How odd....

I'm watching the NHK "NewsWatch 9" show right now, and they had been discussing various aspects of Japanese parliamentary politics for about 20 minutes. The opposition party is having a private election to choose a new party president, etc. At one point, the anchors mentioned former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and I idly pondered the fact that although Abe's name is easy for me to remember, I couldn't quickly recall the current prime minister's name.

And then, about five minutes ago, they suddenly broke into the newscast with "Breaking news". Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has just announced that he will resign the office of prime minister, and an emergency press conference will take place at 9:30. (That's in about five minutes.)

Well, that solves that problem...

I'm listening to the English audio (I never used SAP on TVs until I came to Japan), and if the translation was correct, when the news broke, the anchors basically repeated "Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has announced that he will resign. There will be a press conference at 9:30", rephrased slightly, six or seven times in a row.

11:00 edit:
Well, NewsWatch 9 was extended an extra hour, as the NHK announcers and commentators tried to make sense of this surprise retirement.

Apparently, the actual news conference was announced at 6:00 this evening, with its purpose only revealed at 9:20. Fukuda was prime minister for only a year, following Shinzo Abe's surprise resignation last fall. It appears that with his personal approval ratings being very low, he felt that he wouldn't be able to effectively get his coalition's legislative program approved in the upcoming parliamentary session.

NHK was able to get news crews out to the streets of downtown Tokyo, to get the reactions of passers-by. Most were taken by surprise. One expressed hope that Koizumi would come back. I'm not sure if that's even possible.

Anyway, time for the LDP to shake itself down and pick a new leader.

Japanese TV and the Olympic closing ceremonies

Okay, so the Beijing Olympics closing ceremonies are on, and the Japanese announcers WON'T SHUT UP.

The bit where the London 2012 crew did a cultural presentation was odd, but interesting. It started with a modern dance performance...representing a queue at a bus stop. They laid a zebra crossing down on the track and everything. A double-decker bus (marked "London--Beijing--London") pulled up, and everyone jostled to get on board...but they all fell to the track as a girl got off the bus.

She walked to the zebra crossing where she was presented a soccer ball (this will be relevant later), then a crossing guard walked her back to the bus -- on the backs of the people who were waiting in line. (?!)

Then the top of the bus opened up and out, and some famous British singer who I don't know popped up on a lift and sang some wordless song. This was followed by Jimmy Page on a scissor lift, and they swung into "Whole Lotta Love". And THIS is where I noticed that the Japanese announcers weren't shutting up.

There are a lot of moments of drama in a closing ceremony, and each one was ruined by the Japanese commentators over-explaining everything. I don't need to hear a brief history of Led Zeppelin, I just wanna hear Page and (singer's name here) do the song!

Anyway, after that, another scissor lift popped up with the aforementioned little girl standing next to David Beckham, who took the ball and kicked it into the crowd of athletes, while the modern dancers had all grabbed LED umbrellas (rains a lot in London, explain the NHK people) which lit up to show animated London 2012 logos.

The ceremonies are still on, AND THE NHK PEOPLE ARE STILL TALKING TOO MUCH!!! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!

They just showed a dance routine on a large climbing structure mid-field; the Chinese dancers were wearing body suits that were silver in back and red in front, so that as they twisted on the bars, they would create swirling patterns. As soon as it started, the NHK guys started shouting "OH AMAZING! THE UNIFORMS ARE RED IN FRONT! IT'S MAKING PATTERNS!"

I wonder if they're using the NHK radio feed for audio by accident?

(-_^)

Edited to add: Okay, it's gotten a little better. The announcers shut up for three whole minutes just now.

Google Street View debuts in Japan

(No, that's not a Street View pic, of course.)

Well, it appears that Google Street View has come to Japan. Now you can find images of Japanese neighborhoods in Google Maps, including the candid shots of people doing things that they wouldn't be doing if they knew they were on film, just like Street View anywhere...

...and that may be a problem.

