When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. Or so the saying goes. I wish I had photos of this chance encounter today, but alas, I don’t. I was on the way home from work today when I stopped in at a Lawson’s convenience store. I just wanted to buy a jug of water and some snacks. As I was paying, I noticed another fellow walk into the shop – I’d seen him on the road earlier riding his bike. I decided to wait for him outside. He came back out of the convenience store and I struck up a conversation with him. My starting point? The 「日本一周中」sign on the back of his decked out bicycle. That roughly translates as “currently making a lap around the entirety of Japan.” Awesome. I asked him if it was true, and he told me that it was. He said he departed from Kyoto on the 24th of June this year. He’s coming across the Shimanami Kaido bridges (which link Onomichi / Honshu to Imabari / Shikoku) and will make a full loop through all four prefectures here before heading back down south. He said he’s already done Hokkaido, and he fully intends not only to take a ferry to Okinawa and cycle the main island, but to go to the furthest possible island that still counts as “Japan” and back. I told him how cool I thought it was and asked why he was up to it. Some folks do these things as sponsored charity awareness things or whatever. He told me that since the economy just crapped out globally he’d been fired from his job, and thought “hey – why not do it now?” With no excuses and plenty of free time ahead of him, he ventured forth on his bike. I asked if he was blogging the experience or anything, but he said no. He said his phone dies too often to enable him to connect for blogging purposes. I suggested that he do a photo essay afterward if possible. Anyhoo – it was a great moment today that I thought I’d share with you. Cool dude. Cool thing to do if you’re fired and have the ability to take a large chunk of time off.
The video basically explains itself. But here’s the company that I did this for – Ikeda & Co. You can even see me in the background of a few gallery photos now. I’ll see if I can get my hands on some sharper shots. Great time! I’ll see everyone after Silver Week.
Let me first start out by saying that this preview for Fox’s Human Target came to my attention back in May, but I figured I should wait a bit since the actual show won’t start until fall. Upcoming disappointment? I’m not sure. I know it’s based on a comic book, but I’ve no idea how good the comic is, or if this show will even come close to replicating it anyway. If Mark Valley’s supposed to be fluent in any number of other languages, we could feel the giddy excitement that comes from watching him maul them too. If it’s just Japanese, I’ve got to say that the actors in Heroes have totally whooped his behonkus. You can watch the actual full trailer from Fox Broadcasting below.
The show looks kind of fun, sure. I’m going to watch it, if for no other reason than to listen for any other horrendous Japanese lines. Gotta love the possible connotation of the elderly Japanese dude’s words to him, though, right? 「あなたの日本語はどこで習いましたか？」and「日本語上手ですね。」OUCH. The classic response. I’m kind of thrilled a bit that it was included in a realistic way. Ha ha.
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If anyone out there is a better listener than I am, please feel free to take a crack at the word that he said that I’ve got down as 《ふしょうねん？》in the captions. I have no clue what that was supposed to be. Admittedly, my vocabulary needs work, so if you can parse what he’s saying please leave a comment and I’ll correct the captions. I’d appreciate it. It’s gnawing away at me…and I’ve watched that clip more times than necessary…
This is my ridiculous contribution to the brand new Kanye West as-a-meme phenomenon. Inspired by this post on Japan Probe. If you have no idea what this is about, check out coverage of this loser’s latest public tantrum at this year’s VMAs. Becoming an internet meme is kind of poetic way to make a famous person irrelevant. Ha ha. Lame, sure. But that’s part of the point, I guess.
The video I’ve embedded here, which subscribers may have already seen, is a segment from the NHK Matsuyama Branch about one of the summer camps I went to. I had commenters asking me what was being said. I knew that real subtitles (not hard subtitles, where the text is actually part of the video itself) were doable through the Closed Captioning options on YouTube. I’d seen it done bilingually lots of times by one of my favorite Japan-related YouTubers, Hikosaemon. (Go subscribe if you’re curious!) I set out to try and do so myself, but felt discouraged after watching several tutorials – all of which used Windows software. Until I could find a Mac-viable option, it looked like creating a text file with the proper format by hand was my only option… Read more…
We had the seasonal fall undokai (運動会, or Sports Day) at school on Wednesday, and I grabbed a golden opportunity. I asked for permission to shoot a timelapse video from the 3rd floor of the school building nearest the athletic grounds. When I had secured permission, I asked if I could borrow a tripod from the school and they found one. (Mine is currently living elsewhere and I’m attempting to purchase a Gorilla pod to replace it anyway.)
On the morning of the event I placed the camera and started recording just after the morning staff meeting. I locked the classroom door and left the camera to slowly capture one frame every ten seconds. After we finished cleaning up and before the post-event celebratory drinking party, I went back to stop the recording and retrieve the camera. I was more than pleased with the results. What do you think? Cool, right?
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