Why I'm Not Leaving 'Till I Start to Glow Green

The 20-20 hindsight! It does nothing!

My post on not leaving Yokohama during these turbulent times has been published at the JibTV site. Check it out.
Also, I post for them occasionally, so enjoy some backlogs.

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Selling a car in Japan

I have a lot of things stressing me out about the move right now. Not the least of which is my car. But I won't even have a parking spot in the next place, so the car has got to go.
I went to the old BOE and asked their advice. They were like, "sell a car? Such a thing has never been done in Japan. What you need to do is pay someone to throw it away." Screw. That. I just payed shakken in Feb. Surely used cars can be sold somehow in a country where they are so expensive in the first place.

So I went to Fukuoka Now and posted an online classified ad. We'll see if it sells. This was the only pic I had on hand of the car:

Humour and sex. I should be in advertising.
Oh and I got the car tax note yesterday. I wonder if I still have to pay that if I sell this thing soon.
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And speaking of "Frack me," caught season three of Galactica on youku (the Chinese pirate's answer to youtube--odd how knowing Japanese lets me navigate that site). That finale was awesome! And it even made me like Lee a little. Just a little.

Today's language thoughts

Another Japanese-centric post. And long! If you would rather not see these in your feed, I think a little work with yahoo pipes may do the trick (I try to tag all such posts as 日本語). But I'll throw an unrelated bone out there to my non-moon speak talkers at the bottom.
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So... 好く is a real word, it would seem. Which means I incorrectly corrected a boy when he was translating my worksheet assignment today, and I will have to issue a retraction. I'll probably do it on the announcements so that I have the class' attention (I want to make sure that they don't get confused by my officially given translation on the blackboard, which was basically love instead of like). But anyways, it bugs me that I never noticed this word before, despite Mai always saying 好かん (I don't like it!) (I just thought it was hakata-ben)(don't get it into your head that she was saying she didn't like me!)(four parenthetical statements: bad grammar, or awesome grammar?). The issue got a little muddled because before class, a teacher and I got back into the thing about whether 好き is a verb. Most Japanese people tend to think it is, despite looking nothing like a verb. But in their minds it is 好む or 好く, more or less. And if we factor in the fact that だ is more or less a helper verb, 好きだ is very easy to see as a verb.--by the way, Bobby, if you are reading this, which I doubt you are while you are building houses in India, I have encountered a 国語先生 that thinks of na-adjectives as not 形容動詞 until you get that だ or な on there. Thought you'd like to know, though you won't, cause you can't read this. All aboard the digression train! Oh wait it already left!--But the question remains, why don't I ever see 好く? My best guess is it just sounds like too many other things, so people favor 好き. What do you think, lovely reader, with full red lips I could kiss? That was weird. Why did I say that? Still like this entry? Or are you going back to that Boing Boing* tramp? Okay, I have totally lost my Japanese readers now (as opposed to my readers of Japanese. No, wait, they're both gone).
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So, I thought a section on how Japanese is written, from Wikipedia, was interesting. Therefore, lets have some passages and my reactions!

ニュアンスを伝える日本語表記系

他の言語では説明を追加したり単語自体を変更したりしなければならない情報でも、日本語の表記システムを用いれば同じ単語の表記を変えるだけで伝えることができる場合がある。例えば英語の「 I 」、ドイツ語の「 Ich 」、ロシア語の「 Я 」に相当する「私」は男女兼用でフォーマルな文章にしばしば用いられる。ひらがなで書いた「わたし」は、優しい感じがするので、男女ともにインフォーマルな場や、親しみやすさを表現したい場合に使用される。例えば、女性が日記や友人への手紙で用いるなどは、その典型である。

Okay, fair enough, but I have to point out that other languages have tools such as italics, fonts, elitist French and Latin words, color, and CAPITAL PRINT to convey nuances. But yes, Japanese can get pretty fun when you mess with the characters you choose to write in, and perhaps less jarring than some of the methods I just mentioned.

カタカナの「ワタシ」はほとんど用いられず(時々一人称を強調する時や、外国人が片言で話すニュアンスを出す場合に用いられることがある)

Yeah what the article doesn't tell you is how much it pisses you off to read the local paper and see that all your quotes are in katakana implying that you speak Japanese as well as an animal. At least that's how we feel.

