Let's Learn Japanese: Takumirosu

The Japanese preschool TV world was rocked this week by Mitani Takumi's announcement that she would "graduate" (which is a flowery way of saying "quit") her role as Takumi-neesan on NHK's morning children's show Okaasan to Issho. The announcement prompted an online outpouring of grief from her fans.

Let me clarify "fans." I don't mean the kids who watch the show. I mean their dads.

With a soft, motherly manner and a competent soprano voice to match, Takumi-neesan is a weekday morning favorite among one crucial demographic: fathers of small children, whose wives can't sing. So dads across Japan heard the news and started flooding internet forums with the word Takumirosu (her first name plus rosu, from the English word "loss").

This isn't the first time the public has mourned the "loss" of a celebrity in such a manner, nor is it exclusively men who react in such a way. In September 2015, women across Japan reacted with Fukuyamarosu when rugged pop crooner Fukuyama Masaharu got married.

Mitani's decision to quit is likely a combination of factors. For example, at 29 years of age, she's probably caught in a tug of war between her deafening biological clock and the draconian contractural requirements imposed on her by NHK – you know, just standard rules like:

• no boyfriends
• no childbirth
• no tattoos
• no eating on the sidewalk
• NO YELLING ON THE BUS

Takumi-neesan was already on Okaasan to Issho when I became a father, and has been since then until now, so I have known no other Uta no Oneesan ("Song Lady," her de facto title). Weekday mornings won't be the same without her.

Let's Learn Japanese: Doyagao

doyagao (n.) A smug face

After a tiresome three weeks in the city hospital, Wife gave birth to Daughter at the beginning of April. Daughter is just about two months old now, and is an endless source of humorous facial expressions. Did you know that babies often cross their eyes for no apparent reason? They do, and it's hilarious every time.

Usually these expressions are too fleeting for me to catch on camera, but last night I was in the right place at the right time. While shooting about six frames a second, I grabbed this gem:

Doyagao comes from dou ya, a colloquialism akin to "How ya like me now?" and kao, which means face.

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."

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?

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.

Let's Learn Japanese: Ichioshi

Girls dressed as robotic prom queen impostors.

Vocals that have been pitch-enhanced so much, they no longer sound human.

Dance moves that look like they were choreographed by a rogue computer that hates humans.

These are all hallmarks of the Japanese electro-pop scene as we know it today. And if the unstoppable colossus that is the J-pop marketing machine has its way, we'll all start listening to Perfume.

Ichioshi is the marriage of the words ichi ("one," or in this case, "top") and oshi ("pushing," in the sense of "selling"). Today I went to the Village Vanguard book/record/gift store in Shimokitazawa and was assailed from all sides by posters, magazines and CDs emblazoned with pictures of the electro-pop trio Perfume. Their new CD, Game, is apparently Village Vanguard's ichioshi. They seem to be willing to do just about anything to get you to buy the CD.

Well, anything short of lowering the price from a ridiculous ¥3000.

Despite efforts to break into the mainstream, Perfume remain classified as an idol group: A bunch of allegedly cute girls whose success depends every bit as heavily on their ability to steal the hearts of otaku nerds as on their ability to sing. Actually, that's too generous; their ability to steal the hearts of otaku nerds is far more important than anything their singing...hence, the aforementioned pitch-enhanced vocals and dance moves cute enough to give you diabetes.

They also, however, owe much of their success to their producer Nakata Yasutaka (best known for his affiliation with Capsule, another robo-pop act). For while you might cringe at Perfume's dippy lyrics and choreography, you may very well find your foot tapping involuntarily to their expertly-produced beats.

Here is the video clip for the first single from Game, "Baby Cruising Love." The audio doesn't start until about 35 seconds into the video.

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.

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

Let's Learn Japanese: Karuchaa Gyappu

Karuchaa Gyappu (noun; from English) Culture gap.

Like the all-powerful Japanese phrase "shikata nai" (roughly, "Whaddya gonna do?"), karuchaa gyappu is a tempting way to shrug off some of Japan's harder-to-explain differences with the West.

A: What's the big deal about Koyuki? She looks like a man. She's like seven feet tall and she has a big chin. Why do so many people think she's pretty?

B: [Shrug] I dunno. Culture gap.

