2010. 5. 30.
2010. 5. 22.
why you should learn japanese sign language
because you can do this
--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
2010. 5. 13.
The endless joy of stereotypes
Once, in Junior High school, in Spanish class, our teacher gave us a paper with a bunch of stereotypes that people from various countries south of the border had about Americans, the only ones i can remember now would be that American men drink beer for breakfast and if you live in an American city you either carry a gun or know martial arts. anyways the teacher's point was that people get certain ideas about America from watching our movies which are exported around the world. certainly alot of the kids in Korea thought that eveyr American has a gun.
so what kind of misinformed ideas do the Japanese have about us? I only learned one this week, I don't know any others, but this one made me chuckle a bit, to myself, on the inside.
Apparently, according to the teachers at my Wednesday school, alot of Japanese think that Americans never say "I'm sorry." Why do you think they think that? think on it for a second...i don't think you'll guess the answer though. it might be surprising.
I wish I could write in invisible ink or something here, the kind of text where you have to highlight it with your mouse to read it. anyone know how to do that? leave a comment below onegaishimasu
they think we never say "I'm sorry" because of lawsuits, as in when you say sorry you're admitting guilt so you can get sued later. funny desune? well, actually i think it's true that if you get in a car accident (in America) you never say sorry, cos you're admitting you were at fault and blah blah blah. these are the kinds of things i don't miss about where i come from.
but i explained that if i spill someone's drink, i can say i'm sorry cos no one would sue me for that. then later i thought, if i spilled a hot drink on someone...they *could* try to sue for it right? i'm happy to be living in a non-litigious society now! Litigious is the vocab word for the day.
you might read this and think it's completely fucking ridiculous, and yeah it kind of is. but sometime, why not put one of your crazy ideas about Japan in the comments, and i'll just go ahead and call you an idiot for having a stupid idea.
just kidding, i don't think anyones an idiot in this kind of situation. if you've never been to a place or never met anyone from there of course you'd have the wrong idea about the place. for example, i heard that they eat some pretty bland food in the Czech Republic. is it true, or false? mankind will never know.
--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
so what kind of misinformed ideas do the Japanese have about us? I only learned one this week, I don't know any others, but this one made me chuckle a bit, to myself, on the inside.
Apparently, according to the teachers at my Wednesday school, alot of Japanese think that Americans never say "I'm sorry." Why do you think they think that? think on it for a second...i don't think you'll guess the answer though. it might be surprising.
I wish I could write in invisible ink or something here, the kind of text where you have to highlight it with your mouse to read it. anyone know how to do that? leave a comment below onegaishimasu
they think we never say "I'm sorry" because of lawsuits, as in when you say sorry you're admitting guilt so you can get sued later. funny desune? well, actually i think it's true that if you get in a car accident (in America) you never say sorry, cos you're admitting you were at fault and blah blah blah. these are the kinds of things i don't miss about where i come from.
but i explained that if i spill someone's drink, i can say i'm sorry cos no one would sue me for that. then later i thought, if i spilled a hot drink on someone...they *could* try to sue for it right? i'm happy to be living in a non-litigious society now! Litigious is the vocab word for the day.
you might read this and think it's completely fucking ridiculous, and yeah it kind of is. but sometime, why not put one of your crazy ideas about Japan in the comments, and i'll just go ahead and call you an idiot for having a stupid idea.
just kidding, i don't think anyones an idiot in this kind of situation. if you've never been to a place or never met anyone from there of course you'd have the wrong idea about the place. for example, i heard that they eat some pretty bland food in the Czech Republic. is it true, or false? mankind will never know.
--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
2010. 5. 4.
Yen power? Steps of Enlightenment? (double post & old pictures)
Recently, some of my Japanese friends have been throwing around the phrase "En power." 'Yen' is pronounced "En" in Japan, so why is it known around the world as 'Yen' ????
My first trip to Japan, about 4-5 years ago, $100 would get you the equivalent of about $120 in En, but that was years ago, and things have changed. the dollar keeps going down, down to the point where the Japanese have a phrase for it, "doru yasu." "yasui" means 'cheap.'
this doesn't surprise me at all, because even before i left for Korea the $$$ was fucking up. you can go to Canada now and pay with American dollars because the exchange is almost 1:1. is the Amero coming soon? Goodbye, United States of America, hello N.A.U.
