I am awesome at Chinese

You probably often think to yourself, Does Clay speak any other languages? Speak them? Lady, I have babies with them. It's consensual.



I was going to black-bar out the eyes of my unwitting teacher here, but meh, that effect takes too much time!

Flu Mask Santa Installation in Kobe

Zoom/visit original J article

Kobe-- A rather giant santa, complete with a surgical mask that answers to the trend of a swine-flu terrorized populace that loves to wear them, has been installed on an old 異人館 (ijinkan lit. different-person-hall, a place where foreign settlers lived in during the old days). He has a cat hanging from him. In addition, two boxes in the styrofoam Santa's bag are adorned with the words "job" and "tamiflu".

Hey, I found him on youtube too:


If you live in Kobe, you can go there and see it in person, so I found it on the Google map embedded below. The nearby 英国館 has a contest going on: if you can find their hidden Santa, you win an expensive travel voucher.

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Japanese Student Dodging Chalk

A student's imagination gets the best of him when he hears that milk increases concentration. So is the daydreaming he does before drinking ironic? Does he lack the ability to daydream in this way after drinking? I could give you the answer, but I forgot to drink milk today and so will stare at the clouds now.

Awesome Japanese Llama CMs

What is Kuraray? By watching these, I get a vauge idea that it has something to do with turning people into llama slaves to fight wars against aliens.





The best one:

Karaoke: Goodnight Agnes Chan

I usually try to find videos with Japanese lyrics attached so you can perform from the safety of your own home before making your debut at the snack bar, but the translations will have to do this time. It's a pretty easy song anyways.



Fret not! I have one more with lyrics: This is probably her most famous song (i.e. findable in that karaoke machine).

So the singer is Agnes Chan (Japanese: アグネス・チャン). She is actually a Hong Kong-born singer, a novelist, a UNICEF ambassador, and a professor. That all makes me feel unaccomplished, but I can drown my sorrows in singing at least.

The thing about the name is for name with the same character as hers, we say Chen, Chin, or Chan in English, but in Japan the standard is just Chin. She just seems to be an exception to the Chin rule, probably because they used her English name (lots of English singing goes on in Hong Kong and almost all Chinese stars have two names). In Agnes' case, her original name's hanzi is 陳 (which has an on-yomi of chin), the same as one of my Chinese classmates, Chin-kun. I don't know why she chose Agnes for her first name though.]

Another 陳 is Jackie Chan (born Chan Kong Sang), who has many names. Jackie gets to break the chin-barrier in Japan too. Agnes and Jackie sang together at some point, but I have yet to track that song(s) down. I did see Jackie singing with Annie Defranko though.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Richard Yung Ka Tsai, a songwriter and musician that worked with her and collected some of his old works on his youtube page.

A Furry Surprise in the Computer Lab

An exclusive peek into where the action happens, and it's furry inhabitant. Also, a cat is there.

A Sky Full of Bats in Japan

I'm coming at you in HD, with flying friends! This experience happened during the trip that inspired me to write the Get Lost! article at Jibtv.



Not much to say, except I'm not sure where these bats go during winter. They left poo on my balcony to remember them by though.

Sashimi-san is One Angry Cat

I don't know what makes the cat Sashimi-san so angry, but it definitely doesn't like this guy, who is visiting his sister. There are many vids in this series. I made a playlist of a few of them. Don't let the Japanese at the beginning scare you off; funny stuff abounds.