Never be bored again

Though it may seem like the very concept of life in Japan ought to be an endless source of entertainment and fascination in and of itself, expats do occasionally become bored. Want to know what we do when we get bored?

We directly translate the kanji that make up the names of places around the Tokyo metropolitan area into English, then assign them a North American state or province where they'd seem "at home." For example:

Akabane　→　赤羽 (red+feather)　→　Red Feather, Wyoming

Akabane is a major station in Kita Ward, Tokyo. Its name is made of two kanji characters: 赤 (aka, meaning "red") and 羽 (hane, meaning "feather"). The -hane makes a euphonic change to -bane, making the full name easier to pronounce. And "Red Feather" sounds like the name of a town one might find in Wyoming.

Now that you've got the basic principle, let's do some more!

Ueno　→　上野 (up field)　→　Upfield, New York

Nippori　→　日暮里 (day living village)　→　Livingston, Vermont

Uguisudani　→　鶯谷 (nightingale valley)　→　Warbler Valley, Virginia

Shinbashi　→　新橋 (new bridge)　→　Newbridge, Connecticut

Saginuma　→　鷺沼 (heron marsh)　→　Heron Marsh, Alberta, Canada

Jiyugaoka　→　自由が丘 (freedom hill)　→　Liberty Hill, Texas

Roppongi　→　六本木 (six pine trees)　→　Six Pines, Minnesota

Ochanomizu　→　御茶ノ水 (tea water)　→　Teawater, Massachusetts

Occasionally, English isn't the best target language for this game. "Yokohama," for example, means "beach to the side," but good luck finding a town with a name like that in the US. The Spanish equivalent, however, seems much more believable:

Yokohama　→　横浜 (side beach)　→　Playa al Lado, California

Akihabara　→　秋葉原 (autumn leaf meadow)　→　Prado Otoñal, New Mexico

Or maybe French is more your bag(-uette).

Aoyama　→　青山 (blue/green mountain)　→　Montbleu, Montana

Ikebukuro　→　池袋 (pond bag)　→　Sac du Lac, Wisconsin


See? It's fun.

Piss me off: Image macros

The internet is garbage.

I mean, LOOK AT IT.

"But Jesse," you're saying in my imagination because that way I can make you say what ever I want. "Why do you hate the internet? You use it every day. It serves you well. Aren't you being a little hard on the good old WWW?" (By the way, in my imagination, you have an Indian accent and a very low voice, and you pronounce "WWW" as "wuh-wuh-wuh.")

Well, let me answer that question with another question: Do you know anyone who posts things like this on their Facebook wall?

Not for you, it doesn't.

These JPEGs full of text have to go. I'm serious. What happened to pictures of....stuff? I mean, stuff besides words? These pseudo-images serve no purpose. They aren't art. They aren't intelligent. Best case scenario, they're insipid motivational posters. Often, you get the double whammy of bad wisdom paired with illiteracy:

C+ PS: YOU'LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT

The only thing worse than putting your asinine musings into an image file for no reason is making typographical errors when doing so. Nobody's going to edit your image and fix the mistakes. Those typos are forever. They're like the plastic rings that hold six packs together. They're only questionably useful, and after the short period during which they are used, they'll just end up choking a dolphin.

Any time I'm dumb enough to be tricked into reading the contents of one of these pictures, I curse myself for wasting time.

Guess what I found, a comma splice inside it.

Not only did you just read a depressing (albeit probably made-up) story, you're now ten seconds older. Sorry, your time is non-refundable.

Other times, the message itself is just not true. How many times after the March 11 Tohoku Earthquake did people re-post this iridescent map, thinking it showed the flow of radiation from Fukushima?

Being misinformed is forgivable. But what everyone inexplicably seems to forgive is the fact that these re-posted images are just thinly veiled, socially accepted examples of wholesale unoriginality. If you want to post an image full of words, post this one:

Here are a few more types of social network re-postables that I'd like to see permanently phased out:

High-context culture: a true story

A "high-context culture" is one that tends toward inference and unspoken messages, as opposed to direct and literal verbal communication.

I was sitting on the Saikyo Line, heading home after work this evening. I was playing BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma on my Vita (because fighting games on the Vita are the greatest gift to mankind since Prometheus brought mortals fire). Seated to my immediate left was an older gentleman (perhaps in his fifties) in a suit with a briefcase on his lap. Standing in front of the older gentleman was a younger suited man (perhaps in his thirties). Thirties was holding a handstrap his left hand, while holding an open beer in his right hand...and balancing an iPad in the crook of his right elbow.

My attention shifted nervously between my game and Thirties's beer, which I was sure he was going to drop while he fumbled with the iPad. My apprehension worsened after he dropped the iPad once, hitting my knee. It didn't hurt, but I was annoyed enough to wish at that moment that my knee had been hard enough to break the iPad's screen on impact.

