Via Eat Me Daily, our future robotic overlords/servants.

Just a quick drive-by linking post (without even a kanji or katakana lesson, gasp!): Japanese food robots !

(Nothing to see, move it along.)
(But I might edit this post to have lessons later.)
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A lesson in kanji:

I worded this as unoffensively as possible, but some people still may be offended at the sexual nature of it, so the article is under the cut.

Did you know that the Japanese word and kanji for "clitoris" is the same as "blister" or "corn"? And the two kanji used for it are "meat" and "pain"?

It's hard to miss the relevance in that, isn't it?

It sounds like it might be older style or not commonly used, though; it doesn't show up in the kanji-a-day dictionary when you search "clitoris"; only when you search "mame" (which is bean...that's what I was originally looking up the kanji for, I swear O.O haha). I reviewed several other online dictionaries, and a little searching shows similar results.

That is really interesting in a way, though. Sorry if it's a little crass for your tastes; I didn't mean it to be. I just remember in my gender roles class, that our teacher made us make lists of slang for male and female genitalia, and it was amazing how many more positive terms there were for male genitalia, or even more words at all.

That is one thing I like about learning Japanese; a word can mean something but be represented by something else, and sometimes it shows how it's viewed in a culture (or used to be viewed). I'm sure many of our English words developed that way; we discussed the etymology of the words "good" and "bad" in Philosophy class, and it was really interesting.

The point is, kanji is sooooo interesting, and if it takes learning the etymology of the word "clitoris" to make people think it's interesting, well, so be it. A study in radicals would probably be even more interesting, but here are some examples of word values in kanji:

-There are two spellings of "gohan", or rice, and one of them has the kanji for "honorable" in it (the "go" part).

-Sushi is made up of "longevity", and "administrator" for some reason. There is no mention of "vinegared rice", even though that's what it is.

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Something else cool we won't get:

Coming soon to Japan: green tea flavored Coca-Cola.
(article foun via snopes.com)

The new green-tea flavored Coke is targeted toward health conscious females and will have the benefit of green tea antioxidants...


Aw, yummy! Do you ever notice how other countries get the coolest sodas? I'm not much of a soda drinker, but I was excited when I finally saw Manzanita Sol hit the shelves over here quite a while ago - a drink I had in Mexico that tasted like biting into a fizzy red delicious, only better. Apparently they even have melon sodas in Japan - it sounds totally worth the trip.

Vocabulary:

お茶　(おちゃ): green tea
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Through the eyes of 寿司...

Well, this is obviously a filler post, but I think it's interesting, anyway! Someone put a camera on a 回転寿司 (kaitenzushi) conveyor belt and filmed its trip.

THIS IS WHAT A SUSHI ROLL SEES BEFORE IT DIES.


(YouTube user: AndySearce)

面白いですね？

Now, a little about kaitenzushi...


Kaitenzushi is a sushi restaurant where the sushi is served on a conveyor belt; it's not a specific type of sushi like nigirizushi or makizushi. The conveyor belt takes the sushi throughout the restaurant so people can pick up whichever sushi they please. It's generally cheaper quality but you get a good variety of things to try, and you typically pay per plate. It is super-super-popular in Japan.

Other terms for kaitenzushi: kurukuru sushi, or sushi-go-round.

More on kaitenzushi from Wikipedia (dude, shut up; it's a good article, okay? lol): Click.
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Scare your self shi-...Well, you know where this is going...

Only in Japan will you find the scariest toilet paper ever. (Yahoo News)

Yes. Yes. YES!

The author of The Ring novel (yes, the one the movie was based off of), Koji Suzuki, can now be famous for his "bathroom literature" as well; a horror story printed on toilet paper.

The short horror story is called Drop, and even features a public restroom as its setting. According to the article, it takes up about three feet of toilet paper and just a few minutes to read all of its nine chapters.


View pictures of the toilet paper and another article here:

http://inventorspot.com/articles/horrorthemed_toilet_paper_japan_puts_you_edge_your_seat_28072 (Inventor Spot)

All I can say, as a horror fan and Japan enthusiast - I totally want a roll.

