Loan me some Yens – Japan is Expensive
Posted by harvey in Society on 19. Jun, 2007 | 9 Comments
CNN is running an article ranking the worlds most expensive cities as calculated by Mercer. Here are the top 10 in order of wallet draining power. World’s most expensive cities 2007 Moscow London Seoul Tokyo Hong Kong Copenhagen Geneva Osaka Zurich Oslo Look, two of the top 10 are in Japan! Go Osaka! It surprised [...]
Samurai Movie: Twilight Samurai
Posted by harvey in Media on 16. Jun, 2007 | 6 Comments
I recently saw the movie “The Twilight Samurai” on a friends recommendation. The film is from 2002, and was an Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film… I hadn’t even heard of it… Not sure how I missed this one. The Japanese movie title is 「たそがれ清兵衛」 , and is based on a Japanese book [...]
Dangerous Games
Posted by harvey in About on 16. Jun, 2007 | 3 Comments
Going to try to move the blog software down another sub directory for random crazy admin purposes. If things get crazy. My bad. – Harvey
Kanji Craziness – Page and more
Posted by harvey in Language on 15. Jun, 2007 | 6 Comments
For all of you studying Japanese, get this. This is the craziest Kanji I have seen in my entire life. 頁 It’s reading is “Page”. As in Katakana ページ. As in, a book page. 頁数 【ページすう】 (n) number of pages; Apparently there were a lot of Kanji created for Western things right before World War [...]
Toyama Arrested
Posted by harvey in Society on 14. Jun, 2007 | Comments Off
Toyama Koichi, the infamous candidate for governor of Tokyo who wants to destroy the government and start over… has been arrested. If you haven’t seen Toyama’s campaign speech, check it out on youtube (where else?) check it out. In 2006, when Toyama was living in Kagoshima, he got into some trouble on his motorcycle. Riding [...]
BookMooch
Posted by harvey in Humor on 14. Jun, 2007 | 9 Comments
If you’ve got books you don’t need anymore, sign up for BookMooch. You sign up, and request books from people. There is a points system that encourages everyone to give away and request books from others. There are over 400 books currently available from Japan based moochers, and you can mooch from abroad as well. [...]
Peach Language Fun
Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 12. Jun, 2007 | 15 Comments
The word for Peach “Japanese Pear” in Japanese is 「梨」which is pronounced “nashi”. The word for “nothing” is 「無し」and is also pronounced “nashi”. So some people, around sensitive events, such as entrance exam time… When you don’t want to mention the word “nothing” which could mean a score of “zero”, you can refer to a [...]
Japanese Vocab: ギャラなし
Posted by harvey in Language on 08. Jun, 2007 | Comments Off
Fun Japanese. ギャラなし！ As in, 「この仕事はギャラなしだよ！」 You can also say, 「あの仕事ギャラ高い！」for a job that pays a ton. (I need one of those…) This means that the job gives no pay. The term 「ギャラ」pronounced “gyara” comes from the English “garauntee”. Generally, it refers to “garaunteed payment”, as in the entertainment industry. These days though, it can [...]