文体上の狙いで漢字の複合語を恣意的に読ませることもできる。例えば夏目漱石は短編『十五夜』の中で名詞の「接続」を動詞的に活用した「接続って」を「つながって」と読ませている。これは通常ならば「繋がって」「つながって」と書くものである。

Yeah Soseki drove me a bit crazy at first because I didn't know he was gonna be pulling this sort of thing. I was like, is this an archaic way of saying it? Imagine if we could get away with this in English. Printing something like "connection(tied)." Well, looks kind of annoying in English, but furigana can make it seem natural in Japanese somehow. Another thing you can do with written Japanese is have a word with foreign pronunciation implied by furigana. Like 獣化兵（ゾアノイド）(the Zoanoids from Guyver).
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Promised whatever:
I am finally getting into Battlestar Galactica. It is pretty good, but my theory that all SF movies and TV shows are kinda stupid is holding up. It is odd to me that the suave scientist is the only humorous character (gruff doc doesn't count). Don't get me wrong, he's my fav, but the rest of the show kinda doesn't match. They had one oddly funny scene, complete with stereotypical musical cues in season one, but otherwise melodrama. And I hate Lee. And I'm in love with many Cylons. And there shouldn't be so many episodes stringing things out, giving us stupid stories like Lee the detective. I fracking hate Lee.
Bonus fact: Did you know that the original series, and consequently this one, are littered with reference to Mormon concepts?
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*I stopped reading Boing Boing because I already had seen everything they wrote about. I really may be the king of the internet, as someone recently labeled me.　

Sour Grapes

Before the article begins know this to get an idea of my bias: I am a tall white male with blond hair that has dated 3 J girls and 1 foreigner during my time here. One of the J girls was a 2 year relationship.
I do find that the J girls have more of a tendency to forgive my idiosyncrasies (read: awkward behavoir).
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I've been hearing, during my time in Japan, about how guys that could never get a girlfriend back home are much luckier here. More accurately, I seem to always hear this in a way that casts aspersions against guys that date Japanese women. I hear this on blogs, from girls I'm friends with, and from the occasional guy too.

First off, let me confirm that it is pretty easy for a foreigner to find many interested girls in this country. That is as much a fact as a non-quantifiable thing can be. And I will also confirm that some ugly dudes get girls way above them on the 1-10 scale.

But it seems to be that disparity that bugs our foreign sisters so much. All is fair in love and war, unless your ugly, in which case it is cheating. That seems to be at the root of the sentiment. I also hear a lot of "guys come over here and get arrogant." I can hear the vitriol in women's words when they say it. I also recently read a woman blogger's send up of "charisma men," in which she seemed to think that these guys completely lack in all social graces and dis other foreigners in favor of hanging out with J girls. A type of guy I have yet to encounter here.

I keep hearing about these terribly awkward and rude guys, but I never meet them (it admittedly could be a factor of where I live: inaka). All the guys that I know that are dating J girls seem pretty nice and normal to me. So I am wondering where all the sour grapes come from. I hate to say it, but I think it's a racist and jealous thing. And that is going to hurt some feelings, but some people really need to take the time and reflect on why they would be bothered by an interracial relationship. I hear words like "yellow fever" and I cringe, because while I think fetishists exist in small numbers in all demographics, I don't think but a tiny portion of guys target specific races to date, and this term only exists out of hatred.

There are guys that use the J girls' tendency to jump into relationships to their advantage. But it happens back home too; they're called players and some are so proficient in America that they tutor other guys for money. So being a sleezy guy has nothing to do with Japan. Sleezy guys may end up here, but I think they are rare enough that the usual anti white/Japanese sentiments are still oddly numerous and shrill . It's a bias that some girls carry, like a chip on their shoulder.

And you know what's the silliest thing about it? If girls really are miffed that guys are asking out these very friendly J girls, they really should try asking guys out more often. Girls, how many guys have you asked out in your life? Think about that number. It's not hard to get a date if you ask; I hear all foreign guys in this country are sluts anyways; some girl told me that. Be proactive, or stop complaining. Take charge and quit looking for ways in which life seems unfair; for ways to tear down others.

But I express thanks to girls that have an open mind about international relationships, or are even in them themselves. That's brilliant! Your voices are too often drowned out by the others. And I apologize if I hit too close on this one with some of you; I hope it causes reflection and not anger.

The February pandemic

February is everywhere this month, for reasons I have yet to ascertain. But I know this, around the second month of every year, we get stuck with something I and my friends call February. It brings with it cold and dullness of mind.

I think it would be a good time for me to take a break from the internet (which always gets boring when infected with Febs). I want to get that LOST video done and then be off into books or something for a while. But some jerk made me feel bad about reading because it's passive. So maybe I will study, but Februaries have gotten into my Japanese too. The other day I couldn't remember how to spell the word for 男. I tried おとく and just stared at the screen.
Today I forgot that 次 is not すぎ. Februaries up in my Japanese, verbin my nouns.

And I gots to write a resume.
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your words for the day are 大学芋 with got it's name from popularity among college students, and すごい and すごく which are two words that are similar enough to kill me.
大学芋すごい人気である。　大学芋すごく人気がある。These may or may not be correct; have fun with that.

