mokudekiru

Fixing the pinball machine!

Bonus shots:

This week has gone by extremely fast, and the weekend even faster. Granted, Monday there were no classes, so really the week started from Tuesday, but it was still remarkably fast to the point where I am starting to doubt my ability to judge the passing of time. I made several enlightening discoveries this week that were of, at, or relating to school… so I think I’ll share.

Tuesday’s discovery:
It’s completely and totally necessary to eat lunch. I sort of forgot about the whole eating lunch thing, until I realized that I had class from 12-5 with no break. Oops. By 5pm I was not in a good mood, but I had chinese food leftovers to eat and my mood quickly improved. Lesson: keep food with you at all times, especially on Tuesdays.

Wednesday’s discovery:
Actually, I don’t think I discovered anything particularly amazing on Wednesday, except that there is a nice small time block after my physics discussion section in which I can do fantastic things like go buy batteries for my calculator, etc. Thrilling.

Thursday’s discoveries:

1) As great as the song “She Don’t Use Jelly” is, actually applying that concept to a sandwich is less than ideal. I had my bagel in my dorm room, and actually remembered to pack myself food (after Tuesday’s failure). I spread peanut butter on, at which point I discovered that I didn’t have any jelly. This was a thoroughly depressing moment. But there was nothing to be done, so I just brought my PB&J-hold-the-J sandwich and went on my way. Later on though, I ended up having really yummy chinese food, which certainly helped. Twice this week, really bad or nonexistent meals have been followed by chinese food. I approve of this trend.

2) Conveying knowledge is the hardest thing in the world. I always had some idea of this, but now that I actually am attempting to do this as a JOB, it seems much more essential that I discover how to do this. Also, despite the fact that I haven’t even known this material for very long, it’s a difficult thing to know what other people don’t understand yet (not that it’s even very easy to know exactly what it is you don’t understand when you’re taking a class yourself). Gaaah.

3) I am completely and totally inferior to Sean’s antbuster skills. I spent like 40 minutes on this, only to have my cake stolen by ants a mere one level before Sean’s *awesome* record.

[click on picture to play]

Sean dares you to make it past level 76. I promise the music to this game is really great too.

Friday’s discoveries:

1) So I had a quiz in Japanese, which involved translating some things into english. Normally I dislike translating into english because it’s so difficult. This stems from the fact that English and Japanese are so different, and the year I spent there, no one was asking me for a direct translation. Anyway, on this quiz we didn’t have to translate entire sentences, but just some words and phrases. I studied the appropriate material, but then on the quiz one of the words we were supposed to translate was せっかく (sekkaku). Now, if you asked me to name a word that exists in Japanese and simply doesn’t at all in english, I probably would have picked that word. I can only really attempt to explain the meaning by example. One of the sentences I said during my speech about my new years resolution to be better about replying to emails, could be translated to:

“I don’t want to inconvenience the friends who [sekkaku] wrote emails to ME”

I.e., my friends went all the way out of their way and did this really great thing by writing email to me, I should at the very least try not to inconvenience them.”

Example 2 (from our textbook): The sentence was something like “Then this person loses the sekkaku enjoyment of eating a meal with their family.”

So in short, I have no idea what it means. It seems to be a particularly Japanese sentiment, at times related to obligation… but really, there is no translation.

So after class I pointed this out to my sensei, asking what translation was expected, and that even though I am confident I know what sekkaku is, I am entirely unable to translate it. A few hours later an email came saying that everyone gets credit for that problem, because it’s too hard to explain.

I just thought that the fact that we don’t have to translate something because it’s IMPOSSIBLE is really fantastic.

Now it’s time for sleep, and I’m not going to attempt to describe the weekend anyway. Tata.

Yesterday, second chapter of the manga I translate, was finally released ^_^

The manga is called Sugar Pot, by Takasaka Yue, which is a ridiculously sugary sweet (girly), but fun story. I think the translation on chapter 2 is about a zillion times better than chapter 1, so there’s always lots of room for improvement. So if you’re interested, please read it!

Download it here:
http://www.mahou.org/Projects/SugarPot/

I finished watching Nobuta wo Produce a couple days into 2008, and let me tell you it was great. Released in fall of 2005, at first this appeared to be another typical high school drama (though, I’ve never actually run into an unremarkable high school drama… they’re all special in their own way).

