Since I have no particular topic that I want to write about but have many things on my mind, I thought I'd list them. This is mostly going to be movies and manga and things of which my interests basically derive from either of them.
<STOMP THE YARD>
I saw the trailer for this American movie "Stomp the Yard" last night on TV and thought it's pretty cool. I always like to see dancing especially when it comes to dances with fast beat and rhythm, and I also admire all the time the flexibility of muscles and joints of those dancers plus their sense of rhythm. I myself have never learned hip hop or stepping or any of the stuff on that side - all I've ever had is a few years experience of classic ballet and a bit of clubbing - but I wish I could dance like that. Cool.
< Dororo and Bokkou >
Speaking of films, there are a few that I want to go see in theaters. One is Dororo, a film that I have been mentioning several times now in the past entries and also on my website. I hear it's good, and also feel that I should experience the scale in a theater with large screen and good sound system.
Bokkou was released this past weekend in Japan, and this too, I'm very much interested in seeing because I like that unique worldview Chinese fims or films on China have.
<IRYU - Team Medical Dragon>
... is a name of a manga that I am hooked right now. I borrowed it from a friend from high school who is currently a nursing student. The manga is mostly a criticism to Japanese medical treatment, of the feudalistic systems and structure, corrupted doctors, downlooked nurses and disrespected patients. It's an indignant and sad reality we carry. In terms of being a criticism I guess it's not too different from other medical manga like Say Hello to Black Jack (Jpn: Black Jack ni yoroshiku).
Anyway, it reminded me of this conversation several days ago between my boss, my colleague and me, that the more difficult and technical the theme is, the more they should make it into a manga. You see, manga is easier to understand difficult stuff than sentences because it's visual and more importantly because it takes a conversational style. A whole bunch of questions arise within and are answered within. And to my littlest surprise, this one has been made into a TV drama last year.
Reading about difficult themes in manga is good, but sometimes I feel like the criticisms go too far. It's so much easier to make the readers believe what's written. For instance, this manga gives me a feeling that it's trying to grow distrust among the general public against Japanese hospitals and doctors. The work is directed by an experienced doctor and is not a collection of random and irresponsible things somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, so of course a lot of it has to be true, but still I think I shouldn't believe in everything written...... or should I???
I know that a good selection of Japanese manga and anime are being exported, but how about TV dramas? The foreign TV dramas we have are mostly American and Korean. 24 has been popular for quite a while now as well as Desperate Housewives and LOST. The Korean drama Winter Sonata starring Bae Yong Joon made a huge success in Japan and established the Hanryu-boom (Korean boom) which still hasn't quite died out today. Myself... I was quite into Dae Jang Geum...
I mentioned some time ago this manga called Kami no Shizuku (Les Goutte de Dieu: the drops of god) which is about wine. I liked wine, especially red, from before I read this but reading this comic really makes you thirsty... it makes you want to drink different kinds of the same drink that's not necessarily wine. It makes you want to do some tasting (wannabe) of all kinds of alcohol from wine, Japanese rice wine ("sake"), beer, etc. etc. and even tea. Going back to wine, my recent favorite is a Californian red. Can't remember the name though. And the other favorite is an Italian red. Can't remember the name of this either, except that it had a drawing of a cat on the label. That one was good. My favorite liquor is "umeshu" which is plum wine. Sooo good.
All right. I kind of have more to write about, but I'm stopping here since it's getting long.
Today's update on Japan Mode: This Week's Events in Tokyo ... mostly about plum blossom viewing. It's a sign of spring in Japan, but no parties like cherry blossom viewing.
Japanese language is said to belong to the rather difficult category.
If you speak about the sound I think it's not too hard because I feel a lot of similarities in sounds with other languages especially Spanish and Italian, and to me the sounds of languages like Chinese and the European countries with strong Russian influence seem impossible to pronounce correctly.
But if you start thinking about the correct conjugation and the hierarchy that hides within Nihongo... it gives you a nasty headache. Just for a little background information, so far there are at least three hierarchical levels in Nihongo: 1) respective, 2) humble, and 3) polite. When you are speaking to a person higher in status or older than you or you have to speak in a very formal situation, your proper speech is to mix the first two which means you address the being you're talking to in respective form at the same time as positioning yourself low by using the humble form. Um... very hard to explain, indeed.
The language is so difficult and strict even for a native Japanese if you try to speak it properly that many times the language is simplified and turned more casual. And this casualization of proper language has been a bit of a problem in Japanese society nowadays, for lesser people can use the language correctly. Our language is falling apart.