More on Japanese toilets (very interesting stuff, especially if you ever want to visit!):

http://www.restroomratings.com/features/japan/

Vocabulary (just one today, and no kanji!):

トイレット (toiretto): toilet
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Um...What? Pulse (JP) Review

(x-posted to my horror movie review blog, Horror Movie Love)

Pulse (or Kairo, its Japanese name) is a J-Horror movie directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Pulse follows several Japanese college students who...Do stuff...One of them dies...And then this other guy doesn't know how to use a computer and contacts the dead through the internet somehow...And...Yeah...

Okay, this movie was really hard for me to follow.

People are killing themselves, and there's a website that asks his guy if he wants to meet a ghost, and there's a forbidden room and some red tape that makes ghosts go away and the city is pretty much empty of people, and (I will give away the ending because I don't even know if it counts as a spoiler) they end up on a boat trying to get away from whatever it is for some reason even though whatever it is is everywhere. That is all I got from this movie.

It's often said that Japanese horror is much more subtle and leaves more to the mind than western horror - this might have been a little much for me. I really don't have much to say about it. Perhaps a second round of viewing is necessary, but I feel kind of done with it.

I can't deny that it was pretty damn creepy at times, though. But Pulse/Kairo is skippable, unless you are really into Japanese horror.

Vocabulary (click on kanji for stroke order from Kanji-a-Day.com):

コンピューター (konpyuutaa): computer
何 (nani): what (as in...WHAT??!!!??)
幽霊 (yuurei): ghost

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Learning through song!

If I have to have it stuck in my head, you do, too.

But seriously, songs are a great way to learn/memorize Japanese. Will you ever forget what "ひつじ" (hitsuji) is, now? I think not!


A little more useful - the Japanese Alphabet song:



If you're new to learning hiragana and katakana and are having trouble memorizing them, Genki-Online has flash charts that show stroke order and sound out each syllable when you click them. Very cool!

Hiragana chart
Katakana chart

More songs can be found at genkienglish.net (not related to Genki-Online) or on their YouTube account (tons of other cool videos on their website, too!)

Vocabulary (click the kanji for stroke order from Kanji-a-Day.com):

歌う (utau): to sing
ビデオ (bideo): video
アルファベット (arufabetto): alphabet
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Intro to anna, and to bento!

Hello everyone! I'm anna, and I'm going to be blogging primarily about bento and other elements of Japanese cuisine and culture- recipes I make, Japanese candy I eat, that sort of thing. I'm a white girl living in the Pacific Northwest, which is just about the second-best place besides Asia to get into Asian cuisine (in some cases Australia is better, IMO), plus I'm an internet junkie, so Japanese food is a natural focus. Some of my favorite things about Japanese food are bento, rice, sushi, and teriyaki. Certainly you know rice, sushi and teriyaki, but you might be a bit less familiar with bento. (If you already know about it, feel free to skip this post- but check the links throughout- they're cool stuff!)

弁当 (that's bento!) is the traditional box lunch of Japan. While other countries were figuring out the concept of サンド イッチ (sandoicchi), Japanese cooks were making true works of art with 漬物 (pickled vegetables), protein (especially fish), and most important of all, ご飯 (rice). These are usually packed in a ratio of 4 parts rice to 2 parts protein to 1 part other ingredients. However, modern guidelines often shoot for a bit less rice (the also easy to remember 3:2:1 ratio), and you can adjust depending on what you're going for (more carbs and protein for a growing kid, more vegetables for a dieter) or what's in season.

For more backstory on bento, check out the Wikipedia article, Just Bento, Lunch in a Box, or just Google "bento." There's a lot of history I've skipped already, and many types of bento I won't be addressing in this post, and it's all really interesting!

Modern day bentos don't need to be nearly as complicated as they were in the olden days: one big 御握り (onigiri, or rice ball) can be your lunch! So can a sandwich: there's awesome collapsable boxes made for them. As long as you shoot for a good variety of foods and colors (lots of colors means lots of tasty nutrition!) you're set!

