I haven’t done one of these in a while because it’s hard to get used to the “train of consciousness” type of writing. In fact, I won’t really do that. I’ll break this up into little sections and make it easier to read that way.

Mouretsu Uchuu Kaizoku (Bodacious Space Pirates)

I still find this to be a really good show. The best part is very much the interaction between girls, and now there’s a princess who looks like Sailor Moon wearing a middle school fuku to attract attention. She’s quite adorable, really. Being a crazy-good hacker adds to her charm, but she really wasn’t prepared to be borrowing Captain Marika’s pirate outfit (with a pleated skirt) in Episode 9.

Anyway, this show has teased certain things but we know that things will get a lot more “serious” in episodes to come. The pace is rather Goldilocks: not too frantic and not too slow. Of course some may disagree on that. The show also has a memory, like about Chiaki’s weakness for parfaits. (Then again, why would any self-respecting girl resist…?)

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

I made a little review of this on this blog, but just to reiterate: I liked this show more than I expected, but actually, what drew me in was a really zany Monster Hunter spoof, since I have played many of those games. As usual, I’m not quite the game fanatic some of my friends are, but still, it was interesting. Anyway, the show rose above cheap comedy and became more complex comedy with a lot of laughs, cheap and otherwise. It’s hard for me to watch a show about ordinary people in comedies, somehow. This bunch of weirdos makes it somehow pleasantly tolerable.

Food and Fashion

I’ve been expanding my reading material lately. One is a food blog called Just Hungry; the other is a fashion site called Tokyo Fashion. Both are about Japan’s food and fashion, of course. I have to say, my hardest translation jobs – at least, before finding broader, more thorough Japanese sources – were always: a) food; b) songs; c) songs about food, in ascending order of gratuitous work. (Mahoromatic manga, I mean you.)

Petty Japan Politician Griping

There’s a lot not to like about the political situation in Japan. Recently we saw the sitting Prime Minister declare that no one bears individual responsibility for the Fukushima disaster. First, when everyone’s responsible, no one is. Second, the very idea that a single person should be a scapegoat for a powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami is patently ridiculous. I know that’s not exactly what was being talked about, but really, it’s close enough.

I’m still not happy about finding out that all the (mostly) spent fuel rods stored in those reactor housings were there because environmentalists sabotaged every effort to find/ build a better place for them, greatly raising the possibility that if there was a disaster, it could get ridiculously out of hand.

There’s also the constant denial that they can do without any nuclear power at all and still have a reliable and functional economy. I appreciate the faith of the anti-nuclear crowd, but unless they’re willing to go back to an agrarian society with dirt-poor peasants, they need energy. Energy that doesn’t cost them internal organs would be good. This whole mess with Iran isn’t helping them at all, but if they don’t cooperate in shunning at least 20% of the oil they import from Iran, the United States has essentially promised to destroy their banks’ ability to do business with America and its ‘real’ allies. Not pleasant.

Gundam AGE

I shunned this show for a long time. Now that there’s a 2nd arc running, I can tolerate the apparently obligatory references to the first Gundam and the heretical idea that the “friend on the other side of the warring nations” would actually spare the protagonist’s life. Well, he did, or we wouldn’t have much of a show left.

Right now, this show is more than tolerable. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, people. I’ll see where it goes.

Aquarion EVOL

This show has to be some of the funniest stuff around right now… for a mecha show… oriented towards guys. Actually, I’m assuming it is; there’s certainly pretty boys stuck in there for show for someone. At any rate, the show isn’t afraid to get ridiculous… in a good way.

Armitage III

It’s only taken me over a decade to see this Original Video Animation (4 episodes). Well, at least the ending wasn’t complete suck. Better for the characters, but like was intended, it sure makes you wonder what side was right, whether any of the struggles really mattered… but, they mattered to the characters, so maybe that’s what counts. Anyway, not a bad show in the slightest, for as long as it lasted anyway.

Brave10

I didn’t gravitate to this right away. I watched episode 8 (or was that 7? I can’t remember) then found a little of the manga to read to understand the basics of where this all came from, then watched episode 9 where a major plot point is dropped, and no, spoiling wouldn’t be a good thing here. I half-suspected the twist but I had no idea why anyone would go that route. Guess I’ll see. This is the kind of show that could have been a lot more annoying but doesn’t really feel that way.