For some reason, a kind of an educational committee decided to divide the three levels into five, and turned in a proposal to the Minister of Education and Culture today. Well, actually their aim is to make the levels more easier to understand, to make the levels of language more comprehensible to those who don't really understand it.
For example, the humble form is separated into two: the first group "kenjogo" include words that positions the other being (that you're talking to) higher, and the second group is a collection of words that make polite the action you are making. This is "kenjogo II".
Then, there is this this new category "bikago" that divides from polite term. I couldn't find any examples of this in the article I was reading.
When a complex language that only a minority can use properly becomes even more confusing, I wonder what's the point of preserving the language in the older style. We might as well create a new-generation language out from the casual version of language most of us use in daily conversation.... actually... I remembered that this is going on sometimes. Some of the casual speech, because they're being used so much that no one can stop it, are being officially acknowledged by the specialists in Japanese and education, I think.
But then, I soon come to think that preserving the correctness is significant in maintaining national identity. Afterall, language is something that mirrors national character, the history, the customs, the tradition, the culture, the way our mind works, the way our society operates - all of these are condensed into our daily tongue. Allowing it to fall apart means that bits of these qualities are fading away.
In a way, I'm glad that I was born a native to this language simply because I won't have to go through studying such complex stuff for years...!
Today's update on Japan Mode: webmanga CharmyNurseM Chapter 9 release! (in about three hours from now)
Milk seems to be losing popularity in Japanese society recently.
This year it was the winter vegetables that were overproduced and went to waste cuz the amount harvested was just impossible to consume by ourselves, but this was because of the irregular weather. As for the situation for milk, it's not because the irregular weather grew the cows better and so the cows gave more milk. A huge amount of milk is going to waste simply because we don't drink them so much anymore.
This was the situation last year. And the situation continues if not grows worse this year.
A dairy farmer in the northern island of Hokkaido grieving the situation of the milk demand dropping extremely low, tried to come up with an idea so that the area's only industry (and therefore the chief source of income) won't completely die. Making more dairy products wouldn't improve the situation, so he had to come up with a different brillant idea.
Well, Hokkaido, besides being the top producing prefecture for a variety of vegetables, fruits and milk, happened to be Japan's prominent beer producer. This dairy farmer consulted a beer maker whether it would be possible to make beer from cow milk - and they did.
It was way off common sense and was thought to be close to impossible to make beer from milk due to the unique characteristics of milk (basically it's hard to ferment it for liquor) but wow, they did it in a year (perhaps it took longer, I'm not sure). They say the taste is rather fruity and the drink looks like filtered beer. One third of the drink is milk, so if this "bilk" catches on it would contribute largely to local economy and milk consumption. At the moment, though, it is only available at only six stores in Nakashibetsu Town in Hokkaido. I wonder what it really tastes like - I can't imagine.
That's about it for today :-)
Anybody who's a big fan of any of the following, who is living in Tokyo periphery or are planning to visit Tokyo during February check out today's update on Japan Mode <Tokyo Maniac Event February Ed>
>> Sgt.Keroro (Keroro Gunso) / CLAMP / Japanese swords (katana) / Sakuran (...more like Edo courtesans and dazzling kimono)
I've been wondering how Japanese fashion and clothing are viewed from outside of Japan. Sometimes I hear people say Japanese people are one of the most fashionable people in the world - I don't know if the fashion level is "high" in the world standard, but I do think that people here pay a lot of attention to what they wear and what other people wear. So many of the people in this country especially the generation from teens through 30s are so conscious about fashion, always keen on checking up witht the latest trends.
I don't mean to make any jusgements today on Japanese fashion sense cuz I'm rather pretty proud of our artistic sense (even though it wasn't until recently that I finally realized how fashionable Japanese people are), but am curious to know how non-Japanese people think about our fashion - of the designs that are out there and the way we wear them. Do they appear fashionable to you, or silly?
The biggest question in my mind at the moment is, do the thoughts/ideas of coordination come up in daily fashion in your countries? Coordinating dozens of items considering the balance of colors and volume is almost like common sense here even for daily clothing. We have layers and "today's one-point fashion" and all those sort coordinated together not only with clothes but also with shoes and hairstyle and nail fashion.
I also wonder how many people are actually interested in dressing themselves up with clothes from Japanese brands. Most of the clothes we have in fact have a lot of Western origin and influences, but are modified with little details and are added lots of little values which I suppose, build up to stylishness. Many people are good at finding the balance of their total coordinate but what's been in my mind lately is that does our fashion style have any chances of spreading overseas?
