Your Japanese word of the week is...

... gonna be hard, since it'll be the last one of '08 heh..... anyway, it's

"-nakereba naranai"

The dash represents any verb you'd like to put in there (well, some require slight conjugation changes) or, as I found out, adjectives...... let's try this one....

"Ikenakereba naranai"

Iku = to go

Ikenai = to not go/can't go

-kereba = ones of the ways of saying "if"

Ikenakereba = If one does not go

naru = to become (I mentioned this before I think)

naranai = can't/won't become

So "Ikenakereba naranai" is, essentially, "If one doesn't go, nothing will come out of it". Or, in a manner that's slightly easier to understand, "One can't NOT go". Or, in a manner that's even easier to understand, "One MUST go".

Yes, you read that right. It's a double negative expressing just how important something is.

The reason it's so hard to understand is that, in English, it's been taught for so long that double negatives are usually a grammatical no-no that when you hear it for the first (and, like, 30th) time, deciphering it in your head takes so long that whatever you should've been doing has already passed.

Anyways, feel free to digest that over the New Year...... I know I have been for the past, like, 6 months haha.....

Besides that, since the last time I wrote, quite a bit has happened.

There was a Shiramizu year end party.

I visited the Meiji-Jingu Shrine (again) with some friends.

And I saw the Shinjuku Illuminations, one of many in and around Tokyo.

And then just meeting up with lots of friends I haven't seen in a while.

Tonight it'll be New Year's in Tokyo so hopefully I'll have a story as interesting as the one last year........ perhaps more heh...

And on January 2-4, I'll be in Kyoto.

So I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's and I'll catch you in '09!

-Lawrence

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"yasumi" which means a "rest" or "break". But it can also means the same thing over a longer period of time, like a "holiday". In my case, technically, it lasts til January 8th.

So what does one do with holidays in Tokyo?? Everything, of course heh.......

I know quite a few people going home for the holidays so I've been running around seeing them before they leave. There's also been these year end parties (bonenkai) that I've been going to as well. But, so far, the furthest I've gone is to Yokohama on Monday.

Technically I did come here last year but this time, aside from Chinatown, I did different things. First off, I actually went up that "tallest building in Tokyo", the Landmark tower. I have to admit though, I found it rather uninteresting. Aside from an elevator that does 750m/min (45km/h), the view out just didn't seem that good.

I find high views of Tokyo to be clogged with buildings and while buildings can be interesting, it's almost over-saturated with them so it's hard to pick out anything interesting to see. Added to that the fact that it's hard to find a day with enough clarity (weather-wise or pollution-wise) to see really very far (like Mt. Fuji) and the Landmark tower's 69th floor quickly became a brief walk-around.

The tower also has a Museum of Industrial Science on the first floor but, as this is Japan, it's closed on Mondays.... I would've rather gone to that.......

After that, we (I went with Carl and Amy, the current Shiramizu Interns) made out way to Chinatown. And just like last year, there it was in all its overly-Chinese glory. One thing I didn't notice last time is that if you go in through the main entrance, the very first building you hit is a Starbucks........ some things just never change heh......

Chinatown is also something that never changes...... like I said last year, Yokohama's Chinatown is as much as visual attraction as anything else, so it's adorned with lots of stuff that people associate with China. Dragons, temples burning incense, a giant mural of Sun Wukong from Journey to the West, it's all there.

As is this. A Hello Kitty dressed as a panda posing like a maneki neko (those white cats with raise paws that supposedly bring luck to their owners).

Despite that, it's fun to just walk around and have a bit of food from the street vendors and whatnot, especially if you live in the area. We don't, but we had a rather good lunch at a Chinese restaurant and then went on our merry way.

We made out way out of Chinatown and decided to head towards Yokohama Foreign General Cemetary, which started in 1854 when Commodore Perry returned to Japan a year after he arrived in his famous black ships. On his return, a sailor died during negotiations and Commodore Perry request a piece of Japanese land to bury the sailor at. And thus began the foreign cemetary wherein now rest many famous and historical foreigners, as well as many who died in the Pacific theatre of WWII.

From there, it's a walk downhill to the sea-side Harbour View Park. While this would normally be great with a view across the inlet to Tokyo, by this time it was getting a bit dim and extraordinarily windy. We left the park and headed for Yamashita park which is quite literally across the street and runs for a large city block parallel to the shore. Nothing to do there either though heh......

We decided then to call it a night and headed for the train.

That would be Carl and Amy on the right, walking under a very neatly trimmed tree-cum-awning...

In the meantime, I hope every has a safe and fun Christmas and New Year's!

Or, as the Japanese say, "Me-rii Ku-ri-su-ma-su" and "Yoi otoshi o"!

