-08-11T07:16:14.584+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-muIlI2Bl8G0/TkKQEAIxcoI/AAAAAAAACLg/3txnWtKYX6Y/s72-c/hiragana-chart.gif" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">5</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/08/comprehensive-guide-to-japanese-lesson.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Evil Magistrates of Japan Past 悪代官</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/YY89oaUghYY/evil-magistrates-of-japan-past.html</link><category>J Lang Vids</category><category>J-entertainment</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:39:58 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-8431180969208700290</guid><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yKjBN0R0nuQ/TfLgamAJ2GI/AAAAAAAACJY/iXxF1ChTvWc/s1600/akudaikan" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="194" width="259" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yKjBN0R0nuQ/TfLgamAJ2GI/AAAAAAAACJY/iXxF1ChTvWc/s320/akudaikan" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="303"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1pRGRcYTo6c?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=769"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1pRGRcYTo6c?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=769" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="303" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
You can also see the slot machine version &lt;a href="http://youtu.be/59tlTY0NoUg?t=3m9s"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which features things like cosplay, tickle-torturing kunoichi (ninja women), and the youjinbou (bodyguard) character.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And for extra credit, study up on Evil Magistrate sayings &lt;a href="http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%82%AA%E4%BB%A3%E5%AE%98_%28%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%29#.E7.94.A8.E8.AA.9E"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/YY89oaUghYY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-06-11T12:39:58.278+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yKjBN0R0nuQ/TfLgamAJ2GI/AAAAAAAACJY/iXxF1ChTvWc/s72-c/akudaikan" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/06/evil-magistrates-of-japan-past.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Frogs is the Craziest Peoples カエルのこころ</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/HPo5mfKGUoU/frogs-is-peoples.html</link><category>cute</category><category>art</category><category>comedy</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 02:26:43 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-4656179019510116027</guid><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eV-K3Se54qs/TdonKy40xlI/AAAAAAAACI8/Go4fSUihQzY/s1600/51FVu8oGH6L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="320" width="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eV-K3Se54qs/TdonKy40xlI/AAAAAAAACI8/Go4fSUihQzY/s320/51FVu8oGH6L.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;iframe src="http://rcm-jp.amazon.co.jp/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=FFFFFF&amp;IS2=1&amp;npa=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=thehoperoma-22&amp;o=9&amp;p=8&amp;l=as4&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;asins=4903352307" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://schmidt.shgz.net/d/archives/2005_5_10_30.html"&gt;Here is a post&lt;/a&gt; with more of these frogs/books.&lt;br /&gt;
I also found &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4576081748/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thehoperoma-22&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=247&amp;creative=7399&amp;creativeASIN=4576081748"&gt;カエル国へようこそ！ (Welcome to frog country)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.jp/e/ir?t=&amp;l=as2&amp;o=9&amp;a=4576081748" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;   &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/HPo5mfKGUoU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-05-23T18:26:43.554+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eV-K3Se54qs/TdonKy40xlI/AAAAAAAACI8/Go4fSUihQzY/s72-c/51FVu8oGH6L.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/05/frogs-is-peoples.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Why I'm Not Leaving 'Till I Start to Glow Green</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/pq6KQcVtcjY/why-im-not-leaving-till-i-start-to-glow.html</link><category>rants</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:47:15 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-6176673224967807596</guid><description>&lt;table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-42uf7c6B2lg/TYQmpM4BrEI/AAAAAAAACIw/ECWRfraNheY/s1600/radioactiveman" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="201" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-42uf7c6B2lg/TYQmpM4BrEI/AAAAAAAACIw/ECWRfraNheY/s320/radioactiveman" width="251" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"&gt;The 20-20 hindsight! It does nothing!&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
My post on not leaving Yokohama during these turbulent times has been published at &lt;a href="http://blog.jibtv.com/j-bloggers/2011/03/the-last-foreigner-in-japan-1.html"&gt;the JibTV site&lt;/a&gt;. Check it out.&lt;br /&gt;
Also, I post for them occasionally, so enjoy &lt;a href="http://blog.jibtv.com/j-bloggers/claytonian/"&gt;some backlogs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/pq6KQcVtcjY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-19T12:47:15.807+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-42uf7c6B2lg/TYQmpM4BrEI/AAAAAAAACIw/ECWRfraNheY/s72-c/radioactiveman" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-im-not-leaving-till-i-start-to-glow.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>More Crisis Vocab</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/fGGD0ozjBeY/more-crisis-vocab.html</link><category>Let's Yoji</category><category>politics</category><category>日本語</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:07:26 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-3094115654237157869</guid><description>&lt;i&gt;Edit: corrected a couple things in this post and the last. Commenter wanted to remain anonymous, so I'm deleting what they said...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
We'll start on a term related to the last in &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/vocab-from-2011-quake-and-fukushima.html"&gt;our previous post&lt;/a&gt;. 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 &lt;a href="http://www.japannewbie.com/2011/03/13/japanese-news-earthquake-vocabulary/"&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