Then it happened: While trying to put the iPad into his bag (which was on the rack above Fifties's head), Thirties managed to spray beer on both of us while everyone in the immediate vicinity looked on disapprovingly. A few drops landed on me, but the majority of the payload ended up on Fifties's briefcase. I dug through my bag and produced a package of tissues with my company's name on it and used one to wipe myself off. Then, in a brief moment of PR genius, I decided it would be nice to help Fifties out by giving him my company's pocket tissues, simultaneously creating an association between my company's name and the kindness of an unknown foreigner in his mind. I held the tissue pack out to Fifties, logo side up.

But Fifties refused my tissues with a single-handed "no, thank you" gesture. At first I thought he was just doing the polite refusal that is expected of Japanese people in all situations, but then I saw him regard Thirties with an expectant look and a nod toward his beer-streaked briefcase.

He was waiting for Thirties to clean up the mess he had made himself, which Thirties did in quick order before hurrying off the train at the next stop.

This entire episode happened without anyone uttering a single word. It was awesome.

Vacation Addendum: Breatht

On our way back to Tokyo, a dispenser in the airplane restroom offered small foil packages of a mouthwash called Breatht. In katakana, the name of this product is ブレスト (Buresuto) which is, quite funnily enough, identical to the katakana spelling of the English word "breast." If there's anything better than one Breatht, it's a pair of Breathts, so I grabbed two of them.

Sorry, I've just been informed that the plural form is actually "Breatht-th."

Let's Learn Japanese: Tsui ni

This evening in Osaka, Ichihashi Tatsuya was arrested in connection with the 2007 murder of British ESL teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker (which I briefly mentioned in another "Let's Learn Japanese" post from June of that year. Ichihashi had successfully eluded capture since the murder, fueling suspicions that the police didn't really care about catching him.

Less than two weeks prior to his arrest, an updated version of Ichihashi's "WANTED" photo was released, indicating that he had recently managed to undergo plastic surgery to alter his face. The renewed attention to the case is likely to have aided in his being recognized and subsequently captured.

Tsui ni is Japanese for "at last."

Tokyo Notice Bored

Matthew Sweet's "Ugly Truth Rock" begins with this lyric about depression and boredom:
You don't wanna die
But the living gets you down Why the long face, Matt? Haven't you noticed the veritable cornucopia of potential entertainment that surrounds you at any given moment? Well, I have. And it's called Tokyo Notice Board.
I used TNB as blog fodder last summer, remember? I'd do so more often, except that picking up a copy of this orgy of bad writing and weird personal ads has an effect on me similar to that of a garlic-scented oak crucifix through the heart on Dracula. The essays that people submit to this rag, I swear to god...
Have I mentioned? Getting your essay published in TNB nets you ¥3000. So when I make fun of these people, keep in mind at all times: They aren't just bad writers. They're bad writers who got thirty bucks to pollute the world with their inane musings. Let's get right into it, starting on page 35 of the October 9-15, 2009 issue of Tokyo Garbage Heap.
A hapless expat -- let's call him Chames Jarlton to protect his innocence -- explodes onto the page with an essay called "Being a vegetarian is hard in Japan!" Right off the bat, there's one of those exclamation marks that TNB contributors so often love to overuse. I'll resist the temptation to make fun of him straight away for being a vegetarian; there's bound to be other reasons to make fun of him coming up shortly.

When I first arrived in Japan I struggled hard to find anything to eat, even simple things like a "vegetable sandwich" always seemed to have some meat in it, what could I do!

Ugh. Just....ugh. Really, Chames? Three sentences mashed together with commas? A question punctuated with an exclamation point? Subject-pronoun disagreement? All in the opening line of your essay?
The only word that describes my emotions right now is "ugh." Well, that and maybe, "rrrgh." Moving on:

One of the funniest situations I had

Oh lord. Get ready for a funny situation. I'm laughing just thinking about how funny it's going to be.

One of the funniest situations I had was during a stay in a mountain lodge in Nagano. I explained to the lodge owner in my broken Japanese that I don't eat meat or fish, could he prepare something different for dinner for me?

Okay, now let's get into the substance of it. I'm still not going to make fun of the guy for being a vegetarian. Some people are vegetarians, and sometimes vegetarians make special requests at restaurants. I get it. But refusing to eat fish in Japan? That's not vegetarianism....that's just being difficult. You might as well move to Norway and refuse to wear jackets.

I also want to point out that, in that last excerpt, Chames has defined his Japanese as "broken." Keep this in mind, as it will be important later.

Dinnertime came; first the "normal" meals came out, 2 slices of ham served with rice and vegetables. I was the last to get my special meal, 5 minutes passed and nothing was in front of me yet, I was so excited imagining the exotic new veggie food being prepared for me in the kitchen.

