Month: January 2006

WordPress 2.0

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.0. It’s still using the same theme (for now) so nothing should look any different on the user end, but the administrator’s interface is radically different, and pretty nifty. I haven’t explored it enough to actually say what practicaly changes there have been, but it should be fun to mess around and see what it can do. If anyone finds any bugs or oddities caused by the upgrade, make sure to email me.

Mahjong

I was playing mahjong last night with some people and decided to look up the proper and complete rules on the internet. There are of course many, many variants of the game in different countries/regions, only some of which seem to be easily findable online in English. I did manage to find a good set of Japanese style rules here, and an explanation of the Taiwanese style points system here.

Supply and demand in isolated Burma

I wouldn’t be surprised if most people reading this Washington Post article didn’t make it to the end. After all, we’re so used to getting a constant stream of news on the wretched conditions of people living in some third world nation that a certain level of fatigue sets in, and economic sanctions against Burma doesn’t have the same zing as the Yellow menace of rising China, the endless Middle Eastern wars, or the delicious scandals unfolding in Washington. But for those who did make it to the end of the article, or those watching this page, there is a paragraph at the end that I would say is quite literally jaw-dropping.

The import of automobiles, for instance, is so tightly restricted by these well-connected businessmen that Burmese say a 15-year-old Japanese sedan might sell for more than 20 times its value elsewhere and the supply of mobile phones is so limited that they can cost more than $2,000.

Bombs vs. ports

Just a few days away from returning to Japan. While visiting a war museum in Charleston yesterday, I spotted these names painted on a WWII-era dive bomber:

Obviously, it’s a list of islands that the plane bombed. But I can’t help but think… if you put it in Book Antiqua with some nice photos, it could just as easily come from a cruise line brochure. Stick Honolulu on top and Yokohama on the bottom and you’ve got a nice little Hawaii-Japan trip.

(More profound blog posts coming soon, I promise. Still a little fried from cramming for my tax exam…)

Bad Japanese to the 4th power times 12

This ultra dorky gaming blog run by some anonymous American nerd has the most hilariously bad Japanese I have ever seen. This is so amazingly ridiculously atrocious that it makes Engrish.com look like Geoffrey Chaucer.

Nintendo は再度上がる! 反抗して準備ができているか。

Nintendo は再度上がる。Nintendo の回転は実施中にある。準備ができているか。考えるものを忘れなさい知っている。賭博の回転のために準備されなさい。液浸の回転! 秘密によってはハリウッドがBroadway に会うところにがある。 第12 力の時4 への10 は見るものである。ない実際はspec シートでしかし。 eMagin は真実を保持する。 Nintendo は再度上がる。 反抗して準備ができているか。
Seriousgamer007 はRedmond に内部にある。私がであるかだれ秘密は残る。 信じなさい 回転は来ている!

SeriousGamer007 は実質及びNintendo の内部にである!

The grammar is honestly so bad that I think the only way to properly convey the effect is to run it through Babelfish.

Nintendo rises for the second time! Opposing, does preparation do? Nintendo rises for the second time. As for the revolution of Nintendo it is in the midst of executing. Does preparation do? Forget those which you think you have known. Prepare for turning the gambling. Revolution of immersion! At the point where Hollywood meets to Broadway depending upon secret bitterly it is. At the time of 12th power 10 to 4 is something which is seen. It is not, but really with the spec seat. EMagin keeps truth. Nintendo rises for the second time. Opposing, does preparation do? As for Seriousgamer007 in Redmond it is inside. Am I or, some secret remains. Believes revolution has come! SeriousGamer007 is inside substance and Nintendo!

He strings together grammatical structures that make no sense together-for ‘immersion’ he uses the word that means literally ‘to immerse something in liquid.’ Gambling? I have no idea. He seems to be trying to say something like “ten to the fourth power times twelve” but instead of actually using the mathematical terms, he just uses the literal words ‘times’ and ‘power,’ enabling the ちんぷんかんぶん that you see before you.

Now, I’m not just making fun of him for writing bad Japanese. Everyone writes stuff just as bad as this in language class. No, it’s not just that it’s bad, but that he clearly thinks he’s so goddamn cool for being enough of an uber-dork to write idiotic nonsense about Japanese videogames in the holy language itself. Even written in English it would have been such fanboyish blather that, after reading it, you might wonder for a second if merely by reading this blog you might be somehow rendering invalid all of the maturity you have developed since the sixth grade. Just look at the kind of blather that he actually DOES write in English.

Thank you for following this blog. This blog has become enormously popular. Gamers from countries all over the world have found this blog. This blog leads the war on gaming dominance for Nintendo.

This blog is at the forefront of that battle. The Nintendo blog to change everything.

This is clearly the guy in your Japanese 101 class who embodies all the stereotypes. His very existence casts a dark cloud over all of us who study Japanese and happen to also enjoy pop culture like video games or manga instead of a strict diet of noh, geisha and zen. In response, I would like to borrow the words of yesterday’s SomethingAwful post.

I would like to take a moment to apologize to the Japanese. The people from the United States and Canada that end up living in your country are almost all horrible and I am really sorry about that. Most Americans don’t really love manga, Pocky and babbling for hours on end about obscure videogame minutiae.