Archives for the 'Japan' Category

SoftBank iPhone: confirmed

I was just pointed to this SoftBank press release from today. I quote:

SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple® to bring the iPhone™ to Japan later this year.

(Seriously, that’s the entire press release; you don’t really have to go read it now.)

I’m happy to see the thing on its way to Japan at last. I’m thinking about making it my next cellphone—not for its great wifi action, since free wifi isn’t a common thing to find in this city in my experience, but because it’s the first phone ever that I can be sure will sync up nicely with my Mac computers.

What Japan Thinks has a good post up here on the iPhone and its prospects in this market. The piece is almost a year old but is worth looking at just the same.

06/04/2008 | Japan, tech | 3 Comments

New old movies

If you live in Japan, you get to watch American movies three months later than everyone else, and for more money to boot. Well, in the theater, anyway; if you’re renting disks it’s quite affordable but you get to wait six months instead. I’ve never gotten into the whole “download movies from the internets” thing, but I suppose that route is there for people who can’t wait to watch in a bit more comfort than a computer chair offers.

A few coming up that I’m interested in seeing are There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. I’m a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy (thanks to James for cluing me in to him many years ago). I must admit this is my least favorite of his books—with the possible exception of The Sunset Limited (Amazon page), but I haven’t gotten to that one yet, so no ranking there. But I’m interested to see what happens when this makes it to the screen in the hands of the actors and directors involved with this project.

(I never saw the 2000 adaptation of All the Pretty Horses, but I’ve never seen reviews of it that made me feel like I was missing out. Would be nice to see someone in Hollywood approach the entire Border Trilogy in a serious fashion.)

McCarthy’s page at IMDB says that not only The Road but Blood Meridian and Outer Dark are also in production now. I wonder about the possibility of doing a good transition to the screen with those two—particularly Blood Meridian, which features massive violence and supernaturally intelligent bald giants and such. However, Ridley Scott is listed as the director for it, so maybe there’s a chance we’ll see a compelling Judge Holden on our movie screens. For me, on my TV six months later.

Good information on Cormac McCarthy is available at this site.

04/21/2008 | Japan, books, film | 3 Comments

An old temple photo




An old temple photo

Originally uploaded by Durf

Taken at Jindaiji in the late nineteenth century. Not. Actually it was taken at Jindaiji a few years ago (the original is here) and run through this cool online “old photo generator” called the 幕末古写真ジェネレーター (Bakumatsu old photo generator). Perfect for making your shots of Kabukicho neon last weekend look like they belong in an Isabella Bird book.

(Hat tip to Asiajin for this one.)

04/07/2008 | Japan, photo, web | Comments Off

Koganei babies

A very quick post to link to the website of Hamada Nursing Baby (浜田ナーシングベビー). This Koganei clinic is run by an 80-year-old woman with strong massaging hands and plenty of advice for new mothers wondering what to do with their infants. Megumi has been going there for some months, and has made a number of friends in the neighborhood with babies about the same age as Sakura. (Here’s hoping this entry helps bump the place up a bit in search engine results.)

04/05/2008 | Japan, family, life, web | Comments Off

An online glossary I can really use!

The next time you need to communicate with a tiny person raised in a Japanese-speaking environment, head over to the Goo Labs and take a look at the こども語辞書 (”baby-talk dictionary”). Toss your terms into the search field (you can use a baby term, like wanwan for a dog, or the normal word inu), or use one of the categorized lists listed lower on the page:

  • Kana order (lists of terms for each character in the Japanese syllabary, either by baby sound or adult word represented)
  • By genre (including such toddler favorites as “animals,” “foods and drinks,” and “song lyrics”)
  • By sex of babies that tend to learn the term first (including months of vocabulary usage; boys lag by a half-month or so, with the exception of important words like “ramen”)
  • By month of vocab usage

My favorite category is probably マニアックワード, “maniac words.” The imported term in Japanese refers not to the axe-wielding variety but to a hobby or other interest taken to extremes, often in a “really out there” area that not many people pay attention to. Some of the examples in the Goo Labs glossary are 殺虫剤 (insecticide), アフラック (Aflac, the insurance firm with the popular duck), and シュワッチ (Ultraman’s phrase “shuwatch,” to borrow the Wikipedia entry’s spelling). Crazy kids.

(Via ことば・言葉・コトバ.)

04/03/2008 | Japan, family, translation | 2 Comments