AMG IT'S HAPPENING!!!!! THE BIBLE!!! APOCALYPSE!!! THE 7 GREAT NATIONS!!! oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
so yeah, doru yasu. it doesn't surprise me. what does surprise me is that the En is on the Euro's ass, getting closer to 1 Euro = 100 En everyday. anyone who's ever changed dollars into Euro knows how much that sucks. when you walk away from the exchange counter in any EU country, you're probably thinking "Well, at least that was better than a kick in the nuts," but I have to disagree. i'd gladly take one right in the beanbag if it meant a few more Euro, cos that's a fucking expensive currency, and I can always just punch myself in the chest to get the blood flowing again down there. maybe that's not how it works. maybe that's just a placebo or something, all i know is that it seems to make me feel better everytime i get nut shot. punch yourself in the chest (more like stomach or abs) as hard as you can.
i'm talking about testicles by the way.
regardless, i'm happy about 2 things, #1, I already cashed in my dollars, #2, my salary is in En.
My Japanese listening ability is shameful, but it seems like the Euro's problem is....Greece? why does that not surprise me? Greece is a country where you can start a fire in the woods, plant a tree the next day, go to court and say 'that's my tree so this is clearly my land' and the court says ok.
The only reason I'm watching the Athens riots news coverage is because i've been there in Syntagma Square, therefore i'm more interested. when i saw the cops on TV shooting tear gas, my first reaction was 'that's Syntagma Square!!!! I bought ice cream there! it wasn't good!' I immediately looked through my pictures from my trip to Greece. if you go to Syntagma Square (and honestly, what's the point of going to Syntagma Square? go to Gazi, Ommonia, Acropolis, skip Syntagma) you'll definitely see some of these guys in front of parliament **beep beep old picture alert**
similar to London and Bangkok, these parliament guards stand stock still all day and never smile or react to whatever, even when tourists run right up to them for some funny pictures. a picture of you, and a guy standing next to you in an old-fashioned uniform with a blank expression. AWESOMESAUCE ON RICE !!!! well i should probably clarify, in Athens and London you can take pictures with the parliament guards. in Bangkok, the soldier with an M16 (looked like an M16) standing next to the guard tells people to fuck right off. AND THAT WAS WHY I DIDN'T ASK SOMEONE TO TAKE MY PICTURE WITH THE GUY
can i go on a tangent for a minute? oh right, right, it's my blog and no one reads it. ok here's something stupid for you to chew on (or you can skip it if you like)
************TANGENT TIME********************************************
Wat Arun is in Bangkok and it's the coolest temple i've ever been to, period, the end. I haven't been to Angkor Wat Cambodia yet, but that's irrelevant, and I don't want to diminish Wat Arun, which translates to "Temple of the Dawn" or something. this is one of the places that you should just physically go to rather than looking at pictures. this is one of those places that pictures just don't do it proper. well fuck it, let's show some pictures, because some people are too scared of Hepatitis A to ever go to Thailand. I didn't get any vaccinations for anything before I went and i never got sick!
i'm bad at photography
I SAID YOU pictures don't do it justice, and I SAID YOU i'm bad at photography
click the picture. click it
oh, i'd love to go up and down those steps again before going to the burger king on Khao San road. here's a tip for anyone who wants to go to Thailand: memorize where the places with air conditiong are, and go there alot. your body will thank you later when you're not dead from heat stroke.