The story:
There’s a new transfer student in school, a girl named Nobuko (Horikita Maki), who is quiet, awkward, kind of morose, and all-around creepy — greasy looking hair covers her face, she shuffles around, and avoids everyone. The most popular kid in school, Shuuji (Kamenashi Kazuya), has a calm, cool, and collected exterior, but on the inside is extremely bored with his life. Akira (played by Yamapi) is a crazy kid who decides to bother Shuuji until Shuuji accepts him as a friend. Akira and Shuuji decide their project is to make Nobuko into a popular girl, such as in Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, and She’s All That. There were many similarities in these stories — they try changing her appearance, manner of speaking, etc. to make her “popular”. However, there were several significant differences from these classic western makeover stories:

1) Nobuko never becomes beautiful. She cuts her hair, tries changing her clothes (but ultimately sticks with her original clothes), she never stops stuttering, and never acts kawaii. There was no scene where she spends a day shopping, going to hair salons, getting makeup, and comes out looking fabulous. She tries all of those things at times, but in the end the look that suits her the best is what she’s comfortable in.

2) Nobuko never ends up with Shuuji. You know from the first second of the show that she is going to fall in love with him, and after about 3 or 4 seconds that Akira is going to fall for Nobuko, but all of these relationships are left entirely in the potential form. The characters’ feelings for one another drive them to act the way they do, so the direction of the plot results from these feelings, but there is no final love story that wraps up the whole show. In fact, Shuuji and Akira end up being separated from Nobuko — we see the depth of friendship between the three of them, but the fact that Nobuko doesn’t need them anymore is a measure of their success in teaching her to have confidence.

3) Nobuko is able to achieve true popularity without changing herself. The other kids grow to like her, even in her quirkiness. Nothing is superficial about her popularity, so she never has an existential crisis about, “look what I sacrificed to gain popularity,” since she has not really changed herself at all.

4) Way more cute pigs. “Nobuta” is a nickname for Nobuko, and “buta” = “pig”, so almost everything in the show is pig themed. In a couple of episodes, the trio decides to make a bunch of little keyholders in the shape of these cute pink pigs, which catch on at school and become a huge fad. Shuuji’s mom brings back little pig paperweights or something from a trip as omiyage, and these pigs become the symbol of the trio’s friendship.

5) It was kind of surreal. Luck, spirits, superstition, and dreams play a major role in some episodes. Examples: there are these kids at school who help out the trio in the culture festival, who turn out to be ghosts of former students — everyone just seems to accept this as normal. At one point, four of the characters have the exact same dream at the same time, so they all rush to school (the location of the dream) and make sure everything is okay, but some remnants of their dream seem to be lingering in the real world — weird stuff, that again, everyone seems to accept.

6) Akira’s manner of speaking is ridiculous. You probably have to know Japanese in order to understand this, but he ends almost every sentence he utters with なんだっちゃ for emphasis, which is… well it sounds really stupid. If there were an english equivalent, it would perhaps be ending every sentence with, “zors” or something. Yamapi is really ridiculous.

7) The theme song to Nobuta, “Seishun Amigo” is pretty catchy too. I sang it last week at karaoke ^_^

Anyway here are some stills:

Akira (Yamapi) and Shuuji (Kamenashi). I really do think Kamenashi looks like a death god — if he showed up in the middle of the night I would probably die of fright. But by day, he’s just a classic KAT-TUN prettyboy.

Nobuko in her natural posture. The guys want her to cut her hair, and she points to a store with extremely ugly clothes, and says, “Could you wear those clothes?” “I wouldn’t be caught dead in those…” “That’s what cutting my hair would be like.” So the guys wear the clothes, and convince Nobuko to cut her hair.

Cutting this creepy doll’s hair for practice (yes, at a salon). Yamapi also looks stupid!

And, bonus bento shot:

At the beginning, Shuuji is dating this girl, Mariko (Toda Erika). She makes bento for him every day, brings it to school (or cooks it there) and the two of them eat in one of the cooking schools at room. Oh bento….

However, the best thing about this show is possibly the phrase I learned. Whenever she was lacking in confidence, Nobuko would say,

野ブタパワー
注入！
(Nobuta power! Infusion!)

Which is just pretty great. Some dude compiled a video of a bunch of times she does this (starting with the first time Akira comes up with it). I think it’s gonna be my new power-up as well.

Now that 2007 is over, I would just like to look back and reflect on some of the great jdramas of the year. As the primary thief of my free time (besides school, of course), I certainly spent several days in 2007 JUST watching jdramas, and when I couldn’t, I wish I could have. Many were actually on-air this year, but I managed to go back and rewatch some old classics I’d never seen. Below are some blurbs on the three most recent I finished.

