za sorcerer's stone.

My head is awash with harry potter lately... after watching all the movies again, on the tail of finishing the most recent audiobook, I'm working on the first book in Japanese now. I'm trying my damnedest to get through about 50 pages of it a day, and today, for the first time, I managed it.
This translation's kinda shitty. I haven't read the original book in English (audiobook), but this translation seems to be incautious about the coming rules of the HP world, and uses a lot of really awkward vocabulary... though, hey, what do I know about what's awkward to a 12 japanese kid? The real nastiness though is how the spoken language is translated. In order to bend the characters into palettable japanese archetypes, dumbledore has been converted entirely to old-man-speak. He never uses the word です for all his じゃろうing. Hagrid's even worse. maybe 1/2 of what comes out of his mouth is proper japanese that appears in a dictionary with the rest being as grossly chopped up a slang as the english language "Trainspotting" book.
Eh. you take the good; you take the bad; you take them both.

I blog the tv.

Right now, on the television to my right, an aerobics program is playing. But instead of the class being conducted in a small room with two potted plants, the instructors are in a hotel conference room. Instead of two spandex clad girls and one spandex boy, the instructors are standing in front of a crowd of roughly fifty people wearing various uniforms, including chef, mechanic, maid, tour guide, the noodle shop guy, bartender and several not quite uniforms, like an old dude in a tux (who is a little overly eager) as well as a ninja and a black leather samurai.

The chef looks dead serious.

Holy crazy jeez. The music moved me.

Bruce Haack writes some crazy stuff. I know I've been making a lot of music entries lately, but I'm only two songs into "together" and my mind is blown, irreparably. You can download mp3's from the website, and I suggest you do, especially "touch" from "together".

PS... I'd be utterly remiss if I didn't pass on this link.... it's bill cosby tellin kids about the danges of drugs back in 1971. Courtesy of Waxy.org. If wesley willis had an artistic ancestor, Cosby singing "dope pusher" has got to be it.

dozens and dozens served. the dj's shadow.

The first person to read this post will be my 1000th visitor!

Watch this! It's a high school percussion band playing two tracks from "Endtroducing". Then read a little bit about it here.

This clip made me think a couple things. Like momus said, DJing has gotten pretty lame. I think the last couple generations of software have made it kind of easy, and reduced DJing back down to a dubious technical skill, the way it had been before hip hop. The beat matching is done for you, and everyone's releasing a cappella tracks... it's just a hobby now, and some people want to get paid for it.
DJ shadow (sacramento's proudest son), is the man to thank and blame for the whole dj boom of the last 10 years, but man... he was doing it on another level. I saw his live show in san francisco back when (see "Losing my edge"), and became a big old shadow fan. He was spinning four turn tables!... and he was making the best music of the decade. I think spin magazine were the first people I read to call him the Hendrix of the turntable. Today's dj's are a far cry from that. There's a very special place in my heart for Erlend Oye's DJ Kicks album, but there ain't no one doing what Shadow was doing.

Second, the musically trend of the new millenium = taking non-instrumental recordings, like Shadow or NES soundtracks and playing them live. It's a cool thing right now, and a nice way to shift a paradigm, but what about "creating" music? Between the mashups, cover versions, and these "analog-ies" good, creative music is being crowded out.
(Recommended "analog-ies" = the old demo tracks from the advantage, "Straight outta compton" by Nina Gordon and Seu Jorge's stuff on the "Life Aquatic" soundtrack.)

political science

you'll never guess what's going on in this picture. click on it to find out.

what's really on my mind

にいたって（に至るまで）
どうやら
〜たる
〜じみる
ならでは
〜のかたわら
さりとて
をもって
〜そこなう
〜ならぬ
それかといって
につき／につけ／につけても
一方だ
〜てたまらない／〜てはたまらない
〜てしようがない
〜てかまわない
といったら
*this list + 10 tomorrow. ch17 + oldies

hana ga saitarou

I've only just now gotten around to getting the full album from Asa Chang and Junray. I saw them in concert a while back but I hadn't heard anything from them before, or since. Until yesterday that is.

And it's great. "Jun Ray Song Chang" is highly recommended, especially the first track, "hana". It's renewed my faith in "avant garde" music that is still listenable... see also, dat politics, the fiery furnaces (though they're maybe not all that avant), william basinsky, deerhoof and others. Do not see the animal collective, latter day tv on the radio, wolf eyes, or xiu xiu.

god I hate the animal collective.

I'm sure it's only "avant garde" from where I sit. Most of the albums I linked were from 2002, 2003... and of course all reviewed by pitchfork (now, both a mark of indie cred, and of lack of indie cred).

(also, apologies for last night's entry)

everyone's got a blog. everyone's a tourist.

Everyone's got a blog. Everyone's got a blog. Everyone's got a blog.

I've got a blog too.

