Victory Manual

Who’s making news in Japan?

Rockinginhakata.com’s Deas hit a little bit on the issue of balanced coverage in Japanese media of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election a couple of weeks ago, and it sparked my curiosity.

I ran each name of the three major candidates through Japanese news sites to see how many hits they came out with. (Clinton as 「クリントン」, Obama as 「オバマ」, and McCain as 「マケイン」)

Hits from some major news sites sites were as follows.

Asahi.com (朝日新聞)
Clinton: 628
Obama: 530
McCain: 268

Mainichi.co.jp (毎日新聞)
Obama: 153
Clinton: 152
McCain: 71

Yomiuri.co.jp (読売新聞)
Clinton: 243
Obama: 171
McCain: 77

In all cases, McCain had around half the amount of hits as the lowest Democrat, at most. Clinton had at least as many hits as Obama, most of the time she had considerably more. Some of the Obama hits were just regarding gimmick news related to the candidate and a small Japanese town sharing the same name. (小浜)

The Democratic primary election is still undecided which explains partly why there is such a large discrepancy in numbers, but even so, it’s not uncommon to be asked by the average Japanese person if you will be voting for “Clinton or Obama”. Again, the reason for that is justified in that (from my own possibly skewed experience) there are more Americans in Japan who claim themselves as Democrats than as Republicans. (Which is itself an interesting research project)

The over-pious think that unbelievers are in the dark, and the over-skeptical think that believers are misguided. Neither is right.

The first tremors began to hit around 12:30 am, just as I was about to go to sleep last night. The clinking sound of wine glasses was the first sign, then the rolling sensation. The first round lasted about 20 seconds.

Five minutes later came some more shaking. Not as big as the first time around, I considered them aftershocks. But they didn’t stop. For about an hour straight, every 5 or 6 minutes, the wine glasses would start up their song again. I turned on the TV to see what was going on.

Each tremor was given a message on TV at the top of the screen mere seconds after the quakes stopped. I was watching a local broadcast channel (the station is literally down the street from our apartment) and the messages always read the same.

Earthquake Information:
Level 2 magnitude: Fukushima, Koriyama, Iwaki, etc. etc…(about 15 places given)
Level 1 magnitude: Aizu, Minami-Aizu, etc. etc. (about 10 places given)

(Note: Magnitudes are given on a Japanese scale, the strongest being level 7))

Like I said, this was being posted every 5, 6 minutes as the tremors kept rolling through.

Then at around 1:45 as I was still lying in bed awake with the TV on in the background, the wine glasses started violently dancing, and I jumped up to make sure nothing was close enough to squish us. I looked at the TV banging against the wall, and as the quake was still going on this very straightforward message appeared at the top of the screen:

Earthquake Information:
DANGER! Fukushima, Koriyama, Iwaki

It was a pretty large quake, but nothing bad enough to warrant grief, so cheers to that. Still, I wish I had a better night’s sleep, as I’m about to start off my day zooming around town with appointments to be kept and lessons to be instructed.

(For those of you interested, here’s a little bit more on the quake)

The solution to Japanese farmers’ bind of not selling any rice because of its high cost is simply to not grow any rice at all! With protectionist policies, they could make a fortune out of growing nothing!

“His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.” Chapter 9 - Major Major Major Major, Catch-22.

One of my pet peeves is when options to change languages in programs are only listed in the language that the program is currently set to. So, for example, if you were currently in Japanese mode and attempting to change it to English, here’s the menu you are presented with:

日本語
中国語
韓国語
英語
イタリア語
フランス語

If you don’t understand Japanese, how are you supposed to choose ‘English’ from the menu without simply guessing?! What the menu should look like (no matter what language the program is currently set to) is,

日本語
中文
한국어
English
Italiano
Français

If you can read it, you can choose it!

Very unabashedly, I love Japanese proverbs, even the ones that contradict each other.

十人十色 - Literally meaning, “10 people, 10 colors.” This phrase emphasizes the individuality of humans. “As many opinions as people.”

出るくぎは打たれる - Literally, “The nail that sticks up is hammered down.” Contrasting the proverb above, this expresses the idea that it is best to act the same as everyone else.

And finally, a totally unrelated proverb that I was reminded of by Harvey’s recent post,

花より団子 - Literally, “Rice dumplings rather than flowers.” Flowers may be beautiful, but they won’t fill your stomach. According to one reference, these are similar proverbs in English: “Bread is better than the songs of birds.” “Better to fill a man’s belly than his eye.” “Fair words fill not the belly.” I’ve heard none of these used before.

My wife brought up an interesting point while we were talking about nationalism in Asia. I like hearing her take on things as she’s a Korean living in Japan studying alongside Chinese. She feels that, based on China’s long history of power in Asia, many Chinese today still consider Korea and Japan as simply an extension of China. (This was true in the past as well, and is the reason we don’t call Japan “Wa”, because an old Chinese emperor wrote a letter to the “region” addressing it as “the origin of the sun” [日 - Sun; 本 - Origin]) According to her, they may make a remark along the lines of, “It’s all part of China, anyway!”

This immediately struck me as amusing! While in Korea or Japan (or nearly any other country in the world for that matter) fingers are being pointed and there are shouts claiming differences between “us” and “them”, Chinese nationalism subsumes the rest of Asia, and it’s not a matter of “us” and “them”, but instead, “who cares because you are us.” Needless to say, this claim is not innocent, and only further angers citizens of other nations trying to establish themselves as being different or even superior.

But that their nationalism is established backwards is an interesting concept. Instead of claiming the country stands out amongst the rest, the claim is that other countries are in fact all part of the same thing.

Here’s some of the local 弁 (dialect) that I’ve come to love and utilize.

つかっちゃ Meaning “I’m beat [tired]“, derived from 疲れてしまいました.
どうスッペ? Meaning “What should [I/We/You] do?”, derived from どうする？
さすけね Meaning “No worries / Not a problem”, derived from (the old term) 差支えがない.

These terms will not benefit me at all on the JLPT 1. まあ、さすけね。

A protest to protest a protest.

Torch protests could hurt Japan’s ties with China

I might need to begin a protest of my own. A protest to protest the protest of a protest. All I would ask of you, dear readers, is that you kindly protest me afterwards. A protest to protest the protest of a protest of a protest.

Afterthought,
A PROtest is not the positive version of a CONtest. Furthermore, if you protest something, you are usually contesting its existence.

With all this controversy surrounding Ben Stein’s new [documentary | attack | sensationalism], I was reminded of one argument, in regards to the evolution / creation debate, typically masked as a question that I absolutely can’t stand.

Let me start off by saying that I don’t claim to know any “truth”. Both the ideas of creation and evolution are simply guesses. I tend to find evolution more convincing, though. Again, that doesn’t imply that I believe evolution to be true, but I find the information presented to be more persuasive. In the end, I think David Bowie said it best when he wrote, “Knowledge comes with death’s release.”

Nevertheless, the debate continues, and one statement that just rubs me the wrong way is, “If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there no half-human half-monkeys?”

For the same reason there are no half-ape half-orangutans! I think the theory that man descended (Doesn’t “descended” imply we’re below them? Shouldn’t it be “ascended”? Am I a prideful human? Yes.) from “monkeys” doesn’t mean that the species turned from A into B, but that from the tree-trunk of primates humans are a single branch, next to lemurs, monkeys, and apes. We’re the smart branch! (Well, sometimes…)