漏洩 (rouei, leak+leak) leakage. Especially recently, of radiation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
待避 (taihi, wait+avoid) wait for danger to pass, or make way for emergency vehicles.&lt;br /&gt;
退避 (taihi, escape+avoid) run away or take shelter from danger. Note this is a homophone for the previous item.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Which brings us back to the governor of Tokyo, who said that we are suffering a form of &lt;i&gt;tenken&lt;/i&gt; for our &lt;i&gt;shiyoku&lt;/i&gt;. He apologized, but someone may well &lt;i&gt;satsushoubun&lt;/i&gt; him from his political party if he's not careful with what he says. He'd better &lt;i&gt;taihi&lt;/i&gt; until this scandal blows over.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/fGGD0ozjBeY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-17T18:07:26.565+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">3</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-crisis-vocab.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Vocab from the 2011 Quake and Fukushima Crisis</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/Emnxj1A92S0/vocab-from-2011-quake-and-fukushima.html</link><category>Lists</category><category>Let's Yoji</category><category>日本語</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:04:32 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-6217934961219932612</guid><description>I'm just going to provide some short translations of interesting words I found on the &lt;a href="http://www.practical-japanese.com/feeds/posts/default"&gt;Practical Japanese&lt;/a&gt; blog, which has many helpful topical entries each day. Sub it if you know how to read Japanese. Here we go!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
安否 (anpi, safe+no): safety, well-being. Think safe or not.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
耐震性 (taishinsei, (x-proof+quake)+nature): Earthquake-proofness.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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."&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
不透明感 (futoumei, opaque+ kan, feeling): Unclear feeling. Being unsure what to do next. Indecisiveness.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
多選 (tasen, many+election): Being elected many times. I think this one refers to &lt;a href="http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/15/tokyo-governor-earthquake-was-divine-punishment-ishihara_damare/"&gt;the crazy governor of Tokyo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Well, my lunch-break is over, so more later!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/Emnxj1A92S0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-17T18:04:32.371+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/vocab-from-2011-quake-and-fukushima.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Me in Yokohama, a Few Days After the Quake ＊wobble＊</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/Sr5WJjmtPrg/me-in-yokohama-few-days-after-quake.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:53:48 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-6310392906875014686</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe width="480" height="295" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bjoBwhSB6Og?fs=1" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen=""&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/Sr5WJjmtPrg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-14T16:53:48.759+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/bjoBwhSB6Og/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">5</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/me-in-yokohama-few-days-after-quake.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>The Quake: A Video with Pictures</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/Ff33GMAbzc0/quake-video-with-pictures.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:26:45 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-5420539250975800960</guid><description>I'm fine, but many are not.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/a6Z10aJr3js" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/Ff33GMAbzc0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-13T14:26:45.921+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://img.youtube.com/vi/a6Z10aJr3js/default.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">9</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/quake-video-with-pictures.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Tweeting the Great 2011 Japan Earthquake</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/A5OzoZThQsM/tweeting-great-2011-japan-earthquake.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:07:17 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-3762315931054816037</guid><description>I am fine so far. If you want to see events as they happen, I have been tweeting constantly since yesterday.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/#!/ClaytonianJP"&gt;My twitter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
ALSO a large collection of Japan earthquake tweeters is here: &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/#!/redjoe/japan-quake-3"&gt;http://twitter.com/#!/redjoe/japan-quake-3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/A5OzoZThQsM" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-03-12T16:07:17.714+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/03/tweeting-great-2011-japan-earthquake.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Homeless Japanese Dudes Really Like Me</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/NurQL5acEzU/homeless-japanese-dudes-really-like-me.html</link><category>charity</category><category>cultural misunderstandings</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sat, 26 Feb 2011 06:37:42 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-178827515116813546</guid><description>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. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iOAK0LXdxPI/TWjpzf88V9I/AAAAAAAACII/mQKEgcm6tho/s1600/homeless_ga_chugakusei_still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="168" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iOAK0LXdxPI/TWjpzf88V9I/AAAAAAAACII/mQKEgcm6tho/s320/homeless_ga_chugakusei_still.jpg" width="250" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nipponcinema.com/blog/the-spoof-trend-continues-with-homeless-ga-chugakusei"&gt;Odd image via Nippon Cinema&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