However, there are still a lot of crazy complicated bentos out there, and not just in the traditional style. キャラ弁 (kyaraben), or character bento, recreate popular characters such Bob the Builder, Pikachu, the Nekobasu, and Anpanman. (Since I don't do much in this style- like, nothing at all- I might every now and then link to a cool example of the style.)

My lunches generally have a grain or a pulse (rice and lentils are my big two), a small bit of dairy (wrapped cheese or cream cheese), fruit or vegetable or both (mango blueberry with honey, lime, and ginger is MY fruit salad), and something protein like- generally fake crab or a boiled egg. Or I'll do wraps: whole wheat tortilla, soft cheese, tomato, and basil wraps are my favorite. I try to have at least one Japanese element in every meal, to keep my on my toes. That doesn't always happen: the lunch I made the day I started blog-writing has no distinctly Japanese food: it was curry lentils, wheat tortilla, and a lettuce, basil, tomato, and onion salad.

(Then I wondered why I'd misplaced my delicious grape Pinky, a Japanese "mint" candy, because my breath smelled like alliums and the artificial grape would have knocked it out. More on Pinky later!)

For more on my bentos, head over to my other blog, Bentos and Booze, where an expanded version of this post, complete with an inventory of my bento boxes, will be available by the end of the day (midnight Pacific time) and probably sooner than that.

Vocabulary (click on highlighted kanji for stroke order from Kanji-a-Day.com):
弁当 (bento) box lunch
サンド イッチ (sandoicchi) sandwich
漬物 (tsukemono) pickled vegetables
ご飯 (gohan) rice
御握り (onigiri) rice ball
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Someone needs to do something about that leak..."Dark Water" (JP, US) review

(x-posted from my horror movie blog, Horror Movie Love)

Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara) is a Japanese horror film by Hideo Nakata, the director of the Japanese Ringu movies. It is based on a Japanese short horror story by Koji Suzuki of the same name. There was a US remake of the movie as well (included within this post).

Dark Water follows a mother's battle for custody of her daughter. Yoshimi Matsubara (Dahlia Williams US) rents a apartment for her and Ikuko (Ceci) to live in, but soon after notices a leak in the ceiling. The management is unhelpful, but it seems the leak is evidence of something bigger happening that threatens the lives of Yoshimi and her daughter.

Now, the US version of Dark Water was pretty similar to the Japanese version, actually; almost scene-for-scene until the end of the movie. But which one was better?

For starters, I much preferred the Japanese actresses for the mother and child. Yoshimi had a stressed, slightly psychotic, neurotic quality to her, while Dahlia was just neurotic. And the child? Ikuko was a thousand times more endearing than Ceci. 'Nuff said.

I have to say, I was a little lost by the ending of the Japanese version, though I think that maybe it's because I'm an idiot; after looking it up on Wikipedia it seemed pretty obvious. The epilogue was better in the Japanese version, though. I can't think of a spoiler-free reason to say why, so I'll leave it at that.

The effects were better in the US version, and more of them, though neither movie really depended on effects.

Overall, I think the Japanese version wins this round. If you can handle subtitles or dubbing, definitely check out the Japanese version of Dark Water.
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Millennium Snow

I'm sure any respectable anime/manga lover has heard of the wildly popular Ouran High School Host Club, but did you know about Bisco Hatori's first work, Millennium Snow? If you haven't than you're missing out! I read Millennium Snow before ever reading Host Club and it was that story that got me to read the rest of Bisco Hatori's works.

Let me tell you about it.

The story is about a very sick girl named Chiyuki who has a heart condition. She has spent most of her life in and out of hospitals hoping to live long enough to see the next snow, and the snow after that. The manga's name comes from the main character's desire to see, "A thousand years of snow".


