Last Bat Baby Footage

The baby bat died about a day after filming. I was quite sad.

Japanes Slang: Big Hair and Blinging Accessories

I'm going to give you two related slang words today. First: アゲ嬢.

Breakdown--
age: comes from 小悪魔ageha, a fashion magazine (not a typo, that's the official name's appearance in print)
jyou: an honorific, basically the equivalent of "miss" or "young woman"

So an agejyou is a girl that follows the fashions in the magazine, which displays a lot of キャバクラ嬢, or hostess fashion. Agejyou girls look kind of trampy, overly made-up, pale (trying to look white), sport alien-looking eyes, and have freaky-long art-nails. Also, I have been in Japan too long, because I am starting to like it. Ageha needs support groups for the girls that follow it, as well as boys like me, apparently (we can call it Ageha Anonymous!). Segwayishly, I wonder if on the guy side of things there is a word for host fashion followers. That will be my homework for the next slang post, but Dear Reader is free to tell us in the comments.



On to the related word: Agejyou girls love their デコる. Or if I was going to say that in a grammatically correct way, I might have said デコり^[*]

instead, for デコる is a verb that means to decorate something with bling.

Breakdown--
deco: from デコレーション, decoration, though the native word is 飾る.
ru: This is something that gets slapped onto words sometimes to make them into conjugatable verbs. Another example is ググる (guguru, to google).

I have to admit that I am coming to like decoru as well! I mean, I have seen my fair share of tacky plastic diamonds glued to things in America, but they have elevated it to a true art form over here!
Here is a video tutorial that teaches you how to decoru your own cell phone:

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bonus links on this subject:

An agejyou blog (scroll down for デコった calculators)

A big hair supporter, modeled by a classy white lady

Link to buy the dekoru mask. I should be payed for this... oh wait, you won't be buying one?

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^[*]To further complicate things, the word started out as デコり and became デコる later, as you can see in the mask ad, dekori is still well present.

This is Not the Japanese I Signed on for

So I thought since the Daily Yomiuri offers feeds now I would try it out and try to read a newspaper article a day. But then I get to the headline.

Me: Oh geeze, what is that again, Rikaichan? Foreign product something or othe--
Rikaichan says: 商品先物取引 しょうひんさきものとりひき (n) commodity futures
Me: gawugljl [commence brain-melt]

Think I'll stick to novels and manga for now, as last I checked, the most complicated financial term I knew in either language was "mutual fund".
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BTW, I haven't had the confidence to invest at all this year. I asked the guy that set up my mutual funds at the bank about it, and he used a bunch of words I didn't know along with "strategy". Ergo my lack of financial planning this year. On the one hand, Americas' economy sucking makes what I already invested look dangerously pittanceful [neologism], but on the other, the more it sucks in America, the stronger my yen is here, at least for now. Maybe, if the American economy gets really bad, it will actually be a good time to invest and I can pull a grandpa Forbes. That's the ticket!
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Edit: I just finished reading a different article, and learned the word 拉致問題. Can you guess what recent story I was reading about? My brain is sleepy and limp now. I take fall down sleep time good.

Average salaries in Japan part II

Last post I laid out some salaries that I found in a book at the local family mart. It's now updated a bit (the only one I was really off on was the cop; holy crap they are really rich!). I also picked up these salaries today:

Doctor: 1,100 man. Bit lower than an American doctor I think.
Professor: 1,130 man.
taxi driver: 300 man.
manga-ka: 240 man. Another secret dream job disappoints.
writer: 330 man. Yet another secret dream job.

The book may be enjoyable to read; I found the Japanese was about right for my level. Each entry seems to be, "you may think it's easy to be x, but actually..." It was also fairly cheap, but I was more interested in the scary stories collection to its right (-_^)

Average salaries in Japan

Updated corrections in bold!
As a JET, I make 3,600,000 yen before taxes (360 man in the local lingo).
Today I read a book in a conbini that layed out the average salary of many types of jobs. Let's compare (I tried to memorize the figures as best I could so I may be off by a bit, but as you can see I can hardly afford to be buying books on my salary).

