Shaun White, Multiple Olympic Gold Medal and Gundam Toy Winner
March 8th, 2010So I’m watching TV the other day, and, hey, there’s Shaun White, being interviewed live! That’s fairly unusual for Japan, so I’m watching it and grooving on it. At the end of the segment, they say “Shaun, we’ve heard you like Gundam, so here’s a present”, and they give him a big Gundam toy. He says “Wow, cool, I don’t have this one”.
Ok, so, fine. Then later in the day my wife tells me that she saw him on another show on the same station, and they gave him another Gundam toy. He had to act excited once again, despite the fact that on the same day, in the same building, perhaps even the same room, he received another Gundam toy.
So tonight, I’m watching TV (a different station), and, hey! It’s Shaun White! He talks about a few things, and at the end of the segment, they give him…a Gundam toy! He’s still a good sport and puts on a show of excitement, but you can see his enthusiasm is lower.
Now, what I’m thinking is: I don’t watch that much TV, and neither does my wife anymore. If we managed to see him on TV three times in the last four days, getting 3 Gundams, then how many times has he been on TV this week?! And how many Gundams is he going to get?? At this rate he’s going to have to pawn his gold medal to get the funds to build a new wing on his mansion to house all his Gundams.
Clapping Shepard Tone
February 3rd, 2010Something that has been stuck in my mind for a few days:
First, you should be familiar with the Shepard Tone. If you don’t know what that is:
So, that out of the way, something that has often both bugged and amused me is the tendency of Japanese audiences to “clap the beat”. That is, some musician is playing something, in a TV show or the like, and the audience slowly starts to keep time by clapping. The other day I was watching a TV show folks started clapping the beat, but the music used a lot of upbeats, and the audience was just terrible at finding and keeping the beat.
So I started thinking, “I wonder if you could take a Shepard Tone-like approach and wear the audience out?”
The way I imagine it is, say, you have a musical group with any number of instruments, and two drummers. The musical piece starts out slow, and the drum beat keeps time.
Bump................Bump................Bump................Bump................
Clap................Clap................Clap................Clap................
The audience starts clapping along. Now you have the music start speeding up a little, slowly, so the audience is slowly speeding up too.
Bump...........Bump...........Bump...........Bump...........
Clap...........Clap...........Clap...........Clap..........
After a while, it’s just plain fast:
Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump......
Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap.....
And this is where the second drummer comes in. The first guy keeps playing at that speed, but the second guy plays (quietly) at half speed:
Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump......Bump...... Bump................Bump................Bump................Bump................ Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......
The blue drummer starts playing louder and louder, and the red guy plays quieter and quieter, until eventually, what started out as:
Bump................Bump................Bump................Bump................
Clap................Clap................Clap................Clap................
is now:
Bump................Bump................Bump................Bump................
Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......Clap......
You do the same thing, of course, with the instruments / melody line. Now that you’ve doubled the audience speed without tiring out your musicians, they do it again. And again. And, sure, the audience could also take the same approach, but I’ve seen these audiences. It’s clear that they have no musical sense, and it wouldn’t even occur to them.
Eventually, you’ve got a leisurely tune, about the BPM of “Moon River” or “White Christmas”, with an audience machine-gun clapping, veins popping out of their necks, sweat pouring down the backs.
So, yeah, that mental image has been floating around in my head a little lately.
Jeff’s Miniature
January 2nd, 2010In high school, I played a fair amount of Warhammer 40K. Since then, I’ve bought the game for myself (in high school, a friend supplied all the rulebooks and miniatures), but being older, working, having children, and living further away from my friends, I’ve never actually had a chance to play it. And, even if I did, all the miniatures would be unpainted, because I have neither the time, or, more importantly, the patience to paint an army of minis.
However, I would have one painted figure. My friend Jeff, who is now a rocket scientist an evolutionary scientist, was an amazing artist (and, likely, still is), and also great at painting minis. However, he parted with his Warhammer stuff, and I asked for my favorite mini of his, which he gave me. It sits on my speaker, right next to my computer, but it seems a bit of a shame to let all of that work go unseen, what with me never actually playing the game, so I figured putting it up on the net would help alleviate the shame I feel by receiving it but never using it. So here goes:
An Open Call For Suggestions
December 4th, 2009Back in the day (which is my fancy way of saying “I don’t know when”) there was a custom of naming ones house. People would call their house “Treetops” or “Sandfields”. I always assumed this was only done for palatial manors, but recently found out that even folks in New Jersey would give names to summer cottages, even if they were tiny little dumps. So naming your house is not the exclusive province of the rich.