Dramas I watched in 2007 (in somewhat chronological order, links go to the D-addicts Wiki):

Hana Yori Dango 2
Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai wo Sakebu
Nodame Cantabile
Stand Up!!
Gokusen
Tiger & Dragon
Dragon Zakura
Propose Daisakusen
Bambino!
Kekkon Dekinai Otoko (second viewing)
Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
Papa to Musume no Nanokakan
Hotaru no Hikari
Life
GTO
Orange Days
Yamato Nadeshiko
Manhattan Love Story (second viewing)

And for the most recent three, which I started over Thanksgiving and finished during Winter Break:

Orange Days (2004):

A cute story about five college students trying to find out who they are. The main character is Kai, a guy who falls for a deaf girl named Sae. She was a musician before (violinist) but is now struggling with what she should do now that she is deaf. She has a strong, defensive personality, and communicates solely through sign language, much of which is angry and rude. Kai is able to help her get over her insecurities, but the whole friend group is supportive and represents an idyllic time of youthful happiness.

The best part of this show is by far the sign language conversations. They’re subtitled in Japanese, but since you’re seeing it, it’s a lot harder to ignore than purely verbal subtitles, and as a result you pick up some signs as you watch. Japanese sign language is fairly closely related to the spoken Japanese language (I think), and unrelated to American Sign Language, etc. So unfortunately, I’m not sure learning would be particularly useful, but as of now, I have a vocabulary of commonly used phrases, including: “Really”, “Good,” “That’s wrong,” “But,” “Are you ok?” “Yummy,” “Go together,” “I love you,” and my personal favorite, “I’ve said too much.”

Great Teacher Onizuka (1998):

GTO is a classic hit; manga, anime and drama. It focuses on this slightly gangster guy, Onizuka, who decides to become a high school teacher. His teaching methods are more forward and direct than the other teachers (and students) would like, but soon after, he finds a group of loyal followers among his students, and eventually wins over the hearts of everyone. It’s a little cartoonish (due to its manga roots), but there’s actually less fighting than I expected. This drama is the forerunner to an entire genre of gangsters-in-school dramas — the insanely popular Gokusen is essentially the same story, but the lead is a *female* gangster (part of a yakuza family), Dragon Zakura (which features another gangster teacher, but this time the focus of the story was on academics, surprisingly enough), and My Boss My Hero, in which a gangster poses as a typical high school student. This almost seems to be a fantasy of the Japanese entertainment world — that in a completely normal school, a fellow teacher or student could be a gangster. The juxtaposition of the carefree gangster type, the proper schoolteachers (particularly the female lead, played by Matsushima Nanako), and the cutesy, silly schoolkids, is amusing. Bonus: GTO features a REALL young Oguri Shun (like, his voice hasn’t changed), playing one of the students in Onizuka’s class.

Yamato Nadeshiko (2000):

Another classic drama: a romance about gold-digging stewardesses. Matsushima Nanako is a flight attendant from humble roots, completely obsessed with finding the richest man she can, and marrying him. She is engaged to a doctor, and yet goes on group dates with the other stewardesses (actually, she arranges them), looking for status symbols like designer suits, pins, keys of expensive cars, etc., spending an evening on a date with them, getting some kind of expensive gift out of the situation, and then never calling the guy back. She mistakenly falls for a guy who she believes to be rich (he’s borrowing clothes from some rich friends, etc.), who actually is a former mathematician who has taken over his deceased father’s corner fish shop. Once she hears the truth, she begins to hate this guy, and yet they seem to keep being involved in each others’ lives. In the end, she’s not as shallow as even she thought she was. Her shallow, gold-digging moments are some of the drama’s best though — she likes to tell everyone, particularly younger flight attendants, that “Yes, money CAN buy happiness.” The line she uses on every rich guy she sees is, “I have the feeling I’ve met that special someone tonight.” It’s cheesy, and yet it works. One of the best scenes is when her apartment is burning down, she wants to run back into it to gather up some expensive clothes she’s spent so long collecting. Shinichi (the main guy), runs in for her, almost dies in the process, but brings back one dress of hers. He’s coughing on the ground outside after being rescued by firemen, and her reaction is, “this is the ONLY thing you got?? What about all my other clothes?!” Another great thing about this show is that the fiance, who is an important character throughout, is not a bad guy. He fails to notice her running between dates with him and several other men, always accepts her excuses, and allows her to push him around with threats of canceling the wedding, but aside from being a little bit naive, he’s a good guy, and eventually comes through in the end to help her out.

It’s been a great year for dramas. Based on the fact that most shows are 11-12 episodes long, and are basically 1 hour long, I can safely say I’ve spent over a week total just watching Jdramas. Here’s to 2008 is just as drama-filled!