I haven't actually browsed but a couple of those blogs above, but they're all from aomori jets, and all linked off of the front page of jamie's avoidinglife. In fact that's just a small sampling of the blogs listed there. I read a couple of entries on a couple of blogs selected at semi-random from jamie's blogroll, and I learned about video games, and bugs and flowers and how much some people drank. I suppose in a sense I learned a little about japan, but not really.

You won't really learn about japan here either. I've tried to make a couple of enlightening entries; tried to give a slightly better impression of what I think it's "really like" here, but I don't think it matters. Nothing can counter the mass of media on the internet and elsewhere that tries to paint japan as "5 minutes into the future", or a "land of contradictions", or worse yet, an earthly paradise.

My feelings about japan aren't secret. I love the place, and can envision sticking around a long time. What you get here is the result of my working out the language and culture for myself, and the occasional jab at Bush.

Still it always makes me feel really strange to read other people's experiences with japan. It seems like everyone is always coming and going to and from tea ceremonies and sports clubs, or drinking, or gaming, or pining for their long distance lover. Or they're showing silly english photos (guilty as charged), or commenting on the general weirdness of the place.

Is everyone a tourist? Even people that have lived here for a couple years still hold the place at arms length. It seems like most any interest people around here have in japan is either self-concious interest (I like the idea of liking tea ceremony), or entirely uncritical (I like japanese hip-hop), or just silly (anime/ jgirls/ conbini food/ hello kitty is teh awesome).

Then again, maybe I'm just the only one self-involved enough to think himself seperate from that. but I really do want to understand more.

(by the way, I'm not referring to particular blogs or people)

Mr. Bush, I'm flattered, but...

I didn't expect that you'd take my comments so literally. dick.

big fat cheater plays a tiny violin

This is Chiyotaikai. He's a sumo wrestler from kokonoe-beya who's been struggling for a long time to stay at the top of the sport, despite the fact he's clearly past his prime. Yesterday, Chiyotaikai broke my heart.

He cheated. Or at least someone cheated on his behalf. Yesterday in his match against miyabiyama (misashigawa beya), the sluggish chiyotaikai barely laid a finger on miyabiyama before miyabiyama dropped like a stone. No slip, no uncontrolled momentum, he just fell down, making no effort to prevent it. The announcer was pretty shy about analyzing the match, and with the next match coming up there was no time for dwelling on the past.

I like sumo. I've been watching the english langauge broadcast regularly every tournament for the last couple years, and I've never noticed anything this bad. Granted, I've been talking about sumo fixing in the abstract for the last week over at marxy's place so maybe I'm much more aware of this sort of thing now. Maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Maybe peace and legitimacy reign over sumo.

But sumo has a bit of a shady history in the late 20th century (and before too). I'll add some more about that later, but for now, it's study time. I decided to use a time and make sure I study at least 2 hours every day until the big test in 78 days.

(click the picture for a link to dichne.com, a pretty authoritative site that I stole the picture from)
Also, I joined a forum to deal with my grief... read some discussion about the match here.

your mom dresses you funny.

There are two kinds of bad English in Japan. Incorrect english seems to be all the rage these days on the internet, but the other sort, inappropriate but correct English can be three times as funny.

I feel sort of bad about posting this on the internet, but I had a student yesterday who was wearing the 2nd worst example of proper English on a T-shirt I've ever seen. How bad? Judge for yourself.

Poor kid doesn't know... however even though I explained the meaning to him and to his teachers, no one thought that much of it.

By the way, the worst of the proper English t-shirts was for young women, and read: "And every present you give me gets me dripping like a honeycomb".

(gomen. I don't write the things, I just report 'em)

propriety

Today, I decided to invite a couple of my family members along to read the blog. I've read in countless places that everyone thinks that's a bad idea... so maybe it is. Still I've been posting for a long time here, and I haven't really said anything that outrageous, just a little god-baiting. I figure it can't hurt.

So welcome, welcome. Shoes off on the way in please.

vaccuumcleaner d. monkeyface

this is my vaccuum cleaner. it's winking at you.

dinklink and other links.

dinklink is a new dating website for wannabe dinks. Dink, meaning the demographic term "double income no kids", and not the lame insult most likely hurled by an older child on a sitcom. The link I followed to get there had the wonderful enticement "traditional family values make you want to puke?"
It's intended for "progressives", but I think the subscribers will most likely be homosexual men and women, and jerk heterosexual men. Look for first a mention in the cnn scroll line, and then conservatives saying that they are out to destroy the american family... it may even be described as heterosexuals that have bought into the "gay agenda".
(It's just a fascinating link, everyone knows I get all my myriad lovers through scam deai sites.)