BUT, if you want to go to Wat Arun, you have to find it first, which is no easy task. well...maybe it is an easy task if you're not using Lonely Planet: Bangkok to find your way around. Wat Arun is on the far west side of this lovely gradually sinking below the waterline city, which means the most efficient way to get there is crossing the western river on a boat. This much is true. Lonely planet directs you to the wrong boat, which puts you 2 solid klicks further away from Wat Arun than you need to be. well whatever, a 2 klick walk in the Thailand sun is no big deal right? my brain can always use a good boiling.
following lonely planet's directions takes you to a navy base, not Wat Arun. they were not happy to see me walk in the gate, the doberman did not want to play frisbee. but honestly you guys? if you were standing OUTSIDE the gate, it would've been easier to stop me from GOING IN the gate. and i can't read Thai.
for those keeping score at home, that was the 2nd time a lonely planet guidebook has tried to murder me. think lonely planet won't try to kill you too? try walking around any city in the world with a lonely planet map and send me an email afterwards. this entire tangent was about my burning hatred for LP
and a hooker told me the right way to Wat Arun before propositioning me with some lines that, heh, sounded like they were from Full Metal Jacket. you know the scene i'm talking about? hey, she spoke some english and pointed me the right way so it's all good.
*****AND THAT WAS TANGENT TIME***********************************
Thailand & Greece are so far apart, what do they have in common? they both like protesting, protesting alot, and protesting passionately. the 'red shirts' (i don't know Thai politics, can't explain it) are protesting in Bangkok lately, is it in the American news cycle? Don't read too much into that question, it's not a judgement, i honestly don't know what's on the American news these days. but the red shirts collected a bunch of blood donations and poured it on the streets, maybe you read about it? that's been going on for a month or so, and Athens apparently saw that and said 'hey we need to get in on that shit!'
the thing that really cracks me up about the Athens riots though...go back to that picture of the Syntagma Square guard. when I saw the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, I saw those guards, still standing there, not moving. Ok guys, there's a riot going on, did you see it? it was right in front of you. you're allowed to move now. someone should go to Greece and tell them they're allowed to move now. if you see the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, look closely, in the background, behind the police, you'll see the parliament guards. then the camera follows the cops down the street, away from parliament, and you can't see them any more.
but i should stop talking about this stuff, I don't know enough about economies to make an intelligent comment. all i know about economies is, when i want a cheeseburger, i go to Mos Burger and trade some En for a cheeseburger, compared to other people around the world, like some of the kids in Thailand, this is a luxury and i've got nothing to worry about, and it doesn't matter how much En or Euro I can get per dollar because I don't have to live on the street. so let's switch topics, check out this transition sentence. I don't know anything about economics, but I know I had a kickass Golden Week.
What do you do on summer vacations? naked Skydiving? Swimming with sharks? Bear taunting?
Those are all of my usual habits.
But this Golden Week, i didn't go for any of that crap, except for the bear taunting, which is a year round pasttime. fuck you, kuma-san, yeah maybe you can climb trees faster than you can run, but can you play nintendo with those claws?
I spent my golden week running around my prefecture and part of the next one, seeing what was up. there's more places to see in Japan besides Tokyo, Osaka etc., if you live in Japan, your backwater prefecture might actually be kinda cool if you give it a chance. i did lots. I found an awesome Korean restaurant a couple towns away from me, I went to Shizuoka city in the neighboring prefecture, which was awesome in every way, definitely worth the long trip haha, looking forward to going back
but i'm just gonna talk about one thing here, the Kuonji, the headquarters temple of Nichiren Buddhism is located right here in my prefecture! I don't know enough about the Nichiren sect specifically to TOLD YOU anything about that, it's on the same level as all religions in my mind, that is to say, I personally don't believe in any of them so they're all the same to me. well there is one difference that did stand out actually, it wasn't a Zen temple, so there wasn't one of those meticulously arranged rock gardens.
the town where this is is (basically, more or less) in the Mt. Fuji area, kinda. i found the temple on my phones GPS and thought, 'hey that looks kinda close to the train station' so I decided to take the train down, but that was a mistake. i should've zoomed in the map on my phone, because when I got off the train and loaded up the GPS Walking directions (beta), it turned out to be about 4 Klicks to this temple from the station. whoops! well it wasn't like i was about to turn around, get on the train for another hour so i could go back and get my car. i walked.
walking through this town, i didn't see anyone else around. I thought i lived in the sticks. i was wrong. this is the sticks.
again, can a couple of pictures capture the essence of a place? if you're a good photographer, then yeah, maybe. but i'm not so this is all you get. the town is mostly unremarkable, so walk 4km to Kuonji on an empty stomach, you'll know you're there when you see this
those big trees are one of Japan's national treasures actually, if pamphlets can be trusted. see those stairs in the background?