In a lengthy blog post (translated here), Japanese IT professional Osamu Higuchi points out:

The residential roads of Japan's urban areas are a part of people's living space, and it is impolite to photograph other people's living spaces.

This is because traditionally, Japan's residential areas have been very crowded, and it became the cultural norm to "not see" some of the things around you, such as clothes hanging out to dry, old men sitting around in their underwear trying to keep cool...

According to the morals of urban area residents in Japan, the assumption that “it is scenery [viewable] from public roads and therefore it must be public” is in fact incorrect. Quite the contrary, [these morals state that] “people walking along public roads must avert their glance from the living spaces right before their eyes”.

One wonders if Google will take this cultural difference into account and change their practices for Japan. After all, they haven't hesitated before trespassing into private property for better pictures in other countries...

Gas price update for August

Regular gas prices surge as high as 196 yen per liter after wholesale price increase - Mainichi Daily News

Here in Tottori, it's ¥183 a liter. At today's exchange rates, that's about...$6.44 a gallon.

It's a GOOD thing that the really cool game center, which was underneath the nice movie theater, both of which are a good 40 minute drive away, is closed for remodeling.

Of course, when I say "remodeling," it's in the extreme Japanese sense of "knock down the entire building and put up a new one from scratch."

Gas price update

Like I said before, gasoline prices go up every month, on the first of the month. During the month, the price fluctuates, but never back to what it was the month before.

And the price of gasoline for the month of July in Japan:

$6.50 per gallon.

(¥182 per liter, at today's conversion rates)

I don't go very far away from home these days.

Japanese schools...um...WTF?!

On the news right now, they're talking about how the Ministry of Education has mandated an increase in class hours for elementary schools.

They've read off a list of things that were removed from the curriculum 10 or so years ago when they reduced the number of class hours. Among other things (students must learn about all 47 prefectures, including names and locations, students must learn how to calculate the area of a trapezoid, etc.), they must now use 3.14 as an approximation for pi. Apparently for the last ten years, 3 had been an acceptable estimate.

That's right. For the past ten years, π = 3.

...

....

.....

......WHAT THE F^%@?!

Edited to add:
As Derrick rightly pointed out, how many of us Americans learned about pi and geometry in elementary school, anyway?

Return of the Son of Futility Watch

This month's gas price here in Tottori: About $6.25 a gallon. (Still better than in Europe.) Some localities in Japan, further away from the processing centers, are over 200 yen a liter...that's over $7 a gallon.

The price of gas in Japan includes a ¥30 or so per liter tax, earmarked for road maintenance and construction projects. This is a temporary, provisional tax. Temporary, despite the fact that it was enacted during the "oil shock" back in the '70s.

Due to some sort of governmental mixup, this tax actually expired back on April 1. The government scrambled to re-enact it, but due to procedural requirements, the earliest they could put it back in was May 1. Almost all gas stations in Japan dropped their prices during April, despite the fact that they were still paying for gas bought from wholesalers in March. This caused a few stations to lose money for April, but it was nice for us consumers. (I wonder what American gas stations would have done?)

Other than April, gas prices usually jump at least 10 yen a liter at the beginning of each month. The lines on the last day bring back vague memories of the Carter years....

Japan fights children's cell phone addiction

This article caught my interest for a couple reasons...

First of all, because I'm actually thinking about buying a new cell phone. Considering how little I use the one I've got, though...

And second, because at work I see elementary schoolers who, when their parents are late picking them up, whip out a cell phone and give them a call.

According to the article, "About a third of Japanese sixth graders have cell phones, while 60 percent of ninth graders have them, according to the education ministry." It's becoming its own little subculture. For example, if kids don't respond to a cell phone e-mail within thirty minutes, they are made fun of at school the next day.

Now it's been the better part of a decade (!) since I've taught in American schools, so I have to ask: Do a large percentage of elementary schoolers in the States have cell phones?

Japanese TV has managed to tick me off again.

Every Saturday night there is a popular TV program, called エンタの神様 (God of Entertainment). It's basically a variety show, with various comedian-type people doing five minutes or so of their current act.