Yeah, and I'm so excited imagining giving you an electric shock for every time you misuse a comma or type a numeral when you should spell it out, Chames. And, assuming the restaurant in your mountain lodge wasn't a Burger King, I don't think five minutes is such a long time to wait, considering your request for special treatment. I feel bad for the people who invited Chames on this trip to the mountains. On the bright side, I'm sure they'll never make a mistake like that again.

Finally my meal came, a big serving of rice, some vegetables and.....one slice of ham? I thought to myself, where did I go wrong, what did I say incorrectly? Maybe I didn't make myself clear with my pigeon Japanese, so I just ate around the meat.

It wasn't bad enough that Chames's Japanese was "broken" (not that his English is in much better repair), but it was also "pigeon." Granted, he probably meant "pidgin Japanese," but I cannot ignore the possibility that Chames's request to the lodge owner consisted of a lot of cooing and bird-like head movements.

There is still more inanity to come in this essay, but I have to put it aside. Chames, you're on your own. My advice to you: Weigh your strict vegetarianism against your desire to live in Japan, because one of those two things has to go. And if you're an English teacher, god help you because you have catastrophic punctuation habits.

Next, we examine the October 16-22, 2009 issue of TNB. Here's something called "Getting a good dentist in Japan" by, shall we say, Tresmond Dotter.

Have you ever been to a good dentist in Japan?

Yes.

The answer is probably, no.

No. Yes.

In ten years, I've had nothing but trouble here. My front crown mainly. At first, my friend recommended a dentist who used a pink fluffy towel on my head to avoid the pain. Sure it was painless. But the crown was refitted incorrectly and I looked like a prawn.

I'm struggling to visualize that. Do prawns even have teeth?

When it came off, I was recommended a second dentist by the same person. Again the crown was put on wrong. I went back and incredulously this dentist started his recommended treatment -- he started shaving my good tooth to even it up. Can you believe it!

Can I believe what? That you took further advice from the same person who recommended the first bad dentist to you?

When I jumped out of the chair and threatened him with a series of expletives

He called the police? You got arrested? You got deported? I mean, I'm sorry about your mouth trouble and all, but come on. Don't give your fellow foreigners a bad name by assaulting your dentist. That's just unnecessary.

Not surprisingly, Tresmond's tooth issues continue. It's almost like nature is trying to tell him that he wasn't meant to have any teeth in the first place.

This time I turned to a woman on the Inokashira Line...

Wait a minute.

...Supposedly trained in Australia...

Hey, that's my dentist! Remember my root canal story from three years ago? Well, I assume he finally got his dental dysfunctions resolved, then. She was pretty good at her job.

Supposedly trained in Australia. Where -- In the outback with a stick? He refitted the crown at the wrong angle...

Oh, it was a man? Never mind, different person. Weird coincidence, though. About ten broken teeth later, Tresmond finishes with this cryptic message:

I just hope I now eat my sushi in

In what? In bed? In terror? In a chicken costume? The story doesn't continue on the next page. It doesn't continue on any page. It just ends in mid-sentence. Well, fine. I was about ready to set fire to the magazine, anyway. Memo to self: If I see an angry, toothless prawn walking around Tokyo, that's our friend Tresmond.

Know Your Mollusks

The other day, Wife and I went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (or, as it's known to the article- and preposition-challenged nation of Japan, Night Museum 2). Normally I pass on this kind of movie, but there's a theater in Kichijoji where tickets are ¥1000 all throughout your birth month, and Wife was psyched to watch yet another film in which Ben Stiller talks to animals, so our fate was sealed.

(Jeez, to think that ¥1000 for a movie ticket actually sounds like a bargain to me now....)

Now, I'm sure I've said before that people who work in marketing are prone to making astonishingly bad decisions, but the Japanese marketing of this film has been a brave, new world of nonsense. I challenge you to get your head around why the marketing people made the decision I'm about to describe. Thinking hats on.

As you may know, the film highlights a number of the Smithsonian Institution's actual exhibits, like the Apollo space capsule and the Wright Brothers' plane. One exhibit that failed to make it into the film, however, was the body of 24-foot giant squid displayed in a refrigerated tank.

What did make it into the film, on the other hand, was a giant CGI octopus.

Granted, I can imagine the scenario by which the Smithsonian's squid accidentally became an octopus. Hollywood has mistaken these two mollusks before, so it's par for the course that they do it again. Besides, at no point in the movie do they actually call the octopus "squid," so you could chalk the whole thing up to creative license and leave it at that. But what's much harder to fathom is that all the Japanese promotional material for the movie, and I mean ALL OF IT -- trailers, TV spots, printed leaflets and even a two-hour TV special designed specifically to promote the film's Japanese release -- persistently refers to the animal as a squid.