Our story starts with Chiyuki seeing a boy fall from the roof of the hospital. Freaking out she rushes out of her room to find the boy and see if he's okay, she finds him laying on the ground and fears the worst. However when she goes to touch him he calls her vile among other things and a badmouthing session begins. Through this verbal abuse of Chiyuki we learn that the boy...is a vampire. And then that's all we learn before he runs away. Like a vampire Cinderella though, he leaves behind a shoe which Chiyuki takes with her back into the hospital.

The next day he comes back for his shoe as Chiyuki sits outside on a bench. The boy has no problem with the sun it seems but Chiyuki taunts him with some garlic. Some more insults fly and he grabs his shoe back from her.

She passes out.

She wakes back up in the hospital with the vampire still there, he introduces himself as Toya and his bat familiar is Yamimaru. Chiyuki gets him to agree to hang out tomorrow. She finds out that Toya doesn't drink blood, making him weak, because he fears forcing a human to live a thousand years with him. Chiyuki wants him to bite her, so that she'll get to see her thousand years of snow. However while out on the town she has another heart attack. A fatal one. Toya reacts with desperation and gives her a small bite, renewing her life for a little bit longer.

With Toya's bite, Chiyuki is healthier than she's been in a long time and is let out of the hospital to go to school again, she gets to meet a werewolf, and live the normal life of a teenage girl. Mostly normal...as normal as you can get with a vampire named Toya and a bat named Yamimaru and a werewolf.

Millennium Snow has what any good manga needs, an interesting story, hilarious characters, and gorgeous art. If you come from reading Host Club first, you'll see the difference because Millennium Snow is Bisco Hatori's old work. Unfortunately there's only two volumes and the story isn't finished! Hatori states she wants to finish Millennium Snow, but her main priority is Host Club (makes sense, that's the money maker). Since there's only two volumes out, it'll be easy to buy them and catch up on the story! I recommend Millennium Snow for manga readers that love cute guys, sweet romance, hilarious shenanigans, and the occasional bit of drama. Sometimes the art is a little crowded and you have a hard time figuring out what happened if you don't look it over a few times. Despite being full of vampires and werewolves, it's no horror story, but a really sweet read that'll have you saying, "D'aaawww!" and also, "Take off your shirt Toya!"

Millennium Snow:
Published by: Viz
Price: 8.99 US
Volumes: 2
Finished: No
Rating: 9/10

That's the Logical Assumption

Salazar



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The Marriage Bra

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...You're married!

In the latest news of strange Japanese inventions, we have a bra that counts down the time until a woman gets married.

The Marriage Bra (video)
(msnbc.com)


My computer is horribly slow with videos, but the gist of it seems to be not to count down an actual determined wedding date, but more sort of like the internet death-clock phenomenon; just a piece of fun counting down to an arbitrary date.

(Actually, it sounds more like a curse; like a countdown until I can officially feel pathetic and go adopt 48 cats because the stupid bra-clock lied to me.)

According to the video, the average age of women marrying in Japan has risen to age 28. And if my internet could actually work right I'd give you more info, but you may have to actually watch the video for now :P

More on Japanese weddings:

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2061.html
http://gojapan.about.com/cs/traditionculture/a/japanesewedding.htm

Vocabulary (click on highlighted kanji for stroke order from Kanji-a-Day.com):

結婚する (kekkonsuru): to get married
ウェデイン (uedein): wedding
時 (toki/tokei): time/clock
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OMGSUSHI.

Om nom nom...Sushi is a delicious and healthy Japanese food, and pretty popular in the United States. I remember when sushi was almost a sort of food fashion statement for those who dared try it, but nowadays it's enjoyed by many people, and can be found prepared even at chain grocery stores (I've never tried the ones from grocery stores, so I can't vouch for how delicious or sickness-inducing they may or may not be).

This is a little dated, but I made my own sushi about a month ago. My brother bought me a sushi-making kit out of the blue, so I had some fun with it:

OH MY GOD WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT???

Okay...That's a little more recognizable.

(It's makizushi made with cucumber, white crab, wasabi and sesame seeds; or kappamaki, cucumber roll - named for the mythological mischievous kappa fairies who loved to eat cucumber...And then I added crab).

