Sunday, August 28, 2011

There are no words. (言葉がない。)

For the sheer AMAZINGness that is... that is...

THIS PHOTOGRAPH.

Yes, that is YOSHIKI and Stan Lee. Together.

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN.

Sometimes, the world, she is amazing.

This is Edo, still attempting to put a lid on her fangirlish delight.

PS- Look at that man's face. He is a 45-year-old rock star. Yoshiki is magic.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Cultural (In)Sensitivity. (文化的感受性[がない]。)

(... so that title didn't work out as well as I thought it would. Is that ironic, or just me being stupid?)

Ok, to preface: I'm pretty sure that this winds up happening 99% of the time, to all foreign cultures and languages represented in American media (or really any media that attempts some sort of foreign representation, regardless of what their idea of foreign is... not that there's a right idea, or even a good idea, really), but as I am most familiar with the culture and language of Japan, that's where it gets noticed on this particular blog, thank you.

Ahem.

So.

You decide that the characters in your show (cartoon, sitcom, radio play, whatever) are going to Japan for some reason or other. Maybe there's a giant, evil squid roaming the waters of Lake Biwa, or someone has a relative in the vicinity of Hokkaido. Great. Dandy. Have at it, Japan is nice. Everyone should visit.

... but.

But.

When you cannot do even the bare minimum of research required to make your little jaunt to Japan seem plausible?

A small part of my soul dies.

Yes. Dies.

So you have Japanese natives wandering around. Great!

... why do they speak with accents roughly equivalent to those found within first year Japanese courses in Wisconsin? You'd think they would have a grasp on the phonological nature of their own language, not to mention the ability to construct sentences at a level even slightly above that of basic Genki I exercise material.

Please note that this is not a shot at my favorite language textbook series.
You'd at least think they could manage to pronounce Tokyo properly. Seeing as how they live there and everything (in most cases). It's two syllables people, not three. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that all of your characters are actually from some remote island of the coast Akita where they can't manage the monosyllabic "kyo" syllable because of their centuries-long separation from the mainland.

... although that would be pretty awesome.

And a quick note, because people really shouldn't do this anywhere, let alone Japan: don't touch strangers. People do not touch in Japan like you may have seen done in good ol' America. Hugging is not big. Kissing? Oh god why.

If you stop and kiss a random Japanese boy on the streets of Akihabara, he will not happily respond when you ask for directions immediately after. Mind, I have never tried this, but based on first hand experience, when you're obviously a foreigner and you just cut off some dude's escape route with unwanted physical contact, he will most likely:

                 (a) freeze and not speak until you're very far away
                 (b) gibber for a moment before fleeing at top speed, or
                 (c) spontaneously combust.

You might get away with it if there was alcohol involved, but that's still pushing it a bit.

I admit, I saw this on an episode of Teen Titans my sister was watching, and super hero shows do tend to get a bit more slack. I even think the girl doing it was an alien, thus her cultural insensitivity may have been handwaved easily enough.

The show's, however... Sigh.

I may have been missing the point here, but unfortunately the above-mentioned scene also gets into sexual assault taken for funsies, which is a particular issue in Japan (grope-and-run, anyone?), and in general a problem that gets me up in arms. So, yea. Edo does not approve of your teenage silliness.

... BACK ON TOPIC.

Yes, of course I know that most viewers don't realize what's going on when Japanese culture is being bastardized (or even bowdlerized... but that's another rant)  for their entertainment, because most don't spend their academic career studying it. That's ok. What's not ok is that the creators, researchers and directors of these various shows/movies/whatevers seem to think that it's ok to feed stereotypical, insensitive, and occasionally downright insulting representations of foreign cultures to Americans day in and day out.

The year is 2011, and we can't even mange a bit of international understanding? Really?

If it's so much trouble to do your research, have your damn super heroes fight a giant robot in Michigan, all right?

I was originally going to add a bit more to this rant, referring to the English translation of a Boys' Love manga no less, but I need to do a bit of research first so I don't wind up looking like a hypocritical buffoon.

.... But Edo! I hear you cry. You do that every day. Har har.

Not so witty if I say it first, is it mister comedian?

This is Edo, signing off with a healthy dose of righteous anger in her heart.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

A lizard's tale. (トカゲの物語。)

So, I had a visitor the other morning.

Not, of course, in the human sense. Visitations of the human variety don't often rank up with what I consider to be blog-worthy material.

(Admittedly, however... Me, personally, receiving any sort of personal visit at this juncture might be so completely unexpected and out of the ordinary as to merit some mention... Um.)

It was a lizard. From the desert.

A colorful one at that.

There he is. Hey, little dude.

Places to go, concrete to cover.

Now, I'm sure you're aware that a lizard in the desert is not, usually, a note-worthy occurrence.

A lizard on the porch? Maybe.

A lizard on my window sill scrabbling for entry? Yea, we have news here people.

Yo.


... so I may be blowing it a little out of proportion, excitement-wise, but hey. Wild animals are cool.

Yea, you're a regular ninja with that camera, man.


Dude's a budding interpretive dancer.
Anyway. As he came, lingered, then inexplicably left all in the space of a Monday morning, I have yet to discover what, exactly, he was doing. Lizards aren't very good with that whole courtesy note thing.

Hi,


Nice window you got here. Just thought I'd drop by, look around. Maybe chill in the shade for a bit.