these are the bodai, the 'steps of enlightenment.' there's 287 of them, if pamplets can be trusted, but i stopped counting when my lungs reminded me that i'm a smoker and i coughed up my heart. there's actually 3 ways to the top of this temple mountain, the gentle incline of the women's path, the steeper men's path, or the steps of enlightenment. but i didn't walk 4km on an empty stomach to take the women's path! the steps of enlightenment don't look so bad when you're at the top
again is it bad photography, or the fact that pictures just can't represent the thing? i'll leave that as a thought exercise. so what's your reward for getting to the top?
greenery.
a 5 storied stupa (it's a word look it up)
a goldfish pond
lots of these...classrooms? lecture halls idk. those are little desks
Sake for dead people (ha! nice trap, but i've read enough Japanese comics to know that drinking dead people's sake is like instant bad luck)
ever play "Fatal Frame" for the Playstation2? if you didn't just look at those 3 pictures and imagine there were homicidal ghosts there
5-clawed Dragon painting on the ceiling. big deal right? can see this kind of thing at home. except the one on the ceiling in my room wasn't painted by a famous guy or considered a masterpiece. there's also not a painting on the ceiling in my room but, meh, details. hard to get a picture of this painting, it's on the ceiling and it was too big. i wouldn't rotate it if i were you, kinda fucks with the dimensions. just tilt your head sideways maybe?
the whole temple complex is huge, and since it's a headquarters of a whole sect of buddhism, it's pretty active too, with lots of monks running around and services going on, but I don't take pictures of people praying, or any service. how would you feel if some foreigners came into your church temple or mosque and took a bunch of pictures of you doing whatnot and whathaveyou? i don't know, maybe you'd be ok with that, i'm not you.
i walked back down the steps of enlightenment on my way out, thereby un-enlightening myself? still, still pretty good for a sunday, during golden week no less. what else is there to do on a sunday?
--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
My first trip to Japan, about 4-5 years ago, $100 would get you the equivalent of about $120 in En, but that was years ago, and things have changed. the dollar keeps going down, down to the point where the Japanese have a phrase for it, "doru yasu." "yasui" means 'cheap.'
this doesn't surprise me at all, because even before i left for Korea the $$$ was fucking up. you can go to Canada now and pay with American dollars because the exchange is almost 1:1. is the Amero coming soon? Goodbye, United States of America, hello N.A.U.
AMG IT'S HAPPENING!!!!! THE BIBLE!!! APOCALYPSE!!! THE 7 GREAT NATIONS!!! oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
so yeah, doru yasu. it doesn't surprise me. what does surprise me is that the En is on the Euro's ass, getting closer to 1 Euro = 100 En everyday. anyone who's ever changed dollars into Euro knows how much that sucks. when you walk away from the exchange counter in any EU country, you're probably thinking "Well, at least that was better than a kick in the nuts," but I have to disagree. i'd gladly take one right in the beanbag if it meant a few more Euro, cos that's a fucking expensive currency, and I can always just punch myself in the chest to get the blood flowing again down there. maybe that's not how it works. maybe that's just a placebo or something, all i know is that it seems to make me feel better everytime i get nut shot. punch yourself in the chest (more like stomach or abs) as hard as you can.
i'm talking about testicles by the way.
regardless, i'm happy about 2 things, #1, I already cashed in my dollars, #2, my salary is in En.
My Japanese listening ability is shameful, but it seems like the Euro's problem is....Greece? why does that not surprise me? Greece is a country where you can start a fire in the woods, plant a tree the next day, go to court and say 'that's my tree so this is clearly my land' and the court says ok.