As you can see, I had a little trouble with my inside-out roll, because it didn't want to roll at all. It looks more like a...Well, I don't know what it looks like. Any ideas? But in the end, my regular sushi rolls turned out okay, proving that even if you're a silly little gaijin, you can make decent-looking sushi!

So, try to skip the sushi restaurant sometime and make your own! I do think buying a sushi kit is a good idea; the kit my brother got me came with an instruction book, an instructional DVD, a sushi-rolling mat, chopsticks, two sushi plates and two sauce dishes, for 20 bucks ("Simply Sushi", if you're curious). And of course the internet is also a good resource for sushi-related research:

http://sushifaq.com/
http://eatsushi.com/

FACT!:

"Sushi" actually refers to the vinegared rice.

A few types of sushi:

makizushi - sushi rolls
temakizushi - simple sushi hand roll
nigirizushi - rice nugget with toppings
chirashizushi - bowl of sushi rice with toppings
oshizushi - pressed sushi

Vocabulary (click on kanji for stroke order from kanji-a-day.com):

寿司 - sushi
外人 (gaijin) - foreigner
美味しい (oishii) - delicious

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J-Horror

Horror movies are one of my favorite things ever, and Japanese horror films are no exception. Last night my friend and I went to the used DVD store and I found two J-horror movies in the foreign section - Pulse, and Dark Water. I haven't watched them yet, but I'm excited!

If you've not watched Japanese horror movies before, I highly recommend it! Japanese horror has a much different feel than Western horror...And the movies suck less often, lol. I'm sure you're aware of the remakes made available in the US (The Ring, The Grudge, The Eye) but please, try the Japanese originals if you can find them!


One of my favorites was the movie Reincarnation, about a woman who auditions for a movie filmed in a haunted hotel. 面白いです！

Where to look:
-Used DVD stores/pawn shops
-Amazon.com/eBay
-Often, there will be Japanese horror in the Free Movies! section of OnDemand if you have that option. Try not to miss them!

List of Japanese horror movies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Horror

Vocabulary (click the kanji for stroke order from kanji-a-day.com):

ホラー映画 (hora- eiga): horror movie
怖い (kowai): frightening, scary
見る (miru): to watch
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はじめまして

Edit: I've already changed the blog name XD But the intent remains the same!

こんにちは！

Hi! Welcome to my newly created blog, isshoni benkyoumasshou (一緒に勉強しまっしょう). The title means, "Let's study together". And it took me forever to get the spelling right. See, I'm a new Japanese student; I've been studying for only about four months, but I am fascinated by it!


I avoided taking Japanese for the longest time because I didn't want to be seen as "one of those damn otaku", but in college I needed an extra class to be full time, and I ended up taking a quarter...I loved it! Right afterwards, I ended up changing colleges, and my new one does not offer Japanese classes, so I'm learning by myself right now with the help of several great resources.

I created this blog so I could share resources I find with other people who are also new to learning the Japanese language and culture, and so my friends won't kill me for talking about how much I like it all the time. A lot will be written in English, but a lot of Japanese as well, so installing Japanese fonts will be necessary. This is a good place for directions on how to install fonts and type in Japanese:

http://www.coscom.co.jp/japanesefont/inputjapanese/installime.html

My resources:

-Genki textbook + workbook. I have to say, I love Genki! I took Spanish in high school and also in college, but I would never be able to follow those textbooks by myself. Genki is easy to follow and gives lots of examples. When you begin chapter three, kanji lessons are given in the back of the book as well.

-smart.fm. A learning community majorly focused on learning languages; many members keep journal entries in the language they are learning.
Also offered is the iKnow flash application that drills vocabulary; make your own vocabulary lists or search for others'. Oftentimes people will make vocabulary lists based on the textbooks they are studying.

-Tofugu.com. A damn good Japanese blog. Why am I even making one?

-kanji-a-day.com. Offers a kanji a day (duh), and a great online kanji dictionary showing the stroke order for the characters. Based on the JLPT.

I think that's enough for now. Happy studying!
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