I'll do a quick Let's Learn Japanese here, just to be thorough:

tako (n.) Octopus.

ika (n.) Squid.

There, see? They're different. For these two to be confused in Japan, a country where both are routinely eaten, a country where the average child learns the difference between tako and ika in kindergarten, a country where the difference between the two is important enough that even visiting foreigners figure out how to tell them apart before they return home...well, that's just far fetched.

Like I said before, the movie itself never makes the mistake of calling this octopus a "squid." So why this concerted (not to mention downright Orwellian) effort to fool the moviegoing public? Is it out of an obligation to link the film to the Smithsonian Institution for advertising purposes? Is it just another example of empty-headed marketing?

Could it possibly be both?

Miscellaneous Photos

I have a handful of photos taken here and there around Tokyo over the past several months. I took each one with the intention of blogging about it, but none of them alone really seemed worthy of its own post. Now, posted together for your convenience, here they are.

Exhibit A. In my neighborhood there's a building which is apparently host to a partnership of attorneys, one of whom is a porn star.

Moving on, observe Swastika Man. He tells us, in this sign, not to run up or down the escalators in the train station. Swastika Man hopes that this sign will serve as the Final Solution to the problem of escalator-related injuries.

Ladies, did you know that you can literally roll the cellulite right out of your arms and legs? And if this little plastic roller can help, imagine what a steam roller could do!

Sorry, Burger King, but I'm a little skeptical of the claim you make in this next photo. I haven't "freaked out" after eating something in a long time...not since university.

Next: WE WATCH YOU.

This is a picture on a sign in a residential area warning drivers to watch out for kids playing near the road. Motorists should exercise particular caution if the kids look anything like this kid.

I saved the best one for last. This is in the front window of a motorcycle shop on Kannana Street between Shin-Daita and Daitabashi stations.

When There's Nothing to Write About, I Make Fun of Other Writers

It's come to my attention that, despite being in the midst of a two-week summer vacation with very little to do, I haven't updated this blog since before Soul Calibur IV came out. (Hmmmm....Soul Calibur IV. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.) As happy as I am to be on summer vacation, however, something is missing. You see, as a blogger, I cannot be truly happy unless I'm making fun of someone who can't defend himself. If you recall, one of my most celebrated conquests was that of Japan newbie Erica Belling, a young Australian who came to Tokyo and allegedly had Japan all figured out within six to eight days of her arrival. I dissected her overly excited Tokyo Notice Board essay with a zweihander battle axe, leaving no paragraph un-cleft.

Her destruction was delicious.

Fondly remembering that day of reckoning, I began to show signs of "writer ridicule withdrawal syndrome" (WRWS) and found myself reaching for the latest issue of TNB to quench my proverbial bloodlust. Walk with me through its pages, won't you? A-destroying we shall go.

First I open to an essay entitled "Span in Japanese!" (yes, with an exclamation point) by someone who calls himself Harvey. Span? What does that mean? My curiosity is piqued. Little do I know, I'm in for trouble:

I've got another item for the "you know you've been in Japan too long list". [sic] You know you've been in Japan too long when you start getting tons of Japanese language spam (meiwaku mail in Japanese) in your email box!

Oh, spam? Not span? OK, my curiosity is now un-piqued. And Harvey goes the extra distance to annoy me by putting his sentence-ending punctuation outside his quotation marks. Worst part is, this dumb slob is probably an English teacher. I scan quickly through this five-paragraph essay and see that four of the five paragraphs contain at least one exclamation point each, in addition to the one in the title. This Harvey is one emphatic son of a bitch.

Skeptical that Harvey will be able to tell me anything I don't already know about....anything, I flip to another page and find an essay by Michael Curley called "To Bow or not to Bow, that is the Question." The seemingly arbitrary capitalization is not mine; it's printed like that. Once again, paragraph one does to my interest what penicillin does to an ear infection. First, he repeats the title (just in case you've blacked out since reading it):

To bow or not to bow, that is the question. This is how the honourable William Shakespeare would undoubtably have modified his most famous "to be or not to be" quotation from Hamlet, had he ever had the good fortune to visit Japan.

Thank god you explained the title like that, Michael. But I disagree. If the "honourable William Shakespeare" (what is he, a judge?) had indeed written anything about Japan, I'm pretty sure he would have come up with something more clever than just a rehash of his most famous line. On to paragraph two, if you dare:

The Japanese tradition of respectful bowing is a source of never ending and unfathomable fascination to me, and I feel sure that "the bard" himself would have been equally intrigued.

Continuation of this nonsensical Shakespeare theme notwithstanding, Mr. Curley is right about one thing: I, for one, cannot fathom his fascination with bowing. Six completely uninteresting paragraphs later, the author delivers his killing blow:

These are the questions, but alas, dear reader, I have no answers. Would Shakespeare have faired any better?

