Obvious Shintaro Ishihara quote of the week:
“I hate Mickey Mouse,” Ishihara said. “He has nothing like the unique sensibility that Japan has. The Japanese are inherently skilled at visual expression and detailed work.”
Obviously, this is a guy who’s never seen what American high school otaku can do.
Just as it starts to warm up, poor Environment Ministress and mother of Cool Biz Yuriko Koike has come down with pneumonia. Looks like she’ll be all right, but we would never wish an untimely demise on the woman who gave us Biz Caz Koizumi!
Anyone out there remember Dave Chappelle’s “Black Bush” skit? With the scene that went like this:
BLACK BUSH: I got a coalition of the willing! I got 40 nations ready to roll, son!
REPORTER: Like who?
BLACK BUSH: Who the f— said that? Like who? Uh… England. Japan’s… sending Playstations…
Well, although I haven’t seen any Playstation stories yet, here’s the next best thing, which I swear I am not making up:
The Japan Foundation, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Animation International Middle East, has decided to provide an Arabic-dubbed version of the soccer animation TV program “Captain Majed” (originally “Captain Tsubasa”) to the Iraq Media Network (IMN) as grant aid.
As soccer is a popular sport in Iraq, it is expected that the TV program will strengthen goodwill toward Japan on the Iraqi side. In particular, it may provide dreams and hopes for the children of Iraq, who will shoulder the future of the country.
The conclusion of the agreement for this grant aid took place on March 2 between the IMN and the Japan Foundation, and the program will be provided to the IMN within coming days.
Holy crap, can diplomats be any more irrelevant? Although I have to admit, if you dub this show in Arabic, it might seriously look like a show about Iraqi soccer players.
A couple of years ago the fact that a fake sequel to Harry Potter was illegally published in China made headlines and drew large amounts of attention online. And yet, despite the huge numbers of blogs that linked to the story at the time, nobody had any decent visual evidence, or any details beyond that in the short BBC article I linked to above.
When I went to China for the first time in 2003, one of my main goals was to locate a copy of one of these fake Harry Potter novels. As I was utterly unable to speak Chinese at that time, when I and my travel companion passed a movie theatre showing the film I noted down the Chinese title in the little notebook I carried in my pocket. (哈利 波特) so that I could show it to a bookstore clerk in the hope of finding my very own fake Harry Potter novel, nestled alongside the real ones.
After trying a couple of different bookstores, I met with success! There were actually two different fake Harry Potter novels alongside the real four that had already been published at that time. While neither one of them was the famous Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon (see an English translation of a few paragraphs of that novel here), but they were still gloriously, authentically fake, and of course I bought them both.
Here, for your pleasure, are scans of the front and rear cover of the first of my amazing purchases, which for various reasons have not been presented until now. As you can see, the English title is “Harry Potter and the Filler of Big.” The Chinese title is literally “Harry Potter and the Great Funnel,” which goes at least 35% of the way towards explaining the English translation.
Later on I will post some scans of the interior, lovingly illustrated using bad clip-art, and very possibly type-set using dramatically out of date software. I’ll also post some scans of my second fake Harry Potter novel, which according to what one could ironically call the copyright information page, is entitled “Harry Potter and beaker snd burn.” And as a special bonus, some sample art from a Harry Potter dojinshi from Japan.
UPDATE: The official site has posted an interview with producer Toshio Suzuki that once and for all lays out why Goro Miyazaki was chosen to direct AND why his father Hayao Miyazaki was against it. In short, Hayao Miyazaki is one of those guys who has to be in control at all times. He was OK with Goro working on the film but was dead set against letting him direct until he saw that Goro could draw just as well as his father… stay tuned for a translation!
In celebration of the best comment I have yet received on this site, I bring you another exciting installment of Goro Miyazaki’s blog!
I don’t know what things were like before, but ever since I can remember my father was often not around. That said, just as I loved my mother, I loved my father, and when I was small I wanted him to pay attention to me and play with me. However, there were almost no chances for that.
Continue reading Goro Miyazaki’s Blog 2-24-06: The Only Way for Me to Know My Father was Through His Works
I’m applying for a job in Japan. In the latest email, the potential boss asked me to send a headshot, standard for Japanese resumes. I wanted to say that as soon as I get home to the US I can scan it in and send it, but I wasn’t quite sure how “scanner” is spelled in Japanese. I checked the always useful ALC dictionary, and they had this example:
Scanner Darkly
【著作】 《A ～》暗闇のスキャナー◆米1977《著》フィリップ・K・ディック(Philip K. Dick)
Dick is right around the top of my favorite authors of all time list, and this just reminds me how excited I am about the movie adaptation of this book that’s about to come out. The awesome trailer is here, and Wired has an article here about the trials of the rotoscoping animation they used.