英語弁論大会のスピーチが間違いだらけだ

I hate speech contest season. Not just because I have to try (with inevitable failure) to improve kids' pronunciation ("Er. Er. Er. No, not 'ah'. Er!"), but because the speeches themselves are unnatural and filled with mistakes. We are teaching kids to memorize, by heart, incorrect English. I complain to the English teachers. They say, oh, we'll tell them. No one ever gets told. The speeches have been the same for three years, only they added in some new mistakes. I would say, "Let native speakers create the speeches," but lets face it, I cannot agree with other NESs during a simple eikaiwa about proper use. In fact, I think a NES I know was involved last year, because as I was complaining about the mistake-riddled MLK speech, he proclaimed, "There are NO mistakes in there!"
I say replace these artificial speeches with speeches people have actually given. Instead of talking about Martin Luther King Jr., give his "I have a dream" speech.

That Burma thing...

I made this on Friday night. It is a little late for the blog, but here you go; my take on people that take the effort... to report that they won't take effort.


Also, a Japanese photojournalist was killed, and Mutant Frog has a good assessment of the Japanese reaction.

And Steve, who worked right on the border (the place in Thailand where I volunteered) and so has a good perspective on things in that region, has a good post about things too.

建前

So I got a lecture from the powers that be today, and it basically boiled down to one thing: my lack of tatemae, or putting up the correct front. It still grates on my nerves, coming from the culture that I do. We mostly reserve such behavior for the service industry where I come from. It even feels downright dishonest to me at times to do tatemae. But as my bosses put it, I have to act Japanese when I am in Japan, whether or not it makes sense. しょうがない, they say. It can't be helped.
But I am a little irritated at the teachers who reported me for the stark crime of laying on my side to watch a comedy show in the gym on a hot and humid day. They want me to act according to rules I have no way of knowing, to play along, to be a chatty person (in Japanese?), to pretend to be as busy as them, and yet they don't really let me into their group nor try to understand why I am doing things in a way they aren't used to, and they never will.
Clay, quit your bitching and put on a happy face. That's tatemae.

Everything we love is stupid, revisited

You may remember the entry where I claimed that most things in entertainment, particularly science fiction related things, are really stupid. Really, really stupid.
I think about the idea often, especially when I watch the new Doctor Who episodes. I would say outside of the return of The Master, this season has been mind-numbingly silly. Seriously, villainous weeping angel statues? But I have been watching a lot of the older doctors' episodes lately, thanks to this site, and it drives home the fact that the show was always really bad, and cheesy in the best way. That and Sara Jane was hotter than I ever remembered.

It's all good though, because it's entertaining, and I stand by that.

Anyhoo, you may want to take a look at this article, which argues that true Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. That's something I can get behind!

I know this idea was controversial the first time I brought it up, but have you come to share my point of view, or do you still defend your media?

Which is more complicated, Japanese or English?

Every once in a while, a Japanese person will pose this question to me. They always seem flabbergasted that I think English is more complicated. Actually, I try to clarify that I think English is much easer to learn. Learning Japanese often feels like learning four or five languages at once.
To learn Japanese, you have to cover:

Two sylaballaries

about 2,000 standard Chinese characters

maybe about 1,000 more if you want a specialized job

stroke order, if you want to be able to write

the multiple readings for Chinese characters

the local dialect

familiarity with major dialects

slang

common punchlines

old Japanese is a plus

idioms are a plus

Humble, middle, and honorific language

How to juggle in-group to out-group speech

Katakana words from other languages

Learning which words are too technical/archaic to be used (often after you have already memorized them).

So I think it's a challenge to learn Japanese in the first place. But I still think the grammar is ridiculously simple. Only two verbs in the entire language are irregular. The spelling is fairly simple. And most of the elements reinforce each other. I am actually thankful for kanji, cause sometimes it's the only way I remember a word's meaning, and there can be nice nuance communicated through them (見るvs.観る for example).
Anyways, I don't really think I need to go into why English is harder. But I will share this link with you. Maybe you'll see my point through it.

A lot of the things we love are stupid

People seem to think it's bad to call a spade a spade, but I'm gonna do just that here. A mini-rant, if you will; though I never write much.
So here's the deal. Star Wars. Doctor Who. The Lord of the Rings. LOST. Star Trek. The Matrix. Heroes. Comic books. My vlogs. All stupid. Really, really stupid. Always have been. Even the original trilogy of Star Wars; it's just as dumb as the new trilogy. Incredibly stupid, all of them; littered with bad science, horrible physics, plot holes, one-dimensional characters, and insults to our intelligence.
However, these things all have something in common: they are terribly entertaining. Just as we have suspension of disbelief, we also have suspension of inanity. It's important to remember this the next time you are tempted to get into a stupid argument about these stupid forms of entertainment. It's entertainment, not a dogma. Enjoy.