I’ve been trying to come up with a name for my house, though, and I can’t seem to come up with any non-joke ideas. Sure, “Meanrock Destructotron’s Secret Fortress” has a nice ring to it, but it’s kinda ungainly, and I can’t imagine seriously using it 30 years from now.
So here’s an open call for suggestions. Anyone have some good, non-ridiculous name ideas? Yes, I know the entire idea of naming ones house is, in itself, ridiculous, but given that start point, any ideas?
Being Semi-Unemployed Has Made Me Paradoxically Busy
December 1st, 2009So, as people who know me in person may be aware, I left my workplace of ten years at the end of September. I really couldn’t have asked for better work, in that it was incredibly easy and yet paid well. But all things must come to an end, and the night shifts and gradually worsening work conditions made me decide to say farewell.
So for the last two months, I’ve been semi-unemployed. “Semi”, because I do get some work as a translator, but not enough to make ends meet. Yet. (Knock on wood).
My image of being unemployed is “lots of free time”, so I assumed that “semi-unemployed” would thus be “some free time”. Not that I was planning on kicking my feet up and loafing. I’d be trying to drum up work, of course. But I could take 90 minute lunches or take web-browsing breaks. Turns out being semi-unemployed with kids makes you busier than being fully employed.
I have a trade magazine for translators on my desk which has a page outlining a day in the life of a TV translator (subtitler). I don’t think the magazine’s goal was to shout “NEVER EVER BECOME A TV TRANSLATOR”, but that’s the effect. Here goes:
05:00 Wake up. Write down everything you plan to do today. Do invoicing, financial records, billing, etc.
06:00 Start working.
10:00 Take a shower, go for a walk, get a coffee.
11:00 Eat brunch.
12:00 Back to work.
16:00 Take a nap.
18:00 Go shopping for dinner, browse some magazines.
19:00 Eat dinner.
20:00 Relax. Watch some TV or a movie.
22:00 Work again.
01:00 Get in bed, read a magazine or novel or something.
02:00 Go to sleep.
So this person gets 5 hours of sleep a day (divided into a 3 hour chunk and a 2 hour chunk, no less!) and 2 hours of free time (ok, maybe 2.5 if you include the morning coffee), and works 11 hours. Which is a doable thing when you’re young and getting established, but this magazine presents it like a wonderful mid-career position.
So, anyway, that aside, I am far less fully employed, so I couldn’t work 11 hours a day even if I wanted to. Instead, here’s my current schedule (and the reason I write less blog stuff):
06:00 Wake up. Play video games (my wife hates video games, and I don’t particularly want my kids to get into them, so I prefer to play when the whole family is asleep).
07:15 Make coffee. Feed kids. Dress kids. See kids off to school.
09:15 Go downstairs to start either working or looking for work. If working: translate. If not working: send out resumes, do trial translations, organize financial records, etc.
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Back downstairs for more work or looking-for-work.
18:00 Go upstairs. Either make dinner (10%) or engage kids so they don’t bug wife making dinner (90%).
18:30 Eat dinner.
19:00 Take shower and bathe kids.
19:30 Get kids in pajamas, brush their teeth, help older son with English and Japanese study.
20:15 Try to get kids to go up to bed.
20:30 Succeed in getting kids up to bed.
20:40 Bedtime story.
21:00 Fall asleep at same time as kids.
So, all-in-all, it’s a relatively full schedule. I get a lot of sleep (8 to 9 hours), but other than that I’ve got a 1 hour free-time window in the morning and that’s about it for free time. So, when I was gainfully employed, I had hour after hour to browse the net, write blog entries, etc. Now that I’m less employed, I’m far busier.