That depends. Do you mean, would Shakespeare have faired any better at understanding Japanese bowing tradition? Or, would Shakespeare have faired any better at writing this essay? Because I think you know my answer to the latter. I can't take any more of Michael Curley, so I jump backward a few pages and find Mathew Chromecki's opus magnum entitled "Right so, what am I doing here?" God, it hurts just to think about what might be contained in this essay. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I go in for a closer look.

Ever feel like you've wandering [sic] through your life with no real sense of direction?

Sometimes, yeah. But at times like those, I do the world a favor by NOT WRITING ABOUT IT, DUMBASS. I want to offer a more constructive analysis of this essay but I just can't. It's depressing and clichéd. At one point, Mathew writes:

Weekdays, work work work. Weekend, Roppongi or Shibuya or Shinjuku or some other busy place. Somehow, you always end up going to Roppongi, claiming you hate it but you go anyways.

Stop, Mathew, before you get stomped on. Somehow the fact that this moron is telling me what I do is the most offensive aspect of this foray into life-threatening stupidity. And he's dead wrong because my dislike of Roppongi results in me NOT going there. Why don't I like Roppongi? Because it's full of people like Mathew Chromecki.

I have to stop. Writing this blog post has been an exercise in rage-fueled self-destruction, and has probably shortened my life by about five years.

Tokyo Notice Board, I blame you.

ADDENDUM (April 12, 2009): It's a conspiracy!

My Contributions to the Japanese Language

Foreigners living in Japan make invaluable cultural contributions all the time. From Hungarian sumo wrestlers to ceaseless TV appearances by Marty Friedman to David Aldwinckle's belabored efforts to popularize frivolous litigation, creative gaijin bring welcome variety to what has historically been a very uniform nation. As a relatively long-term resident, therefore, it's natural for me to examine my own cultural footprint and determine whether it's worth the price of the shoe that left it.

One of the most fascinating ways in which foreign residents of any country can affect their host is through the host's language. About three years ago I met an American teacher in Tokyo who had taken to prefixing Japanese adjectives with ero- (a Japanese-English loan word meaning "erotic" or "eroticism"). This teacher used ero- to amplify the subsequent adjective, the same way native Japanese speakers use chô- (super) or metcha- (seriously). So really good food is not just oishii (delicious), but ero-oishii (sexy-delicious).

Over the years, I've coined a few of my own Japanese words, all of which are a source of pride (not to mention newfound linguistic convenience) for me. Here are some examples:

クソい (kusoi) - This is an i-stem adjective built on the noun kuso, which is slang for excrement. Just as English has taken "shit" and morphed it into an adjective as "shitty," I felt Japanese should afford speakers the same privilege with its expletives. Usage would go something like this:

朝の気分は良かったけど、今はなんかクソい。
Asa no kibun wa yokatta kedo, ima wa nanka kusoi.
(I felt good this morning, but now I feel kinda shitty.)

邪魔邪魔しい (jamajamashii) - As you can see from the cumbersome kanji characters required to write it, "jamajamashii" is a word better suited to spoken Japanese than written Japanese. This shii-stem adjective is built out of a doubling of the noun jama, which means "obstruction" or "something in the way." It's similar to the (real) word bakabakashii ("foolish") which is similarly built, doubling the noun baka ("idiot") and adding an adjective suffix. I have to admit, this word was not born out of necessity so much as my own personal amusement. It's usually sufficient to say that something is jama and leave it at that, but I found myself muttering the made-up word jamajamashii when pushing through a crowd of slow-moving shoppers one Sunday in Kichijôji.

クレージく (kurêjiku) - Unfortunately, 99 percent of all loan words from English are treated like nouns in Japanese, regardless of their original part of speech. For example, the English adjective "crazy" is appropriated by Japanese as kurêjî, but its adverb form becomes the unwieldy kurêjî ni. Well, no more. Since kurêjî has the i ending characteristic of so many Japanese adjectives, I'm going to treat it like a Japanese adjective. As such, changing the last i to the syllable ku should make it an adverb, "crazily." By the way, if you found this paragraph interesting, you must be kurêjî.

ティッ者 (tissha) - This is a contraction of the loan word tisshu (tissue) and sha, which means "one who..." or "...person." Together, they describe a person handing out little packages of tissues stuffed with ad fliers; the "Tissue Person." Tissue distribution is a preferred method of advertising for a wide range of Japanese businesses, including loan brokers, English conversation schools, adult video shops, host(-ess) clubs and cell phone service providers. Usually the tissue distributor is described as tisshukubari-san, but I find tissha far more convenient.