Unemployment Blues

I’m still stuck between jobs. Somehow I need to build contacts all over again and get some translation or tutoring work to fill a gap before my future job comes into being. It’s coming, things are just too darn slow. Establishing a company isn’t easy, apparently. I’m helping my father prepare for production where and how I can, but the gap is still really annoying for everyone involved. Even so, I love languages, so I’m going to have to do something about it. – J

I was reading up on Japanese Idols, which, believe it or not, isn’t something I normally get into whatsoever. I’ve been focused on other areas and, well, I avoid anything that smacks of obsession like some people have. All things in moderation. Anyway, I had a few thoughts.

The role of the classical idol singer was to present an idealized feminine image, both in a carefully scripted private life and an equally carefully scripted public life. Honestly, the more I read that section, I was thinking back to geisha (who I’ve written about). In other words, you’re being presented with a beautiful girl who you’ll never have for yourself; she’s a fantasy (from your perspective), you know it’s a fantasy (barring serious mental illness), and that’s really OK with you. You’d rather have an element of fantasy in your life than not.

Of course, culture has rapidly evolved since the 70’s (when the idol phenomenon began). What people view as “ideal” has changed a lot and, more to the point, it’s not all one thing. That’s where you have new genres that have sprouted up, with things like rock music and even rap taking important places in music culture.

We shouldn’t look far past the word itself. An idol is something to be put on a pedestal and idolized. It’s not “reality”; it’s art. So long as people accept it as such and ride with it, we’re doing fine. Over that line and we have problems.

Like I put in the title, these are general thoughts. If I have something to say about a specific idol sometime, I’ll let you know, but I’m not the kind of guy who’s an online stalker wannabe, so I’m not a details guy in this area. – J

P.S. I scaled my blogging way back because I was experimenting with writing fiction. While my skill is far from “bad”, there’s still no realistic way I have the time and support network to make money at it, either, so I’m shelving it once again. Expect more blog posts as inspiration and need strikes. My fingers want to write, though. – J

The whole problem with the investigation of the battery fire of a GM volt, left exposed to the elements for three weeks after a crash test at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), isn’t about whether there really is a special, hidden danger from the Volt or not. It’s that the agency head sounds like Toyota’s former president during the sudden acceleration scare.

At the time, Mr. Toyoda was much derided for his presentation, and even in certain cases, for flawed Japanese grammar (seriously, native Japanese speakers talked to me about it that day), but nonetheless bored the media to death enough that time allowed the proper investigations to show that sudden acceleration was largely hype and myth. In the meantime, it afforded Americans an opportunity to do good, old-fashioned Japan bashing like during the glory days of the sport. Along the way, we had ample opportunity to see that Toyota had allowed long-term issues to creep up and create a certain level of corporate rot which wasn’t good. Toyota just didn’t seem like it had a sense of urgency to inform the government and the public, deciding it knew best and others didn’t need to know explicitly.

Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, gave the head of the NHTSA, David Strictland, a royal grilling about the latter’s not having announced a possible danger with the GM Volt far sooner, portraying it as a conflict of interest. Mind you, this is despite experts never having seen cause for panic; leaving a punctured battery exposed for three weeks, after which a fire broke out, violated manufacturer recommendations quite vividly and so was abuse above and beyond the call of scientific testing. But I realized that’s not the point.

Strickland said he would have gone public immediately if there were an imminent safety risk. He said it would have been irresponsible to tell people that something was wrong with the Volt while experts looked into the cause of the fire.

See the problem here? He would have told the public if he had decided (without the investigation being finished) that there was an immediate safety risk. In other words, he would have told the public if a circumstance that would simply not have happened, did happen. He said it would have been irresponsible to tell anyone that there was a possible problem unless he had conclusively proved that there was an actual problem.

In other words, he made himself the judge and jury of what people should know about possible problems under investigation, but not proven.

In other words, he sounds just like Mr. Toyoda did, inspiring the same kind of outrage, here from Rep. Issa:

“How dare you not have both the public and this committee know what you knew in a timely fashion,” he said.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it – and it’s when you say it.