I am tempted to use the same phrase to explain the often sizeable rift between opinions put forth by Japanese and Western video game critics. Recently I shrugged and said, "culture gap" when I read Japanese and non-Japanese reviews of Tecmo's girlie vacation simulator Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 for the Xbox 360. The game (although to call it a "game" is to test the tensile strength of the word, since it's more like an interactive Russ Meyer film) deals with the intricate subtleties of all-girl, all-bikini beach frollicking and the Newtonian physics connected therewith. Despite its sparkling water and realistic "tanline" system, however, the game was viscously skeletonized by critics in the US:

Gerald Villoria for Gamespy:
"Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 just isn't as relaxing [as the original Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball], with its frustrating mini-games and flawed core game mechanics."
(Review score: 50%)

Compare that with the Japanese reviews which have been generally more appreciative of DOAX2's decidedly mammalian brand of entertainment (translated to the very best of my ability):

Munetatsu Matsui for Famitsu:
"[It's a tropical game that caters to DOA fans in every way.]"
(Review score: 90%)

Are North American reviewers being pretentiously critical of this game because they're insecure about looking like "nerds?" Are the Japanese reviewers who applaud the game exactly the nerds for whom the North American critics are afraid of being mistaken?

[Shrug] I dunno. Culture gap.

Let's Learn Japanese: Taru-Doru

Taru-doru (noun) Chunky model.
I should take a minute to say that, when I make a Let's Learn Japanese post, there is about a 50% chance that the I am presenting some very obscure, less-than-useful Japanese. I may very well be teaching you some Japanese that, should you try to use it in front of an actual Japanese person, might prompt a puzzled "ha?" response.
This word, taru-doru, is one such word. A combination of the word taru (meaning "barrel") and the last two syllables of the Japanese-English loan word aidoru ("idol"), the word taru-doru has appeared on the internet out of necessity; until taru-doru, there was no convenient word for "slightly overweight female gurabia models." But after searching for the term on Japanese Google, I get the impression that the word has yet to catch on in typical circles.
The girl in the picture is self-described taru-doru Ruike Asuka. Her blog, entitled Ruike Asuka: From Barrel-Idol to Idol...My Diet Has Begun, consists mainly of pictures of Ms. Ruike worrying about her tummy, pictures of Ms. Ruike eating and pictures of Ms. Ruike worrying about her tummy all over again. The heartbreaker is that it's very difficult to see any progress in her alleged weight loss efforts from her first post (14 months ago) to now.
I'd like to be supportive of anybody's honest attempts to lose weight, but the fact that Ms. Ruike refers to herself as a taru-doru on her own blog makes me wonder if she really wants to stop being a "chunky idol."
Technorati: taru-doru, Ruike Asuka
テクノラティ: 樽ドル, 類家明日香

Let's Learn Japanese: Tsuyu

Tsuyu (noun) The rainy season. The kanji used to write tsuyu mean "plum rain."

I wrote about it last year, but the Japanese rainy season is a reliable source of exasperation every June and July. It's like a cruel joke whose punchline is "Ha ha ha, you showed up to work looking like a water balloon attack victim."

This year tsuyu started normally, then fooled us all by giving way to about three days of oppressive heat last week, then came back with a vengeance. Yahoo! Weather has given the forcast of "RAIN" in Tokyo for eleven out of the twelve days from this Monday to next Thursday. And yes, it's raining right now as I type this.

Tokyo residents are unanimously anxious for tsuyu to end so that they can stop complaining about the rain and start complaining about the heat.

Let's Learn Japanese: Otsukaresama

Otsukaresama.
(Spoken to co-workers when they leave the office at the end of the day. Means something like, "You must be tired.")

He goes by many names...not the most insulting of which is "Puffy McMoonface." Just don't call him Press Secretary, because Scott McClellan is done! Stick a fork in him. He's beginning to smell delicious.

After nearly three years of lying, stuttering and laying his finger aside his nose, McClellan is resigning from the White House Press Office. But his classic one-liners, ranging from "I can't comment on that ongoing investigation" to "I've already answered your question," will outlive us all. Take heart, friends. We still have the worst leadership in American history, but at least now we are Scott-free.

[the story]

Let's Learn Japanese: Jouzu ni Yakemashita!

Jouzu ni yakemashita!
Skillfully cooked!

As my blog's friendly sidebar has been silently informing you over the past couple weeks, I've been playing Monster Hunter Portable whenever I find myself in a PSP situation. PSP situations are many; they include long train rides, students not showing up for their lessons and Girlfriend's recent endeavors to watch all six seasons of Sex and the City on DVD. With all these PSP situations, I'm fortunate to have one of the most time-consuming games in the universe at my disposal.

This edition of Capcom's hunting-and-gathering-centric Monster Hunter series, while pocket-sized, is packed with loads of Japanese text for me to struggle with. So much, in fact, that I was motivated to buy the 700-page Monster Hunter Portable Official Guidebook in order to help me make sense of all the "kelbi horns" and "water wyvern gizzards." Since this game's maps, stats and lists fill a book more voluminous than the Bible, I recommend all practicing Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians to consider immediate conversion to Monsterhunteropalianism.

