I have waited far too long for this:

Japan’s former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wears a Vietnamese soldier’s ‘Viet Cong’ hat and shawl during his visit to Cu Chi tunnel system in southern Ho Chi Minh city November 14, 2007. Koizumi is in Vietnam on a three-day visit.

November 16: Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, left, speaks to Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet in Hanoi on Friday. (AP)

In other news, some wormy-looking guy named Fukuda is visiting with President Bush. God I hope there’s an election soon.

Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness was based on the author’s experiences in the Belgian Congo. King Leopold II of Belgium had originally wanted to establish his colony in the Philippines, but Spain refused to sell the islands to him. When the film Apocalypse Now, set in Vietnam and based on the novel Heart of Darkness, was made they filmed it in the Philippines.

Today’s announcement of the sale date of the final Harry Potter novel (July 21) offers an opportune moment to mention one of my favorite language related web sites, CJVlang.com. CJVlang is short for Chinese Japanese and Vietnamese Language, and contains a number of fascinating comparisons between the way words are used in Chinese and
how they are used in Japanese and Vietnamese, two of the three languages whose vocabularies are roughly half derived from Chinese loan words. (Unfortunately there is no material on Korean.)
As the site creator says:

It will take you on a trip through the familiar and the exotic—the way Harry Potter has been translated into these totally non-European languages, where they got their names for the days of the week, how their naturalists approach the scientific naming of birds, and, of course, the nature of the scripts the three languages are written in. The journey will give you glimpses of history, a close-up of the workings of culture, and the thrill of discovering the unexpected.

While the article on the comparative history of the names of the days of the week in these three languages, as well as Europe, is particularly fascinating the real attraction of the site is the massive archive of Harry Potter translation comparisons between Japanese, Vietnamese, and both mainland Chinese AND Taiwanese editions. While naturally of the most interest for fans of the series who are also familiar with one or more of the CJV languages, anyone interested in translation or comparative linguistics will also be fascinated by analysis of the translations of puns, character names, spell names, animals, and dialogue into each of these four editions.