I noticed that Kotaku has a post offering very helpful and detailed directions on how to get to Nintendo HQ in Kyoto, Japan.
But before you all book your ticket for a trip to Kyoto, you might want to consider this: Nintendo Japan does NOT offer tours of either its factories or offices. The Q&A section of the company’s website makes this clear:
Q: Can I take a tour of Nintendo’s factories/offices?
A: Since we are entrusted with the business secrets of our various licensee companies, we do not offer factory tours or company tours. Please take note.
Now, one place that does offer tours is the National Diet Building in Tokyo. Perhaps not as exciting as seeing where Mario was born, but hey, you get to see where Japanese policymakers vote to screw their constituents on a regular basis!
It’s amazing how fast misinformation can spread. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, people seem to be accepting at face value Akihabara News’ mistaken claim that the Japanese government is about to ban its thriving used video game electronics market. Though some consoles will be banned without proper certification (contrary to what Roy indicated, Sega fans might be screwed!), the truth is that no comprehensive ban is forthcoming. We at Mutant Frog Travelogue intend to set things right.
The only source that Akihabara News cited in the post is this Japanese government Q&A regarding the provisional measures to the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law, which regulates the safety of old electronics, electric appliances, etc. by instituting an inspection system.
On the top of the Q&A page it states in big letters (paraphrased since the Japanese is kind of awkward): The items that were given a 5-year grace period in 2001 when the law came into effect will come under regulation starting in April 2006.
Below that is a table outlining what kind of labelling will be required of which types of electric/electronic goods. The items that will come under regulation this April are listed as follows: “Electric refrigerators, electric laundry machines, television receivers, electric musical instruments, audio equipment, gaming devices, etc.”
GAMING DEVICES?! My guess is that Mr. Akihabara News must have panicked at this point and typed up his post immediately to warn people.
But if you glance down at Question 4, you’ll find this (provisional translation):
Q4. Will the sale of all secondhand electronics no longer be permitted?
A4. It is not the case that one will no longer be able to sell all secondhand electronics.
The Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law does not designate all electronics. If an electronics product is not designated in the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law, then it is not subject to the regulations of the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law.
For the electronics products that are designated in the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law, it is possible to sell them the same as ever if the new labels are included.
(snip)
Even if an item is on the list, such as electronic musical instruments, audio equipment, gaming devices, etc., the console/body will not be subject to the regulations if it receives its power supply via a removable AC adapter (AC adapters are subject to the regulations with a 7 year grace period (ending on March 31, 2008).
End of story, right? Well, I hate to tell you this, but the scenario is apparently not as rosy as the government would have you believe.
Continue reading Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: METI Explains Stance on Secondhand Game Consoles
Goro WINS:
I will continue on the topic of bicycles from yesterday.
In the animation industry, for some reason there are many bicycle enthusiasts,
so much so that every year, there is a 160km race from Inagi City, Tokyo, to Asuwa, Nagano Prefecture.
I, too, take part in that.Inamura-san, “Ged War Journal” Art Director, is another person obsessed with bicycles.
He is the owner of a quite a pair of legs.
Inamura-san is an avid user of an Italian-made helmet from a maker called Brico, and
since it is very cool, once when I tied putting it on as a test,
a “Docomo mushroom” with an evil look in its eye was standing before me in the mirror.
It seems my head was too big compared to the depth of the helmet’s hat body.Since then, when watching races live on television,
I have tried on several helmets that I thought were cool, but
they are mostly from European makers and none of them fit on my head, or
Even if they fit, I still look like a citizen of the mushroom planet.For whatever reason, European-made helmets
seemingly can only be donned by small-faced, small-headed people.
Since there’s nothing I can do about it, I wear an helmet with a relatively deep hat body
from American maker Bell.They say my face does not look much like my father’s,
but at least there is no mistaking that I got the face largeness from my father.Speaking of which, about 20 years ago, during production of the film, “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,”
my father once suddenly proclaimed, “I’m going to ride a motorcycle!”
He did rush out and buy one,
but he could not find a helmet that fit him at all.Finally, he crammed an off-type helmet onto his head, but
I clearly remember that his face looked like it was about to overflow from the helmet.
Old readers may remember Adam’s original post on the film Sengoku Jieitai or my followup on the author.
I just found a torrent of it here on this site (2 files, no subtitles) and am in the middle of downloading it now. I hope it’s as good as it sounds.