モーニング息子 (morning musuko) - You may have heard of Morning Musume, the Japanese pop group composed of an annually-updated gaggle of giggly junior high school girls. The musume in their name means "daughter" or "little girl." Remove musume and substitute musuko (which means "son," but is also slang for "penis"), and you've got a handy Japanese word for nocturnal penile tumescence. Fiancee told me that she'd never heard this word used before (hence my willingness to take credit for coining it), but that she immediately understood its meaning.

Let's Learn Japanese: Mai Buumu

Mai buumu ("my boom") is a corrupt English phrase used by Japanese people to express something that one has started doing a lot recently, usually for recreation. If you have been spending an uncharacteristic amount of time at karaoke as of late, then you can say, "Saikin (recently), karaoke wa mai buumu desu." The only trouble with this phrase is that Japanese people often misuse the English word "my" to mean "one's own," which leads to all sorts of noun-pronoun disagreement:

彼は、マイカーがあります。

Kare wa, mai kaa ga arimasu.

He has a "my car" (He has his own car).

As a result of this misunderstanding of the word "my," my students sometimes ask me strange questions like, "What is your 'my boom?'"

These days, my "my boom" is Taiko no Tatsujin, Namco's festive drum rhythm game. I've been banging the taiko on a casual basis since I moved to Japan, but this spring saw a marked increase in my efforts to become a tatsujin (master). I have been playing the arcade version of the game at various locations on a weekly basis for the past few months, enjoying its therapeutic effects on my mind and body. Pounding a big drum feels good, it turns out.

Two weeks ago I arrived early for a work shift in Gakugeidaigaku (try saying that five times fast...or just one time fast) and decided to kill some time by going to the arcade and playing my favorite Tatsujin song: the Difficult setting of "Super Mario Bros. Medley." I got through the whole thing without any mistakes -- in the industry, we call this a "full combo" -- and was told to enter my name, which I did most proudly.

Today I found myself with time to kill in the same neighborhood, so I decided to play the same song again. (There are only a few songs I can play on Difficult Mode without embarrassing myself...others include the "Mojipittan Medley" and "Polyrhythm" by Perfume.) I had to smile when I saw that my score from two weeks prior was still in the #1 spot for that song. Either I'm really good at that song, or I'm the only person who ever plays it at that particular arcade. Either premise is readily believable.

Don't Be So Idiomatic

In 2005 and 2006 I put quite a bit of energy into slamming former White House press secretary Scottie-Scott McClellan. I saw him as a mushy marshmallow of a man whose career hinged on his ability to repeat whatever lies he was fed. And in regard to McClellan's capacity as the president's mouthpiece, I think that was an accurate assessment, "marshmallow" and all. Now, more than two years after his resignation from that post, McClellan has once again exploded onto the political scene with What Happened, his "oh no you di-int" account of the Bush Administration's misbehavior.

I'm not sure how interesting a book whose thesis is "Get this, the Iraq War is built on lies!" could possibly be, but I'm ready to read this book and let Scott McClellan redeem himself in full for all the times I cussed at his image on TV and drew goofy facial hair on his image in the newspaper.

Not everyone is as supportive, however, of McClellan's attempt to turn over a new leaf. Former White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy had this colorful comment about McClellan:

"Here's a guy who rode the president's coattails to the world stage and now is [urinating] on his political grave, all the way to the bank."

Now ignore, for a moment, the fact that the press secretary's job is to stand on the "world stage" in lieu of the president. Ignore the fact that riding the president's coattails is an inevitable side-effect of lying on his behalf. And ignore the fact that "deputy press secretary" sounds like a made-up title you'd bestow on a little girl on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Ignore all that and take a good look at Duffy's maelstrom of idioms. You've got coattails, a stage, a grave and a bank, all in the same sentence! How exactly does one [urinate] to the bank, anyway? If you're [micturating] on a grave (even if it's a political grave), while simultaneously going to the bank, doesn't that make it pretty tough to hit your target?

Maybe I've misunderstood. Maybe McClellan is laughing so hard all the way to the bank, that he's started [whizzing] involuntarily. That happens sometimes, even to grown men.

I hope Trent Duffy writes a book, too. And I hope the whole book reads like that quote.

Let's Learn Japanese: Kuuki Yomenai

A very useful (yet difficult-to-translate) Japanese phrase is kuuki yomenai. Literally translated, kuuki yomenai means "can't read the air." It is used to describe people who lack social tact. The written phrase looks like this:

空気読めない

Always the innovators, Japanese young people have recently abbreviated kuuki yomenai to the Roman alphabet letters "K.Y." But sometimes just saying that someone is kuuki yomenai doesn't do justice to that person's lack of social skills. Sometimes you need to take it up a notch. At times like these, you have to use chou kuuki yomenai:

超空気読めない

That means "REALLY can't read the air," and is abbreviated "C.K.Y."