You should probably change out that toothbrush, you know.


Sorry to disturb.


-The Lizard


Not so much. Writing must be a real bitch without thumbs, after all.

Toodles.


Thus, left, as I am, bereft of any sort of explanation for this reptile's strange behavior, I am forced (yes, forced) to come up with some hypotheses.

And hey, who am I supposed to share them with?

....The Dalai Lama isn't returning my calls, so second choice it is.

Theory 1


The lizard was hot, and the shade of the porch combined with (maybe?) some residual air-conditioning coolness creeping out the windows made my sill the idyllic little reptile getaway for a mid-morning break.

Boring? Utterly. Plausible? Sadly. Reality has a distressing lack of imagination, sometimes.

... it also has a certain negative connotation when it comes to energy efficient window moorings. Hm.

Theory 2


The lizard was the designated explorer of his people, sent out to investigate the strange, flat shiny thing wedged into what, for all lizard intents and purposes, is no more than a large, funny-shaped rock that large pink things go in and out of regularly.

He was to examine, take notes, and report back immediately should this turn out to be of more interest or use than "oh, yea, that shiny thing."

More interesting? Yes. Plausible? I don't know, I am not at all familiar with lizard infrastructure. You tell me, mister fancy-pants herpetologist.

Theory 3


This lizard was, in fact, the Harbinger of Doom and Prophet of Despair.

This was, after all, the morning of the day when I received my "Congratulations on being an alternate!" letter from MEXT. Maybe he was trying to warn me. Or, conversely, had mistimed his arrival to revel in my personal Doom and Despair. Sucks to be him, then.

I'm... not going to touch this one. I don't like the idea of my fate being handled behind beady black eyes and decorative head-crests.

Theory 4


The lizard was not, in fact, a lizard at all, but was a beautiful man who had been cruelly transformed into a small reptile against his will by an evil force bent on stealing his power and wealth! While I was busy taking picture and marveling at nature, I was in fact dooming a man to live a cold-blooded life forevermore and missing out on the beginning of my very own personal 少女 (shoujo, girl) manga adventure!


...

NOOO DON PABLO!*


(It's a 少女 manga, after all, so he's delightfully, if inexplicably and unreasonably, European. No, no, don't ask why, that just ruins it.)


Who knew that my camera would be such a horrible sealer of fates. The Luddites may have a point.



*This is actually Jang Keun-Suk, or チャン・グンソク (Chan Gunsok, kinda) as I first knew him (Japanese does strange things to Korean names. Or maybe English does. My Korean pronunciation is absolute rubbish, someone want to help me out? Here's the Hangul: 장근석) He was appearing on the cover of everything in late April of this year in Japan, and I credit him with being the prettiest man alive. I mean seriously. Look at him. Good lord. 



In the end, we will likely never know why, exactly, a random lizard decided to crawl onto my porch, camp out for a bit, and peep into my bathroom.

But without rampant and at times unnecessary imagination, where would my blog posts humanity be?

This is Edo, signing off wondering how many herpetologists actually read her blog and are currently tearing out their hair in frustration at her willful ignorance.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Math and language don't mix. (数学は言語には似合わない。)

I mean really.

Or maybe it's math and East Asian studies. Anyone out there an East Asia/Mathematics double major? I'm just looking to be shown the light over here.

Because, well...

I was in higher level calculus in high school. The highest mathematics course offered by my high school, in point of fact, and I did very well in that class--without any unreasonable effort on my part, I might add. Sure, there was homework, which admittedly was something of a first for me outside of essays and summer projects, but that was more a product of the teaching style (which was not bad by any means, simply intense) than my lack of comprehension (which could be remedied by asking questions in class, ten times out of ten.)

Why am I saying this?

Because the quantitative reasoning section of the GRE (or the practice thereof, at any rate) is kicking my sad behind.

My only consolation is that I am, in the opinion of  at least a few people, slightly more attractive than this man despite my confusion.

My understanding of geometry and algebra have devolved to be about roughly on par with my understanding of modern Swahili.

... or maybe not. I think I did pick up a few words of Swahili thanks to any number of examples in introductory linguistics.

Regardless.

I cannot help but think that I was not really being all that clever when I maneuvered around my college math requirement by taking a computer science course.

... admittedly, it was a very interesting course which I enjoyed despite having a lab on Friday afternoons. That's saying something, that is. I doubt I would have felt the same about any traditional mathematics course, and no mistake.

And then again, perhaps in my knowledge-cramming sessions for my two history courses, my brain felt rushed and decided that it was easier to simply purge this (seemingly) useless information in favor of these newly vital facts than to bother with rooting around in storage and making more space the sensible way.

Thus, I now have extensive knowledge of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi's (possible) syphilis, the Battle of Sekigahara, China's troubled history of attempting to conquer Korea every time it had enough people to do so, the Rig Veda and so on... all that the cost of trigonometry, angles, and what the hell I'm supposed to do with π


... and what do I do? I write to you lot about it when I could be attempting to cram more numbery things into my head. 


But really. I'm applying to East Asian Languages and Literatures programs. If I am required to be ridiculously talented in the mathematics department for admission, well... Let's just say I'll have a few words to say about the state of higher education in the modern world.


Ahem. 


And come on, how many math geeks know a thing about the Three Kingdoms of Korea? Huh?


This is Edo, signing off trying to justify her own ignorance with righteous anger.