Another website that's given me a couple laughs lately is this here it's an old comic featuring a guy reacting violently to rudeness. it's all I could ask for. Theonion has been surprisingly funny lately too.

and lastly, politics and tragedy. The Katrina Timeline. Worst administration ever.

once more into the breach, working sick (and gentei scorecard)

I'm sick again. This is at least the tenth cold since I set foot on these shores. Were these colds the same things I got back in the day in the states, I wouldn't complain. But these are no "head colds" or "chest colds". The colds I get in Japan are always sore throat + body aches + fever. Maybe it's time to get the old tonsils out.

The other nasty thing is that now that I'm older, and have a little bit of career-type responsibility, I have to work when I've got a cold. This week, that means standing and talking and gesturing, and trying my best to get a crowd of 30 or so 15 year olds laughing and interested in what I have to say. It's just as fun as it sounds.

In the business section, this last weekend must have been seasonal rotation day at the convenience stores. I happened into a conbini saturday night at 1:00 to find the shelves virtually empty, and one of my favorite products from last fall is back. Another couple of visits to local conbinis have also seen unusually empty shelves with lots of new products. With kinako pocky and nameko soba cup noodles for sale, it's shaping up to be pretty nice fall.

限定　Scorecard,

Available: kinako pocky, nameko soba cup noodles, donbei tempura udon bowl, ebi mayo-chili onigiri.

Unavailable: lychee iced tea, mango lassi drink, chili sauce and cream cheese potato chips, honey roasted nut potato chips.

breakfast lunch dinner, 朝昼晩, morgens mittags abends

Wake up and have breakfast on sunday the way I did in Germany (mountains of bread, cheese, spreads, tea and eggs with friends), then have some kind of wa-shoku set menu for lunch in Tokyo (and pick up a snack at a conbini while I'm there), and end the day choosing from the myriad (mexican, italian, chinese, japanese, korean, mongolian, thai, indian, russian, greek, organic/whole food, pizza, fast food, et cetera) restaurants of northern California for dinner.

New Orleans and the new new deal.

Like "ned" said down below, the mess NO is in now is the product of ineffective government. It's not just a government that isn't good at what it does though, it's a government that insists on it's own incompetence.
I made an entry a long long time ago about this regime being the first one (ok, 2nd, Reagan) to agree with "corporate america" that "coporate america" is much more fit to run every aspect of the country than the government of, by and for the people. In turn, they've stripped the goverment down to a waif, concerned mostly with inserting christianity into the lives of the citizenry, and spreading some cash and influence around.

What happened to government that got it's hands dirty, literally? The new deal dug ditches for a living. It made permanent changes to America that left her a better place for a huge number of people, especially the poor. The new deal taught americans that in their time of dire need, a strong, democratic government can harness the power of the people and make things right.

The new new deal was on vacation when the hurricane hit. The new new deal flew over and looked at the damage from a plane, and asked the citizenry to donate money to save their fellow man (because the goverment had already spent that money elsewhere). The new new deal has set race relations back 40 years, and presided over thousands of preventable deaths, because the new new deal doesn't know it's his job. The new new deal doesn't dig ditches for a living.

My new best link.

This is far and away the best online kanji study tool I've seen.

http://www.jlpt-kanji.com

frontline is great, but this place is amazing. Even has a personal storage folder to stow 100 of your problem kanji... and unlike a lot of the places I've seen online, there are no "coming soon" bits. It's all there and all working great!

the last tokyo entry for a while.

Here are a couple of leftover pictures from the trip. As (almost) always, click the photo to see it full size. Also, I cut the image quality to preserve space when I upload. If you'd ever like a copy of the unadulterated photo, let me know.

best picture I took during the trip. I was trying to take a really obscured picture of the very disappointing kaminarimon, and wound up snapping a really cute little girl running by the candy store while her mom chases after.

the park in shinbashi where the drunken OLs and prostitutes go to make out with salarymen

by learning english, you don a Tony Blair mask... or vice versa?

odd mall, home of little hong kong

a 3 minute walk from one of the busiest train stations on the planet.

the back of my head and the fake statue of liberty

(click to enlarge)

And that's my last entry about the tokyo trip. Next trip is in December for the test.

truly the end days are upon us.

"Bush Admits Fault"

for context, see:

"bush admits fault" : google edition

"bush admits fault" : google news edition

words of one ned sublette

as new orleans, now exclusively populated by a starving, parched skeleton crew of the abandoned descendants of slaves, comes apart at the seams:

the right has gotten their wish. they successfully made government ineffective. this is what happens when you take away the power of government. the point of effective government is to keep this from happening to society. and there is no better poster boy for the ineffectivity of government than the sitting president.

the literal meaning of homeland security is that you secure the land you live on, no? by now the absolute vacuum of leadership is becoming apparent even to TV viewers.

in his eerie disconnectedness to what's going on around him, isn't it starting to seem like bush is heavily medicated? he's *zonked*, right?

do they have him take these long vacations so they can change his meds? what's going on here?

he's got to go. he's got to go *now*.

(via boing boing)