For lack of anything really interesting to write about at the minute, I’ll write 8 factoids about myself since it has been demanded of me by Deas. I should warn you, though, that on the Japanese magnitude scale of “interesting” I register at “not very”. Most people don’t read these things, anyways.
1. [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘reveries’
June 21, 2008
A little bit about the man behind the curtain
June 9, 2008
Back on the table - Japanese subtitles once more
My wife and I went out to see Charlie Wilson’s War after dinner last night for our wedding anniversary. When we watch movies in English together at home, we usually have Korean subtitles on for her, and the result is that when I describe the scene I watched in English with the same scene [...]
June 3, 2008
Yet another story of super kanji to the rescue
Yet another story of how kanji saved my life…would have sounded a lot more dramatic and probably would have been a more interesting read. But, seriously - Kanji rock. Kanji are superheroes. In fact, in the upcoming 8th season of Smallville (yeah, I watch it - What’s it to you?!), we find [...]
May 31, 2008
Kanji - The Layman’s Best Friends
Sesquipedalian. I don’t think I’ll ever fall out of obsession with that word. The definition is itself. It is its own definition. There’s something so satisfying about that. But that’s not what this is about.
Sesquipedalian is far from being a common vocabulary term. The same holds true of its [...]
May 14, 2008
Balanced News Coverage
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 [...]
May 12, 2008
Finding the confidence to claim ignorance.
The over-pious think that unbelievers are in the dark, and the over-skeptical think that believers are misguided. Neither is right.
April 30, 2008
Interesting bickering
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 [...]
April 28, 2008
弁
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 [...]
April 20, 2008
And here I thought ‘irony’ was a foreign concept in China.
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 [...]
April 17, 2008
Not very well thought out
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 [...]
