Interesting find

I was browsing this grocery-esque store the other day with a friend of mine, and we discovered quite a wide selection of alcohol in a corner of the store. I'm not exactly an alcohol fiend, but I do enjoy browsing the wares of liquor vendors. Anyhow, this place had some surprising products. Among which were:

Suntory rum. If you like ingesting poison and have spent a fair amount of time in Japan, you'll know that Japanese people are pretty big on whiskey, but not so much on rum. I've never seen or heard of a Japanese brand of rum before - didn't know the stuff existed.

Also this abomination. Has to be some kind of mistake. Pepperoni-flavored vodka? Blegh.

Speaking of firsts...

This is shaping up to be a month of firsts - theme of December's Blog Matsuri, first J-Word Play with a prize, first original keyboard composition...Yeah, yeah, so anything can be a first, really. Today was the first time I woke up on December 21st, 2010, har har. But I feel like we're making progress.

The other day I had kind of a strange experience. It was the first blatant, overt, and hostile display of racism I've encountered in Japan (or anywhere, I suppose), and it wasn't perpetrated by a Japanese person. Joe and I had just gotten some Indian food and were walking to the train station, when we noticed this guy crossing the street and walking towards us. His expression was...friendly? He looked like he recognized us. As soon as he got close, his face changed and he became really angry-looking. He walked right in front of us, gave us the finger, and said something in what I believe was Chinese. The only word I caught was "America." Then the angry dude continued past us in the opposite direction. He stopped and turned to watch him go. Near the end of the block he turned around and flipped us off again. Now I don't know how he "knew" we were Americans or what he has against America, but he's lucky the two of us aren't what he probably thinks most Americans are like. There were two of us and he wasn't a very big guy - we could have easily socked him in the face if we were violent men.

It was a very odd experience, and I felt more perplexed than angry.

The Witching Hour: An original composition

I've always considered myself to be somewhat artistic - I used to love to draw, I write short stories from time to time, and I've played piano on and off for years. But I've never really dedicated myself to anything...perhaps that's why I'm capable at so many things but not really outstanding at any one thing (in my mind, anyway). Well, here's another dabblance: my first original song.

Some months ago I bought this keyboard and mentioned I may upload a video or two in the future to let you know how it's going. Pretty well, I think. This short piece is called "The Witching Hour" or "真夜中". I hope you enjoy it.

On my Christmas wishlist

I've seen some pretty cute (read: nerdy) novelty chopsticks in the past, but these ones...man, I would really use these. H/t to Daily Bento.

Foolishgadgets.com

Yes, those are Harry Potter wand chopsticks.

Just another picture of the day 12/15/10: Mmm, Placenta

Arigatou Gojaimasu

H/t to Japan Probe.

Saw this music video the other day, made by a couple of Korean guys singing "Arigatou Gozaimasu" with a Korean accent (that apparently turns "z" into "j"). Pretty catchy.

J-Word Play #14: With Prize!

It's been a while, but for December a special riddle with a special prize!

This is another original (kind of - got the inspiration from a friend's riddle, which I didn't think was very good). Here's how this'll work. I'm disabling comments, so send your answer(s) to ecyrus@gmail.com. You can send multiple answers, but I'll use my discretion in how many to accept - spamming me will get you nowhere.

The prize, unfortunately, is only good for people living in Japan, and it's worth 2000 yen. If you live outside of Japan you're still free to participate, but no prize for you (for this one, anyway). Sorry!

There's only one prize, so everyone who gets the correct answer will be entered into a lottery, from which a winner will be randomly chosen. I'll announce the answer and a winner on December 24th, Christmas Eve, so please submit your answers by then.

Finally, this one has two possible answers that I am aware of. You only need to give one. I will consider other answers that make sense. Here's the riddle it is:

ぎんこういんの好きな食べ物は何でしょう？

Let's enjoy Japanese: Kind of

Here's an interesting grammar pattern that I've recently come across. So far as I can tell, it only works for い adjectives, and not all of them at that.

Take the adjective, drop the い and add め. And what does the resulting word mean? It means "Kind of~."
As in it's more than a little of something, but not that much. Someone I asked used the example of a skirt. If you said a skirt was 長い, maybe it would be down to a girl's calves. If you said it wasn't 長い, maybe it would be above her kneecaps. If you said it was 長め, maybe right below her kneecaps. Kind of long, but not that long.

日本語で、○めってはやや○って意味だ。

For example:

長い　－　長め　－ Kind of long

厚い　－　厚め　－ Kind of thick

細い　－　細め　－ Kind of thin

辛い　－　辛め　－ Kind of spicy

Unfortunately, there are certain words that this pattern isn't used for. For example, 寒め (cold) and 暑め (hot) aren't commonly used. According to three teachers I consulted with, there aren't any set rules (at least not anymore), and certain words that don't use this pattern have begun to change in recent years. The example they cited was 難しめ, which isn't traditionally correct, but seems to have come into periodic used in recent years with younger people. 分かりにくめね。

This is the kind of grammar that I would recommend using cautiously if you want to be understood. If this one is new to you, I recommend listening for it now that you're equipped to understand what it means, and if you're so inclined to use it, do so with the words you're seen or heard used by those who are fluent or native.

If anyone has anything to add or knows some rule for this pattern, please leave a comment.

The Plight of North Korea

This isn't Japan-related, but North Korea is, uh...near Japan (a hop, skip, and a ballistic missile away, at any rate)? So I'm gonna stretch on this. I found this op-ed on the LA Times site to be very poignant: Save the North Koreans!

I can only speak for myself, but although I have felt some sympathy for the N. Korean people, mostly when I think of that country what comes to mind is an unstable regime with a crazy leader and a huge army. I'm not saying it would be a good idea for the U.S. to attack N. Korea and try to topple its government Iraq-style, but it did strike me that I have been rather thoughtless in discounting the suffering going on there. There are so many human rights violations going on there (and in China, too, for the record) that so many people are willing to dismiss or turn a blind eye to. This kind of thing is largely ignored, while Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere fill to the metaphorical brim with news and opinion about Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Oh, what a world.

The aftermath

So a few thoughts on the JLPT Level 2:

I went into this thing not expecting to pass, and not really killing myself over it. I haven't seriously studied in over two weeks. My main goal was basically to see how much I could understand and answer so that I can prepare well for the one in the summer. That said, I was still a little nervous. Test is a test.

I guess it shouldn't have surprised me, but about 95% of the people in my room were Asian, probably Chinese or Korean. For some reason I was expecting more white/black/hispanic people.

I think I need to work almost exclusively on reading. While there were a decent amount of vocabulary and kanji that I didn't understand, I felt like I had most of the grammar under control. That said, I think the reading section was the toughest part, and kanji/vocab comprehension are just an extension of being able to read.

Surprisingly, I found the listening section to be a lot easier than the reading part. Although I wouldn't say I owned it, I felt a lot more confident in most of my answers. Though I don't like how they try to trick or misdirect you - some of the questions will give you like 2 minutes of dialogue and place the answer either at the very beginning or add it quickly to the end. It was frustrating that there were one or two problems where I understood 95% of what was said, but then missed a quickly spoken sentence or phrase and found myself unable to answer the question.

Well, the results will be delivered in February. Not sure why it takes so long - the test is scantron. Oh well. I think I'll be happy with a score in the 40s or 50s. Plenty of room for improvement for the next test, but also plenty of room to breathe. We'll see.