Come on, squares. Our religion lets you kill dinosaurs and use their remains to synthesize medicinal goods. Yours doesn't even acknowledge the existence of dinosaurs.

By the way, "Jouzu ni yakemashita!" is the cheer heard in the game when the player successfully barbecues a chunk of meat to the point of being kongari (golden brown). In real life I'm lucky if I don't burn spaghetti, but in Monster Hunter I'm the Iron damn Chef.

Let's Learn Japanese: Natsukashii

Natsukashii. (adjective)
The closest analogous English word to natsukashii is "nostalgia-inducing." The critical difference is that natsukashii is spoken daily by people throughout Japan, whereas "nostalgia-inducing" has never been spoken or even written until just this second. I am a linguistic pioneer.

This week the nanomachines in my bloodstream started acting up. Suddenly I had an irresistable urge to play Metal Gear Solid. I mean the old PlayStation 1 Metal Gear Solid. Accept no substitute. Regarded by many as the greatest PlayStation game of all time, MGS's comfortable mix of relative political erudition and tastefully colorful character design had already kept me entertained through two previous start-to-finish runs -- once in 1998 after the game's original release, and once more in 2001 when I suddenly felt a hankering to listen to Mei Ling's educational lectures on Chinese proverbs.

Thursday afternoon it suddenly occurred to me that I was long-overdue for a replay. I walked into Bic Camera, not even sure if they still sold PS1 games (let alone this one particular PS1 game). Lo and behold, they not only had Metal Gear Solid, but also Metal Gear Solid: Integral, which bundles the English version of the game along with the V.R. Missions (which, admittedly, never should have been a stand-alone title in the first place) for a modest 1680 yen.

MGS is a lot simpler than the series's current incarnation -- there's no switching camouflage or wondering, "Which should I eat, the squirrel or the reticulated python?" -- but that may have been the reason I wanted to play it again. There's something to be said for a game that's so fun, even with such horrendous enemy AI. Anyone who's judo-thrown a guard on his back and then seen him stand up and say, "Huh?" knows what I'm talking about.

Let's Learn Japanese: Sukkiri!

Sukkiri! (interjection)
When you rack your brain or search for information for an extended period and then finally come up an answer, the subsequent feeling of relief is expressed by the word sukkiri. There is no literal English translation for this, but it means something like "refreshing!"

I eat an awful lot of Indian food, considering that I live in Japan. A few months ago I was having lunch with Girlfriend at Samrat in Shinjuku (home of some of the best naan in Tokyo) and this totally catchy Hindi-sounding pop song came on the loudspeakers. I couldn't understand any of the lyrics, but the song's melody was stuck in my head all day long (along with a humorous approximation of the words to the song). The more I thought about the song, the more I wished I knew more about it. It was like that episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete when Little Pete hears that "I was around / nobody knows" song and then spends the whole episode trying to remember how the song went. Only in my case, the lyrics in question weren't "I was around / nobody knows." They were "Totay, totay."

At first I tried asking the friendly staff of an Indian restaurant in Shimokitazawa called 2x2=8 for information about the song. But of course, I didn't know the song's title, and I could only sort of sing the "totay, totay" part...so they weren't able to shed any light on the matter for me. (Pretty funny, actually...I sang "totay, totay," and the cashier was like, "Oh yes, totay, totay.") Incidentally, they were equally unhelpful when I asked why their restaurant was called 2x2=8. If memory serves, the sign says "2x2=8," but under that there are hiragana spelling out ni nin ga yon, which means "2x2=4." Go figure.

I tried searching online for the song, but of course that was no easy task since I had no idea how I should romanize the words "totay, totay," or if I was even hearing them correctly. Then, last week, it occurred to me that the song was most likely from a Bollywood movie soundtrack, so I narrowed my search and finally found out that the song is "Dil Tote Tote Ho Gaya" by Punjabi singer Hans Raj Hans, and appears on the soundtrack to a movie called Bichhoo.

Sukkiri!

[ Listen to "Dil Tote Tote Ho Gaya" ]

Let's Learn Japanese: Kaze ga fuku to okeya ga moukaru

Kaze ga fuku to okeya ga moukaru.
When the wind blows, the bucket shop profits.

To be a teacher in a foreign country is to be a student. Wow, that was zen. What I mean is: As I teach English, I learn fascinating things about Japanese. For example, take just about any English proverb you can think of, and there is likely to be a Japanese counterpart to that proverb. Time is money; Toki wa kane nari. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence; Tonari no shiba ga aoi.

