Up and down

人生って・・・もちろん見方は人のよって違うけど、難しいよね。確かに主観的だが。世界の一番お金持ちのアメリカの人だし、子供の頃悪くなかったし。でも人間って、充実感や幸せというと客観的に考えないね。周りの人に比べる。

この頃僕は「信頼失ってる」というか、今の状態はどうかな。多分思うよりわるくないけど、これは神様の計画なのか？ただ、運か？もしくは、僕悪い選択をした？

まぁ・・・去年の別れはまだきつい傷だけど、癒してる。と思う。でも強い感情まだある。昨夜、夢で会った、何度も。起きたら、物凄く話したっかた。メールとか送りたかった。でも駄目だよね。まだ凄く大切な人、僕にとって。だが進ませなきゃね。僕も前へ進むしかない・・・と言うはずだけど。

思い出すと、日本にいた時に凄くいいときだった。経験も、友達も、特に相手も・・・その２、３年間は運が良かった。だから今は公平のようかな？というより僕の態度のせいだ、かもしれないね。

とりあえず、落ち着いて日日頑張ろうな。

/メソメソ終了

Prayer of Serenity

神よ、恩寵を私に与えて下さい
変えられないものを静穏に受け入れるために
与えて下さい　
変えるべきものを変える勇気を
そして、変えられるないものと変えるべきものを
区別する賢さを私に与えて下さい

一日を一度に生き、
一瞬を一度に楽しみ
平和へと向かう小道として困難を受け入れる
神がしたように、
この罪深い世界をそのままに受け入れる
私がそれを味わうようにではなく
あなたが全てを正しくされることを信じる
もしあなたの意志に身を委ねたならば、
この人生が適度に幸福なものとなり得るように、
そして、天国で永遠のあなたとともに至福を味わうために

Amen.

Nothin' but graphite

The life of an ink cartridge

Could you repeat that?

It's amazing sometimes how much there is to learn. Earlier I was looking briefly at today's copy of the 日経新聞 (the Nikkei) and I noticed one of the headlines contained a non-kanji character I wasn't familiar with. The word was 「いすゞ」。

I asked one of my coworkers, and it appears I discovered the hiragana version of 「々」. This character is used to indicate repetition of the character before it. For example 「色々」is another way of writing 「色色」。

According to my research, these things are called 「踊り字」or 「繰り返し記号」, though you can call them up by simply typing 「くりかえし」and scrolling through the kanji choices.

Apparently there are separate characters for use in hiragana, katakana, and kanji:

Hiragana - ゝ (or ゞ)

Katakana - ヽ (or ヾ)

Kanji -　々

As you can see, unlike their kanji kin, the kana versions can be accented to represent a change in sound, just like normal kana (though the little circle versions don't seem to exist).

Learning something like this now makes me feel a little noobish, but at the same time it's gratifying to know that there are still simple elements of Japanese like this out there for me to discover.

あけおめ

Happy New Year! Just a quick Japanese post to start 2013.

If you follow a lot of Japanese accounts on Twitter or Facebook or other social media, you've no doubt seen a sizable amount of set phrases thrown around the past couple days. One that I started hearing a lot a few years ago (though it's quite possible it was a popular expression before that and I just was unaware of it) is あけおめ.

Japanese likes to shrink, shorten, abbreviate, and compress words and crunch them into nifty little phrases (NG, anyone?). あけおめ is a shortening of one of the two standard New Year's congratulations - あけましておめでとうございます.

Incidentally, the other standard (ことしもよろしくおねがいします) is also going around as ことよろ.

Note that these are casual and probably shouldn't be proffered to one's superiors or elders.

Far Cry

I don't play a ton of FPS (first person shooter) games, but some of the reviews I was reading about Far Cry 3 sounded pretty interesting. Particularly I like games where there is a lot of progression and customization. In FC3, there are level-up and crafting systems. Plus the visuals are pretty amazing (again, not usually a reason why I buy games, though).

Anyhow, found a little Japanese! One of the cars is sporting some katakana on the dash, reading "Far Cry."

Never know where it's gonna crop up, apparently.

Obligatory Parties

I kind of miss going to 忘年会 (end of year parties, usually held by a company or workplace for its employees). Survey says, however, that most office workers in Japan don't really enjoy them.

According to a Metarika study, 62.6% of office workers regard company drinking parties (飲み会) as a pain in butt (37.4% saying they are fun)

■会社での飲み会は楽しいと思いますか？ 面倒だと思いますか？
楽しい......37.4％
めんどう......62.6％

■あなたの職場の飲み会は、どれくらいの頻度で行われていますか？
月に1～4回......33.0％
半年に1、2回......33.8％
一年に1、2回～ほとんどなし......30.6％

The second question there asks respondents how often their work holds these (obligatory) drinking parties. The responses from top to bottom are "1-4 times a month," "once or twice every half year," or "once or twice a year, almost never."

Maybe I enjoyed my schools' parties more than the typical employee because (a) I wasn't worked to the bone and spending almost every waking hour with my coworkers and (b) I didn't really feel obligated to attend; I just did most of the time because it was fun. Or maybe it's just because teachers are awesome and know how to throw a beastly party.

Upswing

運が変わったかな。注意して褪せないほうがいいと思うけど・・・実は、自分は子供の時から高望みしちゃう人なんだ。そしてがっかりしやすいから、時々上がったり下がったり人間だ。Heh...

Lately there have been some pleasant changes. One of my best friends and his awesome (J) wife moved from Pennsylvania to a town about 40 minutes away. I've gotten used to being somewhat solitary, but it will be a nice change to have friends living nearby.

Things at work are improved a bit, I feel. I still need to get out of there and find something more fulfilling (and financially sustaining), but I've been working on improving my attitude. It's not that I felt I had a bad one before, but I've been trying to be more productive and quicker with my work. And I do feel like it's helped me feel a little better about it. 時々つまんないのに。

And I've been talking a lot with someone I met recently who is very...refreshing? Special, for sure. There are a lot of positive things I could say, but for now I won't.

I don't want to jump the gun on anything, but I just feel like things have been a lot brighter and more fun the past couple of weeks.

Tomorrow I'll be going to a 忘年会 party with Ben and Chika (the previously mentioned friends) after work. I really should start blogging about Japan-related activities and organizations in D.C...

Anyhow, that's it for now.

J-Word Play #31 (Answer)

Whoops - a sparse amount of posts this month, but there's been a lot going on. I'll need to redouble my efforts.

Kudos to Cocomino for solving the last riddle, which was:

上がったり下がったりする野菜って何でしょう？

Our answer is...

かぶ (stocks, turnip)

Our December riddle asks "What vegetable goes up and down?" This one isn't so much tricky as demanding of your vocabulary skills. かぶ is the common pronunciation for both stock (as in the stock market, hence up and down) and the common turnip.