Recently, one of the more popular recurring performers is a woman whose shtick is to do an over-the-top lip-sync of an American pop song. She usually chooses songs by black singers, I guess because it's easier for her to overact to them. This week it was Jennifer Hudson's "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going" from Dreamgirls.

My problem with it is that she pretty much does them in blackface.

Now it's not as bad as some other performances I've seen on Japanese TV -- her makeup is more extreme ganguro rather than true blackface -- but still, it's annoying.

Every time I see something like this, I ponder the prospects of having Mickey Rooney tour Japan, reprising his role as Mr. Yuniyoshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's...

Sorry...this week was...a bit more stressful than usual. Maybe I'm a little thin-skinned right now. Thank goodness for weekends.

Old CalorieMate Commercial

Rough translation of Japanese dialogue:

Student 1: Aw, man, we've got another test tomorrow!
Student 2: To be ready in 24 hours is impossible isn't it?

(English dialogue)

Announcer: Real-time balanced nutrition. CalorieMate.

And yes, they made a whole "season" of these. Some were just text-only stories, though.

Today's non-sequitur

Right now, the game show "Neptune League" is on. One of the contestants is wearing a shirt that reads:

FUCK
AUTHORITY
subciety

ooooh...ALMOST a complete thought!

(Remember: Much as Chinese characters are used as decoration without regard to meaning in the west, Engrish is used the same way here)

An Example of a Japanese Variety Show

In relation to that last "Here's to fail" pic, here's a video of things you can do with a camera that shoots 1 million frames a second.



P.S. to Smaug: You should recognize one of the hosts...

Back when you least expect it!

Holy cow, it's a Photo Album Update!

I swear I am not making this up

So NHK news is talking about how Japan is preparing for the upcoming G8 summit meeting in the town of Tōyako, Hokkaidō. Tokyo is going to send their riot police to Tōyako while the summit is in session. This reminds me of the preparations for the World Cup way back when...

"ARE YOU A HOOLIGAN?"*

Also, the local police will concentrate their forces around the meeting area, resulting in a reduced police presence in the rest of the town. The local officials are asking residents with dogs to patrol their own neighborhoods when they can. NHK showed footage of citizens and their impromptu dog patrols.

CHIHUAHUA patrols.

______
*inside joke.

A note or two on the Japanese language

Japanese has an amazing number of abbreviated terms and phrases. When words are taken from other languages and incorporated into Japanese, the words are almost always truncated in some way. I would conjecture that it's because the Japanese syllabry makes a lot of foreign words really long.

Take the term "plastic model". Four syllables, right? In Japanese, it's eight. "purasuchikku moderu". Small wonder that it becomes "puramoderu". Mobile Suit Gundam models have their own abbreviation, "gunpla".

They do this with their own language as well. There was a TV program on tonight, where they had a panel trying to guess what the original terms were. At first, they did a lot of "Gairaigo", foreign words rendered in Japanese, but then they started in on the native stuff, and the panel couldn't figure out about half of them.

One that everybody missed was "Konnichiwa," the standard Japanese greeting. When this one popped up, everyone was shocked that it was an abbreviation. However, if you think about it, こんにちは translates to "As for today," which makes no sense.

As it turns out, こんにちは is short for 今日はご機嫌いかがですか？ (Konnichi ha gokigen ikaga desuka?) which translates to "How are you today, honored sir?" (Lit. "As for this day, how is your health, honored sir?") "Konban wa" (Good evening) is similar.

I have a few pet theories as to why there are so many abbreviated phrases in Japanese, but as they are pretty much W.A.Gs, I won't bore you with them here.

I didn't notice this when it happened

R.I.P.

The NOVA chain of English Language schools is DEAD!

Man, I gotta pay more attention....

Apropos of nothing, first in a series

Apropos of Nothing: Random stories of little import that I find interesting/amusing.