Today I learned Kaze ga fuku to okeya ga moukaru, which is the Japanese sum-up of Chaos Theory. While not a proverb in English, the nearest approximation would be some variation of "When a butterfly flaps its wings in Shanghai, you get rain instead of sunshine in New York."

So how does wind help the business of the bucket shop? Well, it goes like this: When the wind blows, dust flies. Dust gets in people's eyes, and they react by rubbing their eyes. When they do that, they damage their eyes and go blind. Blind people stereotypically play the shamisen, so an increase in blind people yields increased demand for that instrument. Shamisen are made from cat skin, so increased demand for shamisen yields a decrease in the cat population, which in turn yields and increase in the population of mice. Mice chew through your wooden bucket and suddenly you're forking your hard-earned ryo over to the okeya for a new bucket.

And then you're shit-outta-luck because you have no one to blame for your hardships but the wind, baby! Wow, that was kinda zen, too.

Regarding the above illustration: I don't really understand it.

Let's Learn Japanese: Saiaku no Taimingu

Saiaku no taimingu.
The worst timing possible.

Irony like this can only write itself.

Last night one of my students was kind enough to show me this magazine ad for Yayoi Kaikei, an accounting software package. A software package endorsed by a man whose name is now synonymous with shady accounting: Horie Takafumi (see Jibun de Maita Tane Da and Busted, below). The copyline at the top reads, "I built my company using Yayoi Kaikei."

The endorsement itself is no surprise; Livedoor has owned Yayoi since 2004, and as a result, Yayoi's president Hiramatsu Kozo took over as president of Livedoor after Horie's arrest and voluntary resignation. What's so funny is the fact that the computer magazine Nikkei Pasokon started running this ad just two weeks before the police raid on Livedoor's offices.

This may be the strongest evidence yet that Horie-mon really didn't have any knowledge of his company's dishonest financial practices. Or, it's the strongest evidence yet that the man is an overconfident moron.

Let's Learn Japanese: Jibun De Maita Tane Da

Jibun de maita tane da. (Proverb)
You reap what you sow.
(Literally: It is a seed thrown by oneself.)

You may have read about how the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed twenty minutes early this week (the first such emergency closing in history), due to a sudden 14 percent drop in the value of the stock of Livedoor Co., Ltd., internet service provider and last year's "it" company. The sudden devaluation was a result of a Monday night raid on Livedoor's Roppongi Hills offices by police, under suspicion that the company may have engaged in securities and accounting fraud.

Livedoor was a news leader for most of last year, thanks in part to its young, atypical CEO Horie Takafumi (nicknamed "Horie-mon" because he allegedly looks like Doraemon, the beloved robotic cat; Wikipedia disagrees, claiming the nickname is based on a racehorse...I like my explanation better). Horie-mon (pronounced "ho-ree-eh-moan") dazzled the press and confounded business competitors with his unusually casual business attire and cavalier attitude...to say nothing of his shocking attempt to acquire Fuji Television and unsuccessful run for parliament last year. (January 21, 2006, ADDENDUM: Lest we forget, he was also preparing to debut as a pop singer until the Livedoor scandal truncated that endeavor.)

Rumor has it that the police were tipped off to Livedoor's shady doings by one of Horie-mon's political opponents. Memo to Horie #1: Don't run for office when you're a high-profile CEO.

Upon hearing of the company's scandal many, including myself, were gratified; after last year's media blitz, most of Japan is pretty much sick of Horie Takafumi and his condescending attitude. Consider this quote from Horie's November 2005 interview with Lorraine Hahn of CNN, on his "shocking" business tactics:

...It's not that I'm deliberately trying to shock people all the time. I'm just doing things that are obvious to me. It's because the public doesn't understand my way of thinking that they get surprised. Sometimes, I find it frustrating, but I suppose that can't be helped. The problem is with Japan's education system.

Memo to Horie #2: Quit being a jerk. Condescending is an important duty for us all, and I do my fair share of it. But with people walking around talking like this, maybe I can afford to take a year off.

Fast-forward to this afternoon, when Noguchi Hideaki of H.S. Securities, a brokerage firm which reportedly has a close relationship with Livedoor, was found dead in his hotel room. He apparently committed suicide.

The death of that executive is a sobering thing, but it won't act to quiet the mutterings of everyone who agrees that Mr. Horie has spent enough time grandstanding, and is now preparing to pay the price. Rumor has it that he will be formally charged next month.

Memo to Horie #3: Act tough in prison.