The only reason I'm watching the Athens riots news coverage is because i've been there in Syntagma Square, therefore i'm more interested. when i saw the cops on TV shooting tear gas, my first reaction was 'that's Syntagma Square!!!! I bought ice cream there! it wasn't good!' I immediately looked through my pictures from my trip to Greece. if you go to Syntagma Square (and honestly, what's the point of going to Syntagma Square? go to Gazi, Ommonia, Acropolis, skip Syntagma) you'll definitely see some of these guys in front of parliament **beep beep old picture alert**
similar to London and Bangkok, these parliament guards stand stock still all day and never smile or react to whatever, even when tourists run right up to them for some funny pictures. a picture of you, and a guy standing next to you in an old-fashioned uniform with a blank expression. AWESOMESAUCE ON RICE !!!! well i should probably clarify, in Athens and London you can take pictures with the parliament guards. in Bangkok, the soldier with an M16 (looked like an M16) standing next to the guard tells people to fuck right off. AND THAT WAS WHY I DIDN'T ASK SOMEONE TO TAKE MY PICTURE WITH THE GUY
can i go on a tangent for a minute? oh right, right, it's my blog and no one reads it. ok here's something stupid for you to chew on (or you can skip it if you like)
************TANGENT TIME********************************************
Wat Arun is in Bangkok and it's the coolest temple i've ever been to, period, the end. I haven't been to Angkor Wat Cambodia yet, but that's irrelevant, and I don't want to diminish Wat Arun, which translates to "Temple of the Dawn" or something. this is one of the places that you should just physically go to rather than looking at pictures. this is one of those places that pictures just don't do it proper. well fuck it, let's show some pictures, because some people are too scared of Hepatitis A to ever go to Thailand. I didn't get any vaccinations for anything before I went and i never got sick!
i'm bad at photography
I SAID YOU pictures don't do it justice, and I SAID YOU i'm bad at photography
click the picture. click it
oh, i'd love to go up and down those steps again before going to the burger king on Khao San road. here's a tip for anyone who wants to go to Thailand: memorize where the places with air conditiong are, and go there alot. your body will thank you later when you're not dead from heat stroke.
BUT, if you want to go to Wat Arun, you have to find it first, which is no easy task. well...maybe it is an easy task if you're not using Lonely Planet: Bangkok to find your way around. Wat Arun is on the far west side of this lovely gradually sinking below the waterline city, which means the most efficient way to get there is crossing the western river on a boat. This much is true. Lonely planet directs you to the wrong boat, which puts you 2 solid klicks further away from Wat Arun than you need to be. well whatever, a 2 klick walk in the Thailand sun is no big deal right? my brain can always use a good boiling.
following lonely planet's directions takes you to a navy base, not Wat Arun. they were not happy to see me walk in the gate, the doberman did not want to play frisbee. but honestly you guys? if you were standing OUTSIDE the gate, it would've been easier to stop me from GOING IN the gate. and i can't read Thai.
for those keeping score at home, that was the 2nd time a lonely planet guidebook has tried to murder me. think lonely planet won't try to kill you too? try walking around any city in the world with a lonely planet map and send me an email afterwards. this entire tangent was about my burning hatred for LP
and a hooker told me the right way to Wat Arun before propositioning me with some lines that, heh, sounded like they were from Full Metal Jacket. you know the scene i'm talking about? hey, she spoke some english and pointed me the right way so it's all good.
*****AND THAT WAS TANGENT TIME***********************************
Thailand & Greece are so far apart, what do they have in common? they both like protesting, protesting alot, and protesting passionately. the 'red shirts' (i don't know Thai politics, can't explain it) are protesting in Bangkok lately, is it in the American news cycle? Don't read too much into that question, it's not a judgement, i honestly don't know what's on the American news these days. but the red shirts collected a bunch of blood donations and poured it on the streets, maybe you read about it? that's been going on for a month or so, and Athens apparently saw that and said 'hey we need to get in on that shit!'
the thing that really cracks me up about the Athens riots though...go back to that picture of the Syntagma Square guard. when I saw the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, I saw those guards, still standing there, not moving. Ok guys, there's a riot going on, did you see it? it was right in front of you. you're allowed to move now. someone should go to Greece and tell them they're allowed to move now. if you see the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, look closely, in the background, behind the police, you'll see the parliament guards. then the camera follows the cops down the street, away from parliament, and you can't see them any more.
but i should stop talking about this stuff, I don't know enough about economies to make an intelligent comment. all i know about economies is, when i want a cheeseburger, i go to Mos Burger and trade some En for a cheeseburger, compared to other people around the world, like some of the kids in Thailand, this is a luxury and i've got nothing to worry about, and it doesn't matter how much En or Euro I can get per dollar because I don't have to live on the street. so let's switch topics, check out this transition sentence. I don't know anything about economics, but I know I had a kickass Golden Week.