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"bokeru" which means "to blur/fade". It can be used in two ways, one being the actual blurring of something (like an image) and the other being someone who's senile or otherwise got a fuzzy mind. You can also use it in a derogatory way by calling someone a "boke" (not bohk, but bo-keh).

This word entered the photography world for a similar reason and so "bokeh" describes the blurring of an image's foreground or background with certain camera lenses. It's actually rather complicated to explain why it happens (it has to do with the aperture of the lens and depth of field) but it essentially allows the photographer to blur all the things in front or behind of the object in focus in order to minimize their distraction. It's something I've always noticed in pictures but never knew the name for or how to achieve.

I should note that I bring all this up since I've decided, since I don't currently have a car to waste all my money on, to take up photography. It started in July when I basically played photographer for two weeks to help with Seiritsu's Japan Experience! program. After that, a few weeks ago, at the Tokyo Automotive Games show, I realized I wasn't getting the pictures I wanted.

So, after nearly an entire week of constantly reading camera reviews, learning the terminology, and dissecting the physics behind light, I found a nice guy on Tokyo Craigslist to sell me his DSLR stuff. It was a fairly decent deal including a 6-month old Sony α300, a 16gb CF card, a Lowepro bag, and a mid-telephoto in the shape of a Minolta 70-210mm, affectionately known as the "Beercan". All for cheaper than the cost of a new camera.

Some might scoff at the fact that it's not a Canon or a Nikon, but for now, I'm quite sure I can't tell the difference. I can, however, tell a difference in price...

Anyways, back to the bokeh...

I suppose it's a bit hard to see in a small picture (I resized it for the sake of the internet), but the bike and the tree in the foreground are conveniently blurred to (hopefully) draw the viewer's eyes to the Honda logo.

Of course, pictures aren't pictures without post-processing and I suppose at some point I should learn all of it. But for now, I just shoot JPEG's and see where it goes. Black and white seems to be popular though, and that's easy enough to do......

Anyways, I took these two pics just a few hours ago when I went to a nearby park to take random pictures. I took a lot and many didn't turn out, but what with Christmas lights strewn all over Tokyo, travel plans to Kyoto, the Tokyo Auto Salon, a trip to Hong Kong, and blasting across Japan on the the Bullet Train all coming in the first half of 2009, I'm sure I'll have more chances to really sort it out.

Oh also, this past Sunday I went to the 36th Japan Cup Karatedo, which is essentially the highest level national karate competition in Japan. Special thanks to Anna for holding my program for me =P.......

Double thanks to her catching this picture...

"Use the Force, Luke" =P....

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"omou" which means to "think". "Omoimasu" is one of the conjugated forms of the word and, just like English, you can also use it when you're not totally sure of something; "Lions don't eat humans.... I think..." or "I think tar & feathering people should still be a viable punishment..." And while I'm quite sure of the former and do consider the latter to be quite hilarious, there are a bunch of other things I've been thinking about...

Water on one of Saturn's moons

I understand why we're always looking into space. I understand the desire to find water on other intra-solar system objects. I would even venture to say that, even with nearly impossible odds, I understand that the universe is so vast that there is a possibility of life.

However, what I never understood was why we limit ourselves to finding only water. The link above goes to a Popular Science page about finding evidence of water on Saturn's moon Enceladus and it says that "[...] water is a fundamental requirement for life." And while I do think that having water certainly makes the possibility of life greater, I also think that just because all the lifeforms that we know of require water, why does that mean all other forms of life must require water as well??

There are lots of interesting theories behind abiogenesis (the theory of the origin of life), but they're all based on life that we know. But couldn't life that we don't know be based on a method we've yet to see??

Wheeeeeee....

It's not really as impossible as it seems. Floating something just requires an object to be less desnse than the fluid/gas it's in. Helium floats in air. Humans float particularly well in the Dead Sea.

In this case, the chemical in the tank is sulfur hexaflouride (SF₆) which is 5 times as dense as air. So something like an aluminum foil boat that normally "sinks" in air will float in a tank of SF₆. And you can see that it follows the same physical principles since scooping the gas into the boat makes the boat heavier and thus causes it to sink. It's just rather convenient that it's also transparent.

It's also, apparently, safe enough that you can inhale it to change your voice, like you would with helium. Except that because it's more dense, it'll make your voice deeper.

Now we just have to wait for a swimming pool filled with SF₆, because that would just be awesome.....

What the hell...??

Some pretty weird stuff happens in Japan...

I should say, before you read the rest of this, that Japan is not unsafe. On the contrary, I feel less on-guard walking around at night than I do in downtown Vancouver at night. But there is a hidden amount of extremism in Japanese culture and perhaps that has something to do with it. I also think that the much larger population means even if the chances are slim of a certain event happening, it's more likely to happen here... that and the oft commented on stress levels of Japanese people...

