Archive for the 'observations' Category
Who Do PR Folks Think They’re Fooling?
August 24th, 2010Despite the inflammatory post title, I’m not really talking about all PR folks, or all PR activities. But there is a subsection of PR that I just can’t imagine the people writing the PR copy actually believing anyone in the world will believe. The example that prompts me to write this is a translation I [...]
“Just Yesterday”
March 20th, 2010People say that as you grow older, your sense of time changes, so that weeks, months, and years pass by in the space of a day. Maybe aging is part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. When you have kids, the counting of years becomes easier, because of the concrete milestones [...]
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 [...]
Guns and Acclimation
September 17th, 2009I was raised in a country where handgun ownership is legal (America) and have lived 14 years in a country where it is illegal (Japan). When I first came to Japan, people constantly asked me if I owned a gun in the states, and were amazed when I said “no” (which leads me to wonder [...]
A Possible Reason for High Japanese Literacy Rates
June 1st, 2009Japan has a remarkably high literacy rate, which sometimes seems confounding, due to the complexity of the written language. Sure, it’s not as hard as Chinese, but it’s pretty high up there on the difficulty ladder. This is usually explained by the rigorousness of the educational system, which I’m sure is very important, but I [...]
The Way People Do Things Isn’t Always The Way They Really Do Them
May 5th, 2009The way people do things isn’t always the way people think they do things, but it’s always tough to point that out when they can do it but you can’t. There are two examples that pop to mind: The first was when my wife taught me to snowboard. One of the first things you have [...]
Y2K Gets No Respect
April 1st, 2009Somebody today made another crack about how wrong everyone was about Y2K, and it’s driving me crazy. On the rare occassion when Y2K comes up, it’s always the same: “Look how wrong they were about Y2K”. While I, personally, wasn’t involved at all in Y2K preparation work, I was surrounded by people working to avoid [...]
Intonationally Left Behind
March 25th, 2009So, living away from English for a long time, one naturally starts to worry about losing touch with the language as-it-is-spake, especially when one’s contact with one’s home culture comes primarily through reading things on the internet, as opposed to talking to fellow countrymen or watching topical television. One regular shock is hearing peoples’ names. [...]
Culturally Modified Female Voice
March 5th, 2009Most people with a passing familiarity with Japan, and anyone who has actually lived in Japan, is intimately familiar with the Culturally Modified Female Voice, by which I mean the extra-high voices that some (not all) Japanese women use. There are actually two types of annoying voices, with very different roots. The first is the [...]
Prepared Comedy Doesn’t Work On Me Anymore
December 31st, 2008Do you remember, as a kid, laughing so hard you had to pee? Do you remember laughing so hard you couldn’t breath? I remember both happening fairly often. Not every day, or even every week, but still rather a lot during, say, my first 15 years of life. The second 15, not so much. I [...]