When &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_%28eikaiwa%29"&gt;NOVA&lt;/a&gt; went under, we started to hear &lt;a href="http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/11/08/charity-japan-style/"&gt;stories of out of work English teachers getting food from their former students&lt;/a&gt;. 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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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.&lt;br /&gt;
--&lt;br /&gt;
Virtue is its own reward.&lt;br /&gt;
徳はそれ自体が報いである。&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese"&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang"&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News"&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids"&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice"&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials"&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji"&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/NurQL5acEzU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-02-26T23:37:42.123+09:00</app:edited><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iOAK0LXdxPI/TWjpzf88V9I/AAAAAAAACII/mQKEgcm6tho/s72-c/homeless_ga_chugakusei_still.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/02/homeless-japanese-dudes-really-like-me.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Tama Hoooooooooooooome</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/lLx8xcCt2JY/tama-hoooooooooooooome.html</link><category>Japanese Commercials</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sun, 02 Jan 2011 07:38:57 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-8297969715544982001</guid><description>Japan rips off Deep Purple. I rip off Japan. Vid:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gRltuLkuZz4?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gRltuLkuZz4?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;br /&gt;
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):&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KGMwfk9Trhw?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KGMwfk9Trhw?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
If you want more of the Kuraray CMs, &lt;a href="http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2009/11/awesome-japanese-llama-cms.html"&gt;visit this post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8nW1CplvgqE?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8nW1CplvgqE?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/lLx8xcCt2JY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2011-01-03T00:38:57.464+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2011/01/tama-hoooooooooooooome.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>A Couple TRICK CMs Starring Yukie</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/ta1eBmHLLoI/couple-trick-cms-starring-yukie.html</link><category>Japanese Commercials</category><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:57:05 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-4876982129217589069</guid><description>Two things remain constant: My love of the dorama &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick_%28TV_series%29"&gt;TRICK&lt;/a&gt; and the willingness of Japanese celebrities to appear in commercials. These combine into the embedded videos below, two of which star &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukie_Nakama"&gt;Nakama Yukie&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First we have a tricky cup noodle CM, which came out in time to promote the new movies this year:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G-fWf6CR89s?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G-fWf6CR89s?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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 ;-):&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IV-YLhQzyiA?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IV-YLhQzyiA?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt; And no, I can't tell you how something made out of wheat and hops is different from beer.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And next an ad for the DS game. I need to get that. &lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/V5UHLtVkcfk?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/V5UHLtVkcfk?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97&gt;Kanji&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/ta1eBmHLLoI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2010-12-29T16:57:05.187+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2010/12/couple-trick-cms-starring-yukie.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Japanese Horse Guy Buys Himself a Very Special Present</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~3/eqsC2qeIDV4/japanese-horse-guy-buys-himself-very.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Claytonian JP)</author><pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 05:26:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842114.post-1759325176146614635</guid><description>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.&lt;br /&gt;
Anyways this is technically a Christmas video in which a guy buys himself all the energy drinks and tries to drink/eat them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;center&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript" src="http://ext.nicovideo.jp/thumb_watch/sm1890440"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;&lt;noscript&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1890440"&gt;【ニコニコ動画】ハイポーション作ってみた。&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/noscript&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;span class="Fullpost"&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Japanese Study Links&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sign%20and%20Ad%20Japanese&gt; Sign/Ad J&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Slang&gt;J Slang&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Pics%20from%20the%20Japanese%20News&gt;J News w/Pics&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/J%20Lang%20Vids&gt;J Vids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/karaoke%20practice&gt;Karaoke&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Japanese%20Commercials&gt;J Commercials&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=http://surrealu.blogspot.com/search/label/Let%27s%20Yoji&gt;Let's Yoji!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/WVXf/~4/eqsC2qeIDV4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2010-12-25T22:26:00.132+09:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2010/12/japanese-horse-guy-buys-himself-very.html</feedburner:origLink></item></channel></rss>