79-year old woman stabs 2 - said she was homeless and sought to be "in the care" of the police

Kansai University graduate gets 3-yrs for marijuana trafficking - Japanese officials are treating cannabis as the new plague; lots of arrests, lots of multi-year prison sentences, especially among university students

High-school girl stabs mother - said her mother didn't help around the house and thought the world would be better off without her

Man gets 5-yrs for throwing 3-yr old from pedestrian overpass - intellectual disability hindered his ability to differentiate right from wrong, but not his ability "[...] to foresee the boy would die if thrown"

14-yr old girl sets fire to own house - said she was angry...

Man stabs girlfriend over break-up; jumps off hotel - 22-yr old man stabs his 17-yr old girlfriend 10 times after she breaks up with him, proceeds to jump out of 7th floor of the hotel they're in, survives with a fractured elbow (ONLY?!?)

The only other thing I'd like to say is that the people accused almost always seem to admit to a crime. Perhaps something gets lost in the translation, but when a man was asked why he hid his dead father's body for 2 years, he admitted that "he wanted to keep collecting the pension"....

Deserves to be tar & feathered

In Southern California, a Ford dealership manager took out a radio ad in which he proceeded to lash out at the Japanese car industry and the people who buy Japanese cars. He accuses people of not supporting the economy and calls Japanese cars "[...] rice ready, not road ready", whatever the hell that means.....

These kind of comments really get me.

First off, people don't buy Japanese cars for the sake of buying them. They buy them because they're better designed, better built, and competitively priced. The Big 3 are begging for money because for too long they've sold cars that fell apart and looked awful. Build good cars and they will come, as evidenced by the Ford F-150 which sells in droves.

Secondly, lots of Japanese cars sold in America are built IN America, by Americans. Buying those cars supports the people who make them. A lot of these cars are good quality not because of where they're built or who builds them, but how the company manages the production. Lots of Toyota plants in America, for example, win JD Powers Initial Quality awards.

Lastly, while the cars are a problem, the United Auto Workers union doesn't help the Big 3. A lot of their problems are tied down to deals they've worked out with the UAW that's draining their accounts. The Japanese manufacturers are union resistant and, as it turns out, their workers are actually getting paid more when bonuses and overtime are taken into account.

To be fair, American cars of late have been improving. I can name lots of cars from GM, Chrysler, and Ford that I like. I can't, however, name lots that I would spend my money on. The worst is changing the stigma of "American" cars. Lots of people still choose because of the badge, whether it's not buying a great car from an unwanted brand or buying an atrocious wreck from a desired name.

But ultimately, that this guy's business is going down the drains has nothing to do with the import car industry. All the companies are experiencing lower sales, not just American ones. Toyota's cutting production. Honda's even pulled out of Formula 1. It's just that the American manufacturers have been running out of money for so long that the economy is now just twisting the knife even more.

People have a right to be upset if their job is threatened, but that guy.......... spewing racist, ignorant comments is not where to start. Bring on the feathers, I think... =P

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"mata", which is often used as "again". So you might hear someone say "mata taberu?" (Eating again?) if you suggest dessert after a really heavy meal. Or a common way of saying goodbye "ja mata" as in, "[See you] again". Or even "mata desu ka" for "More?".

But I think the most fitting one for the following picture is "mata ka yo~?" meaning "Not again?!", "ka" because it's a question and "yo" being a sound added for emphasis like you'd find in Cantonese.


Yes...... do it at home, indeed......

Just in time for the holiday season. Although the Japanese don't celebrate Christmas or even the New Year with any type of extravagant party, a really popular function is the "bonenkai", which is a year-end party, be it for work or a club or anything. Both dojo's I'm training at are having separate bonenkai's as is the school (probably). As expected, imbibing is rampant....

This image was actually posted on an English site for Japanese news and sparked comments about the choice of English as the alternate language, the sign assuming that English-speaking foreigners contribute heavily to the drunken behaviour. I find that a little over-reactionary since leaving out any foreign language doesn't account for the percentage of non-Japanese "not doing it at home" but printing it in every single language leaves no space for a picture of THE SAME OLD MAN awash in the displeasure of being around a social deviant.....

A better comment than that, however, was someone commenting on the fact that it says "Please". as if this was some option statement to be heeded, not some kind of directive to be followed (indeed, it's written in a much more forceful manner in Japanese).

The best, however, was a comment saying how the poster seems to expect everyone to celebrate all their year-end festivities at home...... by themselves......

At any rate, I just thought you might get as good a laugh as I did.......