I want everyone back home in the US who reads this to try using "K.Y." or "C.K.Y." in daily conversation. When someone asks you what it means, tell them what it means, then tell them to start using it.

The English language needs a phrase like this.

Let's Learn Japanese: Maji Ureteru

Maji ureteru is a colloquial way of saying that a product or person is in high demand. Think of it as something like "selling like hotcakes," only less hokey.

Comedian Kojima Yoshio （小島よしお）is maji ureteru. I first saw him on TV last August and his popularity has been increasing ever since. Like many Japanese comedians, his brand of "comedy" relies heavily, if not exclusively, on a single gag. In the case of Mr. Kojima, that gag is showing up in a Speedo, dancing to some techno music and then chanting "Demo sonnano kankei neh!" ("But that's beside the point!") while pantomiming that he's repeatedly punching a fallen victim. Then he strikes a really sily pose and says the nonsense word oppappii.

It's funny.....in Japan, anyway.

When asked during a satirical interview what "oppappii" means, Kojima offered that it's an acronym for "Ocean Pacific Peace." I'm pretty sure he just made that up on the spot for comedic purposes, but ever since then, that's been the official explanation of the meaning of "oppappii." Japan, being the impressionable nation it is, heard his explanation and ate it up in vast quantities.

In the past thirty days, Kojima Yoshio has begun appearing in a number of TV commercials, all of which feature him doing his "thing" with little variation. One commercial substitutes his "oppappii" with "kurisupii" (crispy). You get the idea.

Due to the ippatsu gei (one-gag comedy) nature of Kojima's performance, it's likely that he will end up in the metaphorical trash bin that is the final resting place for all comedians of his ilk. See also: Sakano Dandy and Hata Yoku. Will Kojima Yoshio suffer this fate? See for yourself and hazard a guess:

click for video

The link shows a relatively early TV appearance of Mr. Kojima. More recent appearances tend to dispense with the talking and get straight to the dancing.

The Damnation of Mario

I spend three days a week teaching English conversation and composition to mixed-level classes at a private college in Setagaya. I'm not kidding when I say "mixed-level," either; the huge proficiency overlaps that exist between designated levels often make me wonder how the students have ended up enrolled in the classes they're in. As such, the most proficient students are capable of some really clever humor, while the low-level students are mostly only capable of making lame excuses to explain why they're forty minutes late for class.

One day, during a group writing exercise focusing on "if" clauses, some of my first-year students came up with the scenario below. I supplied only the phrase "If Mario eats a mushroom," and the students did the rest, taking turns completing each other's sentences. Things didn't turn out well for Mario, it turns out:

Weep Not For Engrish

June must be The Month When I Yell Angrily At Other Foreigners In Tokyo, because this week I'm at it again. This time the object of my all-destroying disdain is Beau Miller's essay (entitled Farewell, My Government Abuse Chicken) which was printed in the Last Word section of issue #692 of Metropolis. In it, Mr. Miller laments recent efforts to rid Beijing of "Engrish" (bastardized English born of computerized translation).

"Engrish" is one of my least favorite words in the world. It's like a thick, juicy slab of "I find your country quaint and humorous" wrapped in a "Your inability to understand English is an endless font of delight" tortilla.

With his mouth full of the burrito I just described, Beau Miller complains that, without all this "Engrish" (and "Chinglish," just in case you weren't already offended), cities like Beijing and Tokyo will become tiresome, boring and generally less of a barrel of laughs for him. If he knew that an endless supply of "Engrish" was always available at Yahoo's babel fish page, he might not be in such a panic.

While Mr. Miller frames his essay by stressing that Beijing has "more important matters to address," his decision to illustrate that point with a stack of "ha ha ha, these people can't even speak English good" observations is counter-productive to his cause. I do, however, approve of his decision not to identify himself as a freelance writer. Most Last Word authors do. After all, "freelance writer" sounds a lot cooler than "ESL instructor."

Below is the letter I wrote to Metropolis in response. I kept it short, and so perhaps oversimplified my argument (and may subsequently be accused of missing the point of Miller's essay), but I wrote it more for my own benefit than anyone else's.

The disappearance of allegedly comical English from cities like Beijing and Tokyo is no crisis. Rather, if this change means people will stop using condescending words like "Engrish" and "Chinglish," I hope it happens sooner than later. The "Engrish" in question is usually the product of babel fish translation services (available for free all over the Internet), so if Beau Miller's top priority is indeed his own entertainment at the expense of language, why not just go to the source?

Let's Learn Japanese: Dame usagi

Dame usagi
Stupid rabbit ("Dame" can be translated as "no good," "unacceptable," "hapless" or "stupid." In this case, let's go with "stupid.")