I noticed that a lot of the punky gothy clothes are pretty popular in the name of Harajuku fashion, but I feel a lot of British punk rock elements in them and also that style, although pretty famous and popular in Harajuku (which is a 10-min-bike ride from where I live) it is by no means a representative of the whole customer population there.
Shibuya is also famous for young generation's fashion as many times represented in the term "109 fashion" or in Japanese (marukyu-fashion). How many of you would actually be interested in buying loads of clothes in Shibuya and wearing them daily back in your home country? And how available are Japan-originated clothes outside of Japan?
Once a pretty big figure in the Italian fashion industry said that the men's fashion culture in Japan is well-established and is something the whole world can learn lots from. Come to think of it, I guess that's kind of true. Men here are pretty keen on fashion even just wearing T-shirts with blue jeans. Graphic printed T-shirts are extremely popular among them. Have a look at this brand, graniph, they're one of the prominent brands in the T-shirts industry in Japan (kind of like a Japanese version of Stussy). See here also for more popular fashion brands in Japan. Too sorry a lot of them only have Japanese website.
Okay I think I must stop here as I am not exactly ready to update today's feature on my website. Today I have an article on manga that I've talked a little about on this blog a couple of weeks ago. It's about how common and popular it is to make live action films and TV dramas in the past few years. Come see Japan Mode for more :-)
The news of Japanese baseball pitcher Matsuzaka Daisuke playing in the States has stirred up the Japanese and American (baseball) societies at the end of 2006 (see here for more observations on him). It's been a little quiet this past month, but today the latest update on him popped up in the news.
It was about the specific date of his debut match. Since his move across the ocean involving 6 billion yen made such a big news it was quite natural for many of us to think that he'll make his debut at the very first match of the new season at Fenway (Boston Red Sox Home), but it turned out that the opponent for the first match is the Mariners, which is precisely the team another monster Ichiro has been playing with since 2001.
If it were only a match-up of two Japanese players in the US than it wouldn't have become much of a news, but it's Ichiro versus Matsuzaka, and above anything else, Matsuzaka happened to reply at his press conference to the question "which player do you wish the most to play against in MLB?" - "Ichiro." Okay, it's good maybe to acknowledge Ichiro as an MLB player, but personally I don't really think it was the smartest answer to give at his US debut press conference. You know, he could've given a name or two or three of a non-Japanese player.
Anyway, if Matsuzaka pitched against Mariners from the very beginning, it would mean that his dream is highly likely to become true in a day. I believe that that would surely make a big mess around Fenway. It's said that more than a hundred press-related people from Japan and several times more of fans would flood over to Boston that night. I'd say this fever is uncontrollable.
The monster reveals his "power" on April 5th, so it seems. Hope his monsterlike-ness doesn't only end up in the monsterous contract money and the monsterous news topics.
Today's update on Japan Mode: kanji name conversion samples - I don't know it I mentioned before but I've restarted kanji name conversions. Give me an e-mail through the website if you want to see your name in kanji. I appreciate the requests, but please don't flood me with a dozen names at a time just cuz the service is free! It'll take a little time to get back.
So I've been doing bits and pieces of research on manga lately, from its history to what kind of works are popular these days and what kind of general tendency can be observed. I'll post these kinds of things on the website shortly, but today I would like to write a little about how manga was viewed socially when it first came out, since I happened to see a program on it a couple of nights ago.
It was a short documentary program on not a manga artist (mangaka, as we call in Japanese) but an editor of one of the earliest manga magazine. Until then, I tended to think that the manga culture we have today was created by the early masters like Tezuka Osamu and so it is, in terms of the style and form and content of the manga itself. But it wasn't just the quality of the works these masters have produced that built up the Japanese manga culture into an established subculture a large part of the society enjoys. A good portion of the credit of the spread and social acceptance of manga belongs to an editor named Kato Kenichi.
It's only too bad that I didn't know about this program and couldn't watch the entire story, but anyway, I'll introduce what I learned from the show.
Kato was a very talented editor who loved manga himself and spotted the positive potentials of manga in the earlier stages of the culture. He knew what kinds of stories kids loved and he also knew which mangaka created excellent works. If it were not for him, Tezuka might have not become a manga artist.
But back then in the early 20th century, manga was not socially accepted in Japan like the way it is today. It was rather viewed as a ridiculous children's stuff - ridiculous though, dangerous as the government viewed. They feared the potentials and influence of manga on children of letting all kinds of imaginations grow including those that were considerably against the government's policies and their education of good and healthy citizens.