On our travels around Kyushu, we (the JET gang) once visited a shop called Fukusaya, which specializes in "castella", a kind of sponge cake first brought to Japan by the Portugese way back when. (I think we were in Fukuoka at the time. Airport code for Fukuoka airport: FUK)

Fukusaya (福砂屋) was founded in 1624 in Nagasaki, and has been making castella ever since. They're probably the most famous makers of castella in the country. Naturally, we all bought some to bring back to our various offices/school boards/etc.

When I presented the staff at one of the schools I worked at with some castella, they were very impressed. One of the teachers asked the English teacher if I knew that Fukusaya was famous.

She said, "Of course not."

I fired back from across the room, "YES I DID," in passable Japanese.

I'm not sure, but I think that it was at this point that the rest of the staff began to have a higher opinion of me.

It's the little victories in life that make it worthwhile.

But it wasn't a wasted trip

It was a nice, albeit brief, getaway. I took the train from Yonago to Okayama, a trip I haven't taken since...the last time I took this test, two years ago. Since then, they've upgraded the trains that run this route, replacing all the old bench-style seats with more comfortable bucket seats...(I kind of liked the bench seats better. Easier to stretch out when you didn't have a seatmate.)

When I first took this particular train, back when I interviewed for my current job, I was struck by the beauty of this region. The train tracks follow a river for most of the route, and although the river is armored and fortified like practically all of Japan's rivers, the powers-that-be decided to let the river retain it's natural meandering course, rather than the straight-line concrete ditch style that is more typical.

[inside joke for Doug] BEHOLD: the power of Nature. [/inside joke]

Also, I went to a Freshness Burger for the first time in years. MmmMMMmmm. There is one near Tenmonkan Dori in Kagoshima City that I often visited. This time, I had their "Classic Double Double Burger." HUGE Double cheeseburger, with real cheddar, and lots of veggie-type toppings. SO greasy. SO bad for me. SO delicious....

They also have a Spam Sandwich that I really like. For some reason mentioning this caused everyone else in the old Kagoshima gang to gag. Oh well. (^_-)

You are now entering the Uncanny Valley...

...from the WRONG DIRECTION.

Seriously, I don't know what makes this guy (I'm pretty sure it's a guy) put on a full-body stocking, a (woman's) anime costume, and a mask, but more power to him.

It's the mask that's the creepy part, though. Here's an example:



It's not as apparent in a still picture, but imagine hanging around with this person, face to face with an immobile mask for a face, making the head look just a little too large for the body...

Apparently this is a semi-widespread offshoot of anime cosplay. Still creeps me out, though.

Now THAT's customer service

Something odd happened to me yesterday.

I had gone to the train station to buy my ticket to Okayama, where I'll be taking the Japanese language proficiency test next month (outlook NOT SO GOOD). The ticket itself was much cheaper than I expected, thank goodness.

Anyway, I had pulled out of the parking lot and was driving down Kitaro Road (no, not THAT Kitaro), when a van pulled up behind me and started honking.

So I looked around, panicking -- did I do something wrong? Are the cops on my tail? -- but I only saw this van, and a lot of pedestrians wondering what was going on.

I pulled over, and the van pulled in behind me. After a few seconds -- I didn't leave the car, of course -- he pulled around, and tried to say something as he passed my window. (I didn't catch what he said.) He then proceeded about fifty meters ahead of me and pulled over.

He got out of his van, opened the sliding door, and hauled out a box, which he waved at me.

Turns out, he's the local driver for one of the parcel delivery companies, and he had a box from Amazon for me. He had just left the distribution center, which was near the station, when he saw me drive by.

I don't get deliveries from Amazon THAT often, but he recognized me -- or at least my car -- and decided to save some time. Since I wasn't home, of course we would've had to play phone tag for a while. Ever try to play phone tag in a language you don't know?

(What was I ordering from Amazon? Um...random anime stuff. Move along, nothing to see here....)

No fun, continued.

Aftershock. Weak, yet still unsettling. Intensity 1 on the Japanese scale. The odd thing is, less than a kilometer away from here, the intensity was 3. It's odd because that's a kilometer FURTHER away from the epicenter.

