Vocab from the 2011 Quake and Fukushima Crisis

I'm just going to provide some short translations of interesting words I found on the Practical Japanese blog, which has many helpful topical entries each day. Sub it if you know how to read Japanese. Here we go!

安否 (anpi, safe+no): safety, well-being. Think safe or not.

耐震性 (taishinsei, (x-proof+quake)+nature): Earthquake-proofness.

憂慮 (yuuro, anxious+fear): anxiety or concern. The sentence 憂慮すべき状況 would be "disturbing circumstances," or more literally "things are in a state you should fear."

空焚き (karadaki, empty+cook): heating an empty vessel that would usually have water, or that has lost it. Seen in 空焚き状態, the reactors being hot last night without an incoming water supply to cool them.

不透明感 (futoumei, opaque+ kan, feeling): Unclear feeling. Being unsure what to do next. Indecisiveness.

点検漏れ (tenkenmore, (spot+examine)+omission): Something that was overlooked during a check. A blind-spot in the prevention plans. Like a tsunami taking out your generators after an earthquake.

多選 (tasen, many+election): Being elected many times. I think this one refers to the crazy governor of Tokyo.

Well, my lunch-break is over, so more later!

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Me in Yokohama, a Few Days After the Quake ＊wobble＊

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The Quake: A Video with Pictures

I'm fine, but many are not.

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Tweeting the Great 2011 Japan Earthquake

I am fine so far. If you want to see events as they happen, I have been tweeting constantly since yesterday.
My twitter.
ALSO a large collection of Japan earthquake tweeters is here: http://twitter.com/#!/redjoe/japan-quake-3

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Homeless Japanese Dudes Really Like Me

Well, I suspect they just like Western-looking people in general. The reason being somehow they caught on to the fact that Western culture has a strong tradition of charity. Japan, on the other hand, has a culture of 恩返し (ongaeshi,gratitude+return). Someone gives you a gift and then you try to return it or pay it forward to someone lower on the pecking order.

Odd image via Nippon Cinema

When NOVA went under, we started to hear stories of out of work English teachers getting food from their former students. But a lot of those students then sat themselves or their child down for a free English lesson. Expecting something in return is not charity, so if you want charity a foreigner is a good person to go to.

Often I am accosted by gentlemen of the homeless persuasion at larger train stations around here. They always address me in English to ask for money. I, having mixed feelings about what they will spend their money on, often counter with, "おにぎりは?" (How about a riceball?). They always walk away, though I genuinely am offering.

Tonight I walked into my local Dokihotei to buy some weights. A rather unwashed-looking gentleman followed me in, said "HELLO!" and thrust out a left hand, bedecked in fungusy nails, for me to reluctantly shake. I tried to wave bye-bye, but he followed me throughout the store, cornering me near my quarry, a set of adjustable dumbbells. After a weird show of strength with forearm exercise pincers, he started to ask me in Japanese for money. I gave my usual onigiri counter offer, and he raised for bread. Deal. He wanted to carry my heavy purchase for me, but as I am not from an ongaeshi culture, I couldn't let him. Maybe that was insensitive of me; I don't know the rules that well. Anyways, he got the bread, and I got to to thinking, so the end result is a blog post.
--
Virtue is its own reward.
徳はそれ自体が報いである。

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Tama Hoooooooooooooome

Japan rips off Deep Purple. I rip off Japan. Vid:


So you can see one Tama home CM in that video, here is a new one where they prove my point and replace Tama Hooooooome with chirashi (flyer, as in the damn flyers I get shoved in my mailbox everyday):

If you want more of the Kuraray CMs, visit this post.

This isn't the only vid I've made with a guest recently by the way. This one stars butt biting bug of Japan fame more prominently:

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A Couple TRICK CMs Starring Yukie

Two things remain constant: My love of the dorama TRICK and the willingness of Japanese celebrities to appear in commercials. These combine into the embedded videos below, two of which star Nakama Yukie.

First we have a tricky cup noodle CM, which came out in time to promote the new movies this year:


Here we see Yamada utter a variation on her famous line "I see what you did there!" (I may have changed the nuance on that line a bit ;-):
And no, I can't tell you how something made out of wheat and hops is different from beer.

And next an ad for the DS game. I need to get that.

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Japanese Horse Guy Buys Himself a Very Special Present

I am scheduling this post way ahead of time, so if I die or something and it shows up, know that I am not posting from beyond the grave. Yet.
Anyways this is technically a Christmas video in which a guy buys himself all the energy drinks and tries to drink/eat them.

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Karaoke: The City Lights Make One Yearn for Companionship

While perusing my copy of 常識として知っておきたい日本語 (Japanese Everyone Should Know), I ran across 巷の灯り (chimata no ikari, the lights of the streets). It refers to the glow of a city at night, and maybe worldly delights/the profane (I'm not always clear at what the author is getting at because he waxes poetic about phrases).

It's not a phrase that lends well to googling the nuance thereof, but I did discover an nice old song with a related title: 街の灯り (machi no akari, the lights of the streets). Yeah the titles are one kanji apart and the nuance I can only guess at, but the song makes me feel all good and lonesome, especially as I sit here trying to figure out what to do for Christmas break and lament the lack of blog readers that could fill me in on the nuances of 巷 vs 街.　Make my linguistic Christmas dreams come true, Hopeless Readers.

So a karaoke vid is embedded below (my preferred singer is here in case you need to know how to sing it):

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Karaoke: The English version vs the Japanese

Check it: The English language version of Save the Last Dance for me:

Versus the Japanese:

A bit different. Sing those back to back for fun.

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Japanese Zombies Are the Standard

I used to think the plethora of anime out there represented the fact that the Japanese are creative. Then I taught their middle schoolers, who couldn't imagine their way outside of an... imaginary... box thing. After that I started to look at anime and Japanese culture a little more scrutibly. I scruted the heck out of it. My conclusion is that the culture stifles creative impulses. But such impulses are human nature, and so they will come to the fore in some way while still remaining true to the national idioms. I leave you with video evidence, but before I do, let me make it clear I still love living here. One friend of mine said something understandable on the subject: "I love living in Japan, but I hate the boring Japanese people I have to live in it with."

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About Being an Extra in Japan

The teeming masses of readership of this blog (my aunt) have been bugging me for a while to share my extraing experience. I've done only one gig so far. I didn't even get paid for (not) appearing in Zebraman II.
But here is the video:





And now some pics cause I just talk in my entertainingly quaint way in the vid:

A view of the track field and camerateers

A view of your protagonist getting ready for his big scene in the bleachers

In the train on the way home I spotted a Takashi Miike spot on a tabloid advertisement. As his film was the first thing I ever extra-ed on, I thought it a nice nod by the universe. Sup, Universe! I see what you did there.

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