For this reason Kato was once caught by the government for spreading out bad influences on children's education and was forced to leave Kodansha which is still one of the biggest publishers today.
To the icy looks and disapproval against manga being children's stuff, Kato confronted the situation claiming, "sure manga is for children, for children who will grow up into adults who create and support the society one day. manga can teach children the joy and happiness of life, morals and virtue, of what's right and wrong. manga has the power to guide children to the right direction so that they won't cause a horrible war like we have."
At that time he had already known Tezuka, but Tezuka then was standing on the crossroads of his life of becoming a mangaka or not. He wasn't confident. Kato who strongly believed in Tezuka's talents gave a kick in his back and told him to open up the future of manga with this message, and like this, the culture was established and spread at once.
And so half a century has passed since then. The children then are adults now, who have greatly contributed to the massive and rapid economic growth of the country. Whether Kato's belief turned out positively or negatively is a big question - for we have not exactly caused nor have seriously suffered from war for over six decades now, but the society seems to have become a bit feeble in a different sense even though the spread of manga may not have anything to do with it. Anyway, this is how manga became one established subculture of this country.
Like I mentioned in the beginning, I would like to write about the general tendencies of manga related business soon. I'll let you know when I'm ready.
BTW a manga-based movie called Sakuran is going to be shown at Berlin International Film Festival as the only Japanese film under Official Selection. So far it's only scheduled to be shown in Japan (in theaters Feb 24) but the participance opens up a great possibilityof distributing the film internationally.
Japanese mobile phones or "keitai" as we call them, are said to be one of the most high-tech and highly designed phones in the world carrying an unbelievable number of functions from calling ('course, it's a phone), SMS, chat, text-mailing (e-mails with colored and moving icons we call emoji: most common next to calling), surfing the internet (mobile sites and PC sites), downloading all kinds of things like music and games, music player, infrared communication, e-money, etc. etc. and the Japanese population's owning/usage rate of mobile phones is pretty high.
Despite the high rate and the convenience of the device being "mobile" and carriable, however, the rate of mobile game users reach the highest during the hours from after dinner to bedtime. From this mildly surprising report, some groups decided to conduct a survey on what people do on the train/subway while they commute every morning and evening.
The gender ratio of the survey subject of 300 individuals is 50%-50%, and the age bracket ratio is 20% for each of the generations: A-teens (age 18-19), B-20s, C-30s, D-40s, E-50s.
The report told that to the question, "What do you do on the train?" 67% (201people) out of the whole regardless the gender and generation answered "sleep". Considering not all people can get the seats on a full rush-hour train, I guess this means that most of those who win the seats sleep. I thought that the answer resulting in a high percentage proves how tired and pressed by time and work these people (who probably represent the most typical kind of people in Japanese cities) are, at the same time as how safe and vulnerable this country is. It's not that there are no pick-pockets nor groping (actually groping is pretty bad), but I've heard from people who come from outside of Japan that sleeping on the trains is basically unthinkable if you don't want to lose your belongings.
Following the answer "sleep" was "read", which covers books, newspapers, comics, magazines, novels and that sort of hard copy reading materials. Majority of the people responded that they read paperback books followed by novels, telling that compact and carriable materials are most popular means to kill time on the train. Moreover, hard copy materials prove to gain more support than things on the internet, probably because for reason one) people just aren't too familiar with using the mobile internet, two) reception isn't always smooth especially on the subway, three) the text is too small (that's only what my parents complain).
One of the honest but funny replies that were collected in this survey was how so many people peek into other people's stuff. According to the same survey, nearly 80% of the people whether they carry a piece of reading or not, peek into their neighbors papers, books or magazines. By the way I'm pretty sure that the temptation grows stronger if the material is some kind of gossip or paparazzi.
Exactly 50% of the subject answered that they use the mobile on the train, which I consider a pretty low. In any case, 90% of them answered that they read e-mails, 83% send e-mails, and when it comes to viewing mobile sites the rate dropped down to 38%.
Overall, I suppose I can conclude that mobile phones have spread so widely and have rooted in our daily lives so much in just less than a decade, that it is impossible for us to maintain an un-chaotic life if we lose them right this instant. It's quite interesting though that non electric stuff still occupy a good portion of our busy lives. Like this refrence article rounded up, what would grasp the attentions of these commuters if there weren't mobile phones?