It's midnight, almost, but I don't think I'll be going to sleep anytime soon. Whenever one of these events happens, I imagine feeling all sorts of follow up tremors...most of which I'm assuming are just in my head.

Time for a little PS2 action...

NOT a fun way to wake up

I'm sure I've blogged about this exact same thing before, but for the record, I must say it again:

A Level 3 intensity (on the Japanese scale of 1~7) earthquake is NOT a fun way to wake up in the morning. (The title link goes to the Japan Meteorological Website.)

Now, a Level 3, while scary enough when one is in the middle of it, isn't strong enough to do a lot of damage. So, this time, the worst thing about it is the fact that IT'S 3 IN THE F%&#ING MORNING, AND THE ADRENALINE WON'T LET ME GO BACK TO SLEEP!!!

Gah. Time to fire up some random video game system and beat the crap out of something.

One week and counting

I am slowly starting to enter into panic mode. Tomorrow, I'm going to drive out to the town where they will be taping the show, just to make sure that I know how to get there...

Typhoon #9

One of the good things about living on the Japan Sea side of Japan is that when the typhoons come, they either turn along the Pacific coast, or are somewhat weakened by passing overland before they hit here.

Love Hotels Make Twice as Much as Anime - Anime News Network

From Anime News Network:

According to research cited in Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History, by Sarah Chaplin (242p. published by Routledge, available from Amazon), 30,000 Japanese love hotels earn more than 4 trillion yen per year in profit, which is twice the profit of the Japanese anime market. Approximately 1% of the Japanese population checks into a love hotel every day, and according to one study, 50% of all Japanese sex occurs in love hotels. Source: The Japan Times

Four TRILLION yen. That's about 34 BILLION dollars. Yikes.

McDonalds Japan goes upscale (?!)

Have these hit the States yet?

Gourmet coffee and espresso drinks. Croissant sandwiches and other pastries. Savory soups. NO hamburgers or french fries...

McCafes have opened up in a number of countries, if Google Image Search is to be believed.

GAIJIN SMASH!

For a unique point of view on the life of a foreigner in Japan, take a look at this article. It's pretty funny, but some bits of it are uncomfortably close to the truth.

Gaijin Telepathy - Our co-workers and supervisors don't tell us anything. Literally. One day, I came into work at the ghetto school and found a straw hat and pair of garden gloves on my desk. OK. I sat in the teachers' room kind of waiting for an explanation, but one never came. Eventually I noticed it had become really quiet. I then noticed that I was the only one around. Odd. I went outside to find the whole school, teachers and students, picking weeds in the soccer and baseball fields. Ah, so that's what the garden hat and gloves were for! However, no one ever actually told me this.

Behind the Scenes, if your computer is of Japanese make

Just something odd that I spotted on the net a while back. Heck, I may have blogged about it before...

The Butt-Biting Bug

A few days ago, I posted about the NHK series "Minna no Uta" (Everyone's songs), and their new hit, おしりかじりむし　(The Butt-Biting Bug).

Well, it looks like this song has become a HUGE hit in Japan, with people buying CDs, DVDs, and even ringtones of this song. I guess Japan has its very own "Crazy Frog" now.

Click the post title to read a Mainichi Shimbun article on the song.

English subtitled version here:

My reading comprehension in Japanese is improving.

Well, I took another look at that postcard about のど自慢. As it turns out, they'll be taping the auditions, all six hours or so, and then using it as late night/early morning filler material.

In other words, I'm gonna be on TV no matter what, and all that's left to be decided is whether or not I'll be on during daylight hours.

Oh boy.

Japan: The Nation of Rule #34

Rule #34 of the internet, in case you don't know: If you can imagine it, somewhere there is porn of it.

If you click the title, you'll find an article from the Mainichi Shimbun ("Daily Newspaper") detailing a 24-hour charity telethon for AIDS research, run by a Japanese satellite "Adults only" network. Gah.

That's a bit weird, even for Japan.

(both links are safe for work, by the way.)