Being right is not a defense here. Being proven right six or eight or ten months later is not a defense. People believe that responsibility isn’t confined to conducting secret investigations and either never releasing details or releasing them at the last minute.

Conflicts of interest are not defined by proof that there has been wrongdoing; they are defined by creating so much opportunity to do wrongdoing, and to get away with it, that the public can’t help but wonder. 

Toyota messed up by creating, and sustaining, the impression that it had mislead the government and the public, and engaged in corrupt relations with auto regulators, that it had gotten away with murder… or at least manslaughter. Hindsight proved these claims unjustified by science, though many still believe them. Similarly, the NHTSA, which investigated Toyota, messed up by creating the impression that as part of the government, which has skin in the game in regards to GM, and specifically the GM Volt (one of President Obama’s pet priorities), the NHTSA has motive, means, and opportunity to manipulate its reporting of investigations to benefit the White House.

That doesn’t mean the NHTSA did just that. As I wrote above, experts seem to agree firmly that the NHTSA strangely didn’t dispose of the side-crash test vehicle like it should have and created conditions for a fire that wouldn’t have happened in real life, because no one would’ve just left a totaled Volt on the side of the road for three weeks, and if someone did, the driver would be long gone when it did catch fire! But again, that’s not the point: the opportunity for hanky-panky existed, and the NHTSA said, nope, nothing to see here, move along.

I’m well aware that Issa is a combative chairman and an aggressive investigator, but he’s right to point out that there could have been manipulation due to conflict of interest; that’s why we call it conflict of interest. When the head of a government agency goes in front of the cameras and ends up sounding like a captain of industry defending his own car – like Mr. Toyoda then, or GM Chairman and CEO Daniel F. Ackerson at the same hearing with Mr. Strictland – you look completely out of place.

Having said all this, it’s really much, much simpler. If that had been Chairman Toyoda testifying and not David Strictland, the media would have howled with rage. We can disagree on if it’s a conflict of interest, but it is most certainly a double standard. A regulator placing itself in this position needs to make a quick trip to the nearest mirror and take a hard stare. – J

Here PeteZahut states:

Dear Congressman Lamar Smith:

AMERICA is the name of the whole continent, thus AMERICAN refers to brazilian, cuban, mexican, argentinian, canadian and so on. Your country’s official name IS United States of America NOT America, not North America.

It’s the kind of thing that freaks me out, like the “You’re” and “Your” misspelling…

And I’m pretty sure this guy is the same kind of ignorant people that thinks Mexico is everything below da States and down to Antartica…

Look, my stepmother is a lovely woman from Colombia. She does not go around calling herself an American. She calls herself a Colombian immigrant to Canada. A Brazilian would call himself a Brazilian, not an American. A Chilean would call himself a Chilean, not an American. These people are justifiably proud of their national heritage. So, I have two problems with this:

1. It represents an attack on someone else’s national identity
2. It uses the openly mendacious argument that the identity of “American” is one used by people who are residents of other former colonies that were never part of the U.S.A.

In other words, it’s a pure attempt to demean and insult Americans. It is not an honest argument.

Now why am I explaining all this? Look, there’s really only two ways Japanese people refer to Americans specifically. One is “beikokujin” and the other is “amerikajin”.

I’m simply pointing out that saying the latter is absolutely all right. They really are Americans.

More to the point, if we have to change how we regard the native peoples of the far northern reaches of America once every decade, having cycled through Eskimo and Inuit in past years, where do we get off dictating to “United Statians” what they ought to call themselves, and what we ought to be calling them? Let’s have some fairness here.

The rest is in Japanese, just to avoid any misunderstanding across the language barrier:

「アメリカ人」を使うは良い事よ。まったく問題ではない。時々、南米の人が「我々は本当のアメリカ人だ、あのクズじゃない」とか言っている。無視してください。大体、誰であっても他の民の名前を君臨する権利がないだろう。それより、あの人たちは立派な国と名前がある。「アメリカ人」の意味を壊すがセコイのトリックだけでしょう。アメリカ人はアメリカ人だ。それだけ。

ご理解はありがとうございます！ちなみに私はカナダ人ですけど、多くの友達はアメリカ人。友好らしくで行こう！

So, I just wanted to clear that up for the record. There’s so much better things to debate than if it’s OK to use the term “American”.