Average teacher pay (junior high): 740 man. And they get bonuses. And they live with their parents, so life is practically free. Downside: No free time and you are basically a replacement parent.
Average cop: Something like 780 man I think it was. Not bad for bike wranglers.
Average talento: A mere 280 man. Crap. That is my secret dream job. And they work so hard it seems!
Average hostess: 450 man. Does it make up for the liver damage?
Average stripper: 470 man. Probably not worth the extra 20 man a year to go from entertaining guys as a hostess to entertaining guys. And I imagine you get stuck with a Nigerian boyfriend that always borrows your money. I'm just saying there were a lot of Nigerians working for the strip clubs in Roppongi; there's gotta be a lot of hardworking Nigerians with real jobs outside of that area.
Director: 280 man. No wonder Takashi Miike makes so many films.
Farmer: 420 man. Probably not enough, seeing as I have never met a farmer without a family.
Translator: 360 man. Crap, that is my not-secret dream job.
Ramen restauranteur: 450 man.
Soba restauranteur: 800 man. Who knew the kings of the noodle industry were soba dudes?
Public servant: 700 man. Ironically, one of the easiest jobs in town is the highest paying. You have to pass a test to get in though, and maybe know some people who know some people.

Tomorrow I promise to go out and double check the numbers and maybe add a couple more. Check completed; but I missed the pages on hostesses and strippers on the second go around; I was furtively scribbling notes and worrying about how it looked to the store people, so I kinda flipped through fast.

Forgetting stuff until I remember it too much later

Money and enlightenment

Thought aggregate post go!
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Talked to the guy that handles my mutual funds. Right now they are worth less than what I payed by a bit (I had made hundreds on them after a short time last year). Thanks US economy. He recommended something about money markets or something. I dunno. It's more complicated. How to not be poor should be a mandatory college class, instead of that university living class most people took. Still, thinking of shipping some money back since the yen is relatively up. Don't exactly know if it's worth it, cause I may need that money if I decide to go to language school in Japan.
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Was talking with teachers about reincarnation at lunch today and if you change sexes and whatnot. Most of them believe in it, but are not too versed on how it happens. I mentioned a Buddhist belief that there are five parts to the soul, to which one replied, "sounds like Dragonball!"
Then I tried to describe a bodhisatva, and how maybe they don't get reincarnated (?)
teach: "Oh that's too bad"
me: "Well, the thing is life is hard, so you wanna escape"
teach :"Oh yes, there are things in life that are no good. Like bad movies."
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Saw a boy's notebook today. On it, he had written "Engelsh 英語."

I won

Disclamer: there are lyrics in a song in the vid. I can't be held responsible for the swears in it, as I didn't make this video.

oh irony

The day I drop my iPod and it decides that is one drop too many was today. Maybe it will come back after the battery runs out, but that will be a while since it is displaying a paused song and doing nothing else (yes hard rebooting does nothing).
This is also the day I discovered the podcast feeds for writer's almanac and prarie home companion, so no iPod listening to them, but thankfully I have a mac with a remote, and a comfy coutch to listen to Mr. Keilor on rainy days, just like home. Speaking of which, gotta love the smell of spring's first rains in the mountains of Japan.
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Can you see my new favicon? If not, what os/browser do you have?

wii internet

Technophilic

I think I may be becoming a technophile. And by that I don't mean simply thinking gadgets are cool. I mean I am finding certain items dead sexy. My old iPod used to do it for me; these days I stroke the white enamel of my DS Lite. And the cell phone I got yesterday... I keep marveling at how thin it is. I'm afraid I'm going to break it if I press too hard, but it feels so good. But I'm not alone, I think. I whipped it out the other day (my DS), and girl said "Oh, that's very sexy. I gotta get my hands on one."
Check out the ad; that's from my phone company. They know. Don't think they don't know.

Screw it

Materialism is where it's at. Why did it take me so long to realize this?
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This post may be a result of watching Buckaroo Banzai this weekend.