What do you do on summer vacations? naked Skydiving? Swimming with sharks? Bear taunting?
Those are all of my usual habits.
But this Golden Week, i didn't go for any of that crap, except for the bear taunting, which is a year round pasttime. fuck you, kuma-san, yeah maybe you can climb trees faster than you can run, but can you play nintendo with those claws?
I spent my golden week running around my prefecture and part of the next one, seeing what was up. there's more places to see in Japan besides Tokyo, Osaka etc., if you live in Japan, your backwater prefecture might actually be kinda cool if you give it a chance. i did lots. I found an awesome Korean restaurant a couple towns away from me, I went to Shizuoka city in the neighboring prefecture, which was awesome in every way, definitely worth the long trip haha, looking forward to going back
but i'm just gonna talk about one thing here, the Kuonji, the headquarters temple of Nichiren Buddhism is located right here in my prefecture! I don't know enough about the Nichiren sect specifically to TOLD YOU anything about that, it's on the same level as all religions in my mind, that is to say, I personally don't believe in any of them so they're all the same to me. well there is one difference that did stand out actually, it wasn't a Zen temple, so there wasn't one of those meticulously arranged rock gardens.
the town where this is is (basically, more or less) in the Mt. Fuji area, kinda. i found the temple on my phones GPS and thought, 'hey that looks kinda close to the train station' so I decided to take the train down, but that was a mistake. i should've zoomed in the map on my phone, because when I got off the train and loaded up the GPS Walking directions (beta), it turned out to be about 4 Klicks to this temple from the station. whoops! well it wasn't like i was about to turn around, get on the train for another hour so i could go back and get my car. i walked.
walking through this town, i didn't see anyone else around. I thought i lived in the sticks. i was wrong. this is the sticks.
again, can a couple of pictures capture the essence of a place? if you're a good photographer, then yeah, maybe. but i'm not so this is all you get. the town is mostly unremarkable, so walk 4km to Kuonji on an empty stomach, you'll know you're there when you see this
those big trees are one of Japan's national treasures actually, if pamphlets can be trusted. see those stairs in the background?
these are the bodai, the 'steps of enlightenment.' there's 287 of them, if pamplets can be trusted, but i stopped counting when my lungs reminded me that i'm a smoker and i coughed up my heart. there's actually 3 ways to the top of this temple mountain, the gentle incline of the women's path, the steeper men's path, or the steps of enlightenment. but i didn't walk 4km on an empty stomach to take the women's path! the steps of enlightenment don't look so bad when you're at the top
again is it bad photography, or the fact that pictures just can't represent the thing? i'll leave that as a thought exercise. so what's your reward for getting to the top?
greenery.
a 5 storied stupa (it's a word look it up)
a goldfish pond
lots of these...classrooms? lecture halls idk. those are little desks
Sake for dead people (ha! nice trap, but i've read enough Japanese comics to know that drinking dead people's sake is like instant bad luck)
ever play "Fatal Frame" for the Playstation2? if you didn't just look at those 3 pictures and imagine there were homicidal ghosts there
5-clawed Dragon painting on the ceiling. big deal right? can see this kind of thing at home. except the one on the ceiling in my room wasn't painted by a famous guy or considered a masterpiece. there's also not a painting on the ceiling in my room but, meh, details. hard to get a picture of this painting, it's on the ceiling and it was too big. i wouldn't rotate it if i were you, kinda fucks with the dimensions. just tilt your head sideways maybe?
the whole temple complex is huge, and since it's a headquarters of a whole sect of buddhism, it's pretty active too, with lots of monks running around and services going on, but I don't take pictures of people praying, or any service. how would you feel if some foreigners came into your church temple or mosque and took a bunch of pictures of you doing whatnot and whathaveyou? i don't know, maybe you'd be ok with that, i'm not you.
i walked back down the steps of enlightenment on my way out, thereby un-enlightening myself? still, still pretty good for a sunday, during golden week no less. what else is there to do on a sunday?
--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
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