P.S. Quebec people have tried to use “Les Etas-Uniens” (“The United-Statiers”) to refer to Americans, without much success. “Les Americains” still dominates. As it should. – J

If you haven’t heard, Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island, has been hit by the biggest snowfall since scientific records began there in 1949. The snow was so heavy that the weather measuring gear broke. They’re talking about mounds of up to 2 meters, which would come up to 72 inches (but instruments measure average fall, not the height of mounds).

Similarly, I’ve been buried by events on my end. I’m only just today fully coming up for air after spending the last several weeks working on a business plan and a venture capital pitch. This was for an innovation contest we ended back in after being ruled out at first; we were #6, and one of the top 5 bowed out, so we had a small grace period to hammer out the plan  and the pitch. The pitch was given yesterday and by all accounts went excellently. Whether that translates into prize money and in-kind help, we just won’t know for another week. Thankfully, it’s just one week.

I’ve been distracted with other things too, but sometimes life just buries you for a while. Now my “storm” is over for the short term and I might not have much to do on the corporate front until manufacturing is ready and the company needs online marketing. If that’s the case, I’ll just try harder to blog, contribute to the Internet (as long as governments keep their mitts off it) and comment more.

This blog wasn’t meant to be an encyclopedia. It also is my only blog now so I won’t shy away from non pure Japan comments, as long as it’s all kept clean, dignified and I feel that it contributes something. So, best wishes to Hokkaido residents, and I’ll be more visible here for a while. – J

It’s been a while since I’ve been writing in this blog, but it’s not really because of anything bad. Actually, a number of minor and major problems have been fixed so I feel like I have the luxury of blogging a little more. Part of it is health related, and I’ll keep details private, but it is good to be on the right path when it comes to health. So, I’m more 元気 (genki) in the physical health sense.

Yesterday a power outage zapped my Windows XP profile’s user settings. I was a bit worried, but after taking a large chunk of the day doing long-overdue defragging and optimizing of my boot drive (my C: drive), it’s in far better shape now. Then, a reboot successfully brought back the old settings. I guess Windows realized it needed to take a step back. In the meantime, I fixed a huge ton of registry errors with the help of a free trial of an AVG-related program. I really can’t complain about the results so far.

Actually, most of what’s been killing my blogging time is practicing writing fiction. I wanted to get back to the level I was at before I began learning Japanese some fifteen years ago (!). Or maybe it’s 16, it’s hard to recall the exact date. Anyway, I had no prospect of finding a book agent. Frankly, I still don’t. But that’s not the point here: I’m older, wiser, and have a lot more experience to draw on.

The most challenging thing right now has nothing to do with skill. Due to a rather… embarrassingly extreme amount of experience with running role-playing games for close friends, I am accustomed to a lot of character creation and development, and I have always had a knack for dialogue and writing action. It’s setting up the scenarios in a way that satisfies my amateur anthropologist mind and having a plot worth pushing that holds a lot back… and well, time. Writing sucks up a lot of time, you see.

Having said that, I’m at the point where, if I had a clear plot to work with, I could crank out mini-novels in no time at all. My typing speed is ridiculously fast compared to a lot of people, and mostly, it’s about having ideas and flow. But since plot matters, it’s not as if I want to be a fast food writer, either.

In terms of anime, I’ve caught up on some things a little, but I’ve been enjoying things other than anime where I can for quite some time. Mainly, I’ve been getting really impressed at the fundamental beauty and meticulous story crafting for Guilty Crown, one of this season’s greats that looks every bit as good as a feature film should. Animation has come a long way, though my understanding is, right around where I watched the last episode, there is a switch from computer graphics animation to more cel-based animation for the mecha.

I will say this: today’s anime can come up with some truly spectacular background shots. This has CG assistance too, apparently, but it’s not really the same; when things aren’t in motion like a giant robot, you get to appreciate all the subtleties of the extremely detailed and high resolution art involved. The vibrancy is just incredible. People in centuries past had famous painters; I have my high-res backgrounds of vast flower gardens and bodies of water. My human experience has been enriched.