This week Osaka-based Nova Corporation, proprietor of the omnipresent Nova English Conversation School chain (whose mascot is an allegedly cute, pink rabbit with a yellow beak), was ordered by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to suspend recruitment of new long-term contract customers for six months as punishment for illegal bait-and-switch practices and contractural misrepresentation.

[the story]

This is just one more troublesome black mark on the reputation of a company that has, in recent months, been especially troubled with bad press. In 1997, Nova repaid 3.8 million yen to a group of 18 students who complained of false advertising and had been subsequently forbidden by the company to cancel their contracts. In January 2007, seven Nova teachers were arrested for possession of cannabis and cocaine. And in March of 2007, a Nova teacher from the UK named Lindsay Ann Hawker was found strangled to death, presumeably by one of her students. Her body was found buried in a bathtub full of sand (one hand protruding) on the balcony of the student's apartment. The suspect remains at large.

Going from strange to stranger, consider this letter printed in February 2005 in Metropolis, Tokyo's self-proclaimed #1 English magazine. The writer claims to be Gil Cruz, a Nova employee who firmly believes that "Nova rocks," despite the fact that Nova employees are forbidden by their employer to speak publicly as representatives of the company. The letter sparked a mixed response of yeas and nays from others who had worked for Nova, and the question of whether Gil Cruz actually exists (and whether Nova does, indeed, rock) has yet to be answered.

This latest slap on the wrist by the government has caused a sudden 10% drop in Nova's stock value and many are unsure of what will become of the overgrown language giant. One thing is certain: If Nova ceases to exist, Tokyo pedestrians will have to figure out a new way navigating. Once, you could simply look up for the nearest Nova sign and know that the nearest rail station was not far away.

Technorati: Nova

Let's Learn Japanese: Hamatta

Hamatta. (Hooked.)

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, it's a Let's Learn Japanese post for the first time since December! And, as if that weren't exciting enough, this is my 300th post on Chorus, Isolate, Confirm. Seems like just yesterday I was taking photos of myself with a PS2 controller cable wrapped around my neck.

Today's lesson is about the past tense of the Japanese verb hamaru, which literally means "to be trapped" (or, often, "to be hooked on something"). After fussing and complaining about Square Enix's unsatisfactory PSP port of Final Fantasy Tactics, I found myself fondly remembering the hopeless addiction to Monster Hunter Portable I experienced last spring. So the next natural course of action was to buy the sequel, known in Japan as Monster Hunter Portable 2nd. Now, after importing my fully-pumped-up MHP character data into MHP2, I am very much hamatta.

My childhood love of dinosaurs bears a large amount of the responsibilty for my adulthood love of this game franchise. When I was in second grade I used the word Parasaurolophus in a conversation with my friend. When my teacher overheard me, she jokingly threatened to give me a failing grade if I couldn't spell Parasaurolophus.

Who's laughing now, Mrs. Hansen?

Technorati: Monster Hunter / Parasaurolophus

An-Tastic

Not counting the Virginia Tech shootings, the death of Boris Yeltsin, the shooting of Nagasaki's governor by a jilted yakuza, the firing of Don Imus, the discovery of "Super-Earth" and a day-long police standoff in Machida (which happened on a day when I happened to be teaching in Machida), it's been a slow news month.

Until now, that is.

Japanese Wendy's restaurants have unveiled something that should have remained veiled: A sweet bean burger. Called the "Anburger" (using the Japanese word "an" which means "sweet bean paste"), this culinary monstrosity defies food logic with its unholy trinity of sweet red beans, cheese and -- dear God, is that mayonnaise?

Something I learned very early in my Japan experience was that I don't care for anything an. It's a shame because the sticky purple paste, sometimes called azuki, is a staple ingredient in traditional Japanese sweets. It's everywhere. You can find it in donuts, cookies, pastries and cake. And burgers.

To make an already unusual story even more so, when I first saw the advertisement for the Anburger, I misread it. In the image above, the purple heading says "ANBURGER" and beneath that it says, "Oniku no kawari ni AN wo iretemimashita" (translation: "We tried using AN instead of meat"). But because of the font used in the ad, the word an very much looks like the word are, which means "that." In the sentence beneath the heading, the word an is in Japanese quotation marks to give it emphasis...but when you put emphasis on the word are, it sounds like a euphemism for something nasty or dirty or sexual. So the sentence could be misread as "We tried using you-know-what instead of meat."

Technorati: anburger

Sakuradamon!

The southernmost entrance to the palace grounds is called Sakuradamon, which means "cherry blossom field gate." An observant student of the Japanese language could make a joke about the name, as the Japanese sentence "Sakura da mon!" sounds like a childish whine to the effect of, "But Mom, they're cherry blossoms!"

And hey, what do you know? They are cherry blossoms.