Product Quality
October 31st, 2009A car by Tomica, Japan’s biggest toy car line:
A car by Hot Wheels, America’s biggest toy car line:
Dressed Up
October 28th, 2009I’ve worn a suit, as far as I can recall, 4 times in the last decade: once at a job interview, and three times at weddings. Of those, my eldest son has only been privy to 2, and neither one since he’s old enough to remember. In high school, one of my life goals was to “not have a job where I have to wear a suit”, and I’ve been remarkably successful in that endeavor.
Still, even if one doesn’t always wear a suit, there are some occasions where a suit is the right thing to wear, and such was the case last Wednesday, when I went in for another job interview (although I’m on my way to being a full-time work-at-home translator, some translation agencies require interviews, and you can’t exactly dress like a work-at-home translator when you go in for your interview).
I dislike suits for a host of reasons, but when you wear a suit on average once per 2.5 years, there is a certain feeling of sharpness that comes from wearing one. So that’s how I felt on Wednesday, crisp white shirt, silk tie, nice black suit. My son, though, looked at me. Then he looked at the suit. His face grew somber. Then he started, slowly, to shake his head side to side.
I don’t think he likes suits either.
Wolverine : Illegal in Japan
October 22nd, 2009
I meant to post this a few months ago, but kinda forgot until now. Sorry.
I find this a somewhat strange tie-up: the National Police Agency has put up posters both advertising “Wolverine: X-Men Zero” (original title “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and the new restrictions on knives with blades more than 5.5 cm long.
That, in itself, is odd. I’ve seen licensed characters in public service posters, but never an actual advertisement including the name of a movie. But stranger (to me) is what it says:
Not Even Allowed For This Man
Dagger Possession is Illegal
Possession of blades more than 5.5 cm long is illegal. Illegal possession is punishable by a jail sentence of up to 3 years or a fine of up to 500,000 Yen.
Hugh Jackman
Wolverine
X-Men Zero
In theaters nationwide 9/11
National Police Agency
I can’t figure out what the message is. Is it:
“This guy is totally rad, and sports blatantly illegal blades. Having illegal blades is cool! Brought to you by the National Police Agency”
Or is it:
“This guy fights bad guys who try to destroy the world, but we’d totally arrest him on sight”?
Not Quite Engrish
October 16th, 2009I’ve been in Japan long enough to be used to both Engrish and to perfectly normal English in unusual locations (such as a t-shirt I saw this morning that said “Who Do You Feel Has Been The Most Popular Recently As A Musician?”), but there’s always something left to surprise me.
Case in point, taken at a hardware store. I doubt either the sellers or the buyers realize how odd this is:
The “Ism” of the Future
October 7th, 2009Every once in a while on the internet, there is a discussion of some famous genius or otherwise admirable figure from long, long ago. And, quite often, the person, despite their abilities, has some regressive beliefs about race, sex, or the like.
Someone will then inevitably attack the person for those beliefs. And, inevitably, someone will then counter that by saying that those beliefs were standard back in those days, and “who knows which of our current beliefs will be considered ridiculously discriminatory in the future?”
I know the answer: Me.
No, people in the future won’t be thinking “wow, the 21st centure was really big on discriminating against bugbread”. I mean “I am the one who knows which of our current beliefs will be considered ridiculously discriminatory in the future”.
Stupidity.
Yeah, right there, that word will probably be verboten. “Low intelligence” would probably be better, but who knows, that may still sound to future ears like “colored” or “negro” sounds to us.
Low intelligence (as opposed to ignorance) is a matter of genetics and perhaps nutrition. We are pretty good with handling *really* low intelligence (sure, some people still say “retard”, but we’re talking about “geniuses of the past” and “geniuses of the present”, and I can’t imagine any geniuses using the word “retard”). We understand that if someone is mentally retarded they aren’t an object of ridicule. And, of course, a person of average or above intelligence isn’t an object of ridicule either. but the grey zone in-between is a constant object of ridicule. I’m no better, I do it myself. It’s a rare day when I don’t talk about someone as being an idiot (usually someone I see on TV). But on more sober reflection, while ignorant people have no excuse, people with low intelligence aren’t really to blame for their condition.
So, there you go. My prediction. If any future researchers from 2209 are reading this blog, I realized it first.