Now, I will say this: I don’t necessarily want to talk just about Japan stuff here. It’s just that I can’t really walk ten feet without bumping into something related to it. While waiting for my father’s business to finish setting up for manufacturing (and for me to play secretary/ customer support/ online marketing demon), I’ve been toying with the Japanese version of the RPG Tales of the Abyss, which has some of the most incredible character development for a main character ever seen or even heard of. Of course explaining it would spoil, but the bottom line is this: I am so glad I play these games in Japanese. The voice actor casting is often what you might call, well… absolutely perfect for a given character’s personality, and this game emphasizes the characters, the personalities, and it always comes back to clinging to hope for a better future.

Another anime I caught up on is “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukinai“. The hiragana shortened version comes off as “はがない” , which is confusing because that’s not “ha”, it’s “wa” as pronounced. Anyway, “I have few friends” is one translation suggested to me. It’s based on novels, where some of the best stuff comes from (largely due to the extremely intricate plotting and dialogue; hey, if you don’t have artists cranking out every cell, your dialogue had better be good). It’s also notable for an “anime blonde” girl who is, well… let’s just say she is popular with the masses.

But really, I’ve been distracted by the writing and other issues. I don’t want to idly rant too much about the writing stuff (and the background research I’ve been doing) to any great degree, but I just wanted to let people know the broad outline. – J

So why do I like Japan? （なぜ、日本を大好きですか)

It’s not complicated. Japan is a land of beautiful nature (美しい大自然), rich culture (豊か文化), an interesting history (面白い歴史),  a resilient people (頼もしい人), and, in spite of a great deal of conformity (「出る釘は打たれる」のくせに、) there is a huge amount of creativity that emerges from Japan. (莫大な創作力がある).

One of the true reasons, and unfortunately, the one that I can least share, is that the intricacy of the Japanese language allows Japanese people to reveal a great deal about what they think and feel to others, with as much vagueness or specificity as they prefer. The language is truly a window into the soul.

That’s my reasons in a very short list.

So a friend of mine showed me this post about “I hate Japan some more.” The writer lives in Japan and teaches classes there. He has found a new reason to hate Japan, and I do not care for it or him. If you hate what you’re doing, who’s forcing you to do it? No one forces me to like Japan. I do it because I care, because I prefer to be motivated by positive emotions instead of negative ones, and because I am not a jerk.

Part of this guy’s rant is that he doesn’t see the point of getting kids to identify goals for later in life. “Let kids be kids.” No, let kids be students. Without goals it’s hard to motivate yourself to do something truly difficult, like learn Japanese right after leaving high school and sticking with it through thick and thin for years. As for America not being concerned about scores and grades… ever heard of No Child Left Behind?

As for Japan being restricted and constrained, yes, it is. Real life isn’t 100% like anime. Why would it be? Anime is fantasy. People wouldn’t fantasize about freedom of action if there weren’t constraints. Deal. We exist in the real world, and we should have what fun in it that we can while not forgetting that it is real. – J

そこまで！ (That’s far enough!)

Normally, I wouldn’t deign to be defending the Japanese people against their own government, but even I have my limits. Just how many elected ministers will go down in flames insulting their own disaster victims? This is ridiculous.

Here’s the latest example at the Daily Telegraph. Now look, I have some small sympathy for his calling someone who didn’t take shelter with tsunami warnings blaring “idiots,” but that’s not the sort of thing that people want to hear from their elected leaders.  Let the idiots rest in peace. Deliberately jabbing the eyes of the living with needles is not just bad politics; it’s terrible for the country.

I will not list the numerous examples of other ministers being idiots themselves in their insulting or mocking disaster victims, or saying things like they’re not sure anyone does have a right to a radiation-free life. (Keep in mind, I’m a nuclear power moderate here, but downplaying the legitimate concerns of ordinary people is in extraordinarily poor taste.)

More to the point, this minister replaced a predecessor who had to step down a mere three months ago for being a jackass to the governor of tsunami-battered Miyagi prefecture. Supposedly the minister berated the governor for being late (I have no idea if he was or not) and refused to even shake the man’s hand.

Notice the American-style apology at the end of the article. That’s one piece of Western culture that should never have migrated eastward.