JapanNewbie » Media

Locohama’s Book: My Name is Loco and I am a Racist

harvey — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:37:47 +0000

Well, another Japan blogger has beat me to self-publishing! (I really need to get on that.)

Baye from Loco in Yokohama has finished his book! His blog is extremely popular so I’m sure his book will be enjoyed by many.

His book is called “Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist” and it’s available on the Kindle! Check it out.

Loco's Book! Read it on your Kindle.

Japanese Language Audio Books on iPad with Rye Studio

harvey — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:51:18 +0000

In an effort to boost my pitiful Chinese abilities… I got an App!

A company called Rye Studio makes a series of picture book apps for iPhone and iPad that read you a story while showing you the text in Chinese. Listening to target language text being read at native speed while reading along is a great way to pick up new vocabulary if you ask me.

What’s that you say? You’re not studying Chinese, you’re learning Japanese! Of course! Well, the kicker is that you can watch the story while reading and listening to it in a variety of languages… including Japanese in most cases! (Not that I’m spending all my time in China looking for Japanese language sources… no not at all… I just happened to notice this and decided to tell you about it… yeah that’s it…)

Mulan in Chinese!

Mulan in Japanese!

(Doesn’t looking at all the Chinese characters that appear in both the Japanese and the Chinese make you crazy?)

And rest assured, the Japanese seems to be being read by a native speaker as far as I and my Japanese wife can tell. So yeah, it’s high quality stuff.

The following Rye Studio stories are available in Japanese:
The Little Snail かたつむり
 Mulan ムーラン
 The Magic Brush and Maliang 魔法の筆と馬良
 The Monkeys Who Tried to Catch the Mooon 猿とお月さん

There are lots more as well!

Also, these apps all run on your iPhone or iPod Touch as well. The screen shots in this post are all from the iPhone and iPod Touch screens. Note, it’s a universal app, so you only have to buy it once and you can run it on both of your devices.

Well worth a look!

Scars Borough

harvey — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:39:30 +0000

This music recommendation must be the most personal one I have ever done… Here’s the story.

So a long time ago in Japan I met a French dude. We became friends, time passed, I moved to Osaka and he was still in Tokyo, and we didn’t see each other so often anymore. Then a few years ago I was randomly back in Tokyo and we ended up seeing each other again at a big dinner party. He had a new girlfriend named Kyoko. She was this really tough looking Japanese girl. I remember she looked sort of metal and punk. Pretty hardcore. Anyway, apparently she was in a band.

Years passed…

Just about a week ago I had some friends in from Tokyo visiting and we got to talking about all of our peeps who were still in Japan. It turns out that my French friend and Kyoko are still together, and her band is doing live shows in Japan quite frequently and they have a few CDs out! My friends brought me their newest album as a gift. I’m liking it!

The band is called Scars Borough and they’re pretty awesome. Check out some of their videos:

Band Talk.

More Japanese music! And yeah so, I uh, had dinner once with the lead singer of Scars Borough. Yeah, I’m awesome. (hehe.)

Bright Siren by androp

harvey — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:54:10 +0000

If you’re into Japanese rock and… camera flashes… you’ll probably find this to be pretty interesting. This is the video for the song Bright Siren by a Japanese band called androp.

They used 250 cameras to set this up. Pretty impressive in terms of scale!

Fun stuff. If you check their official website you can even add your own light message to the end of the video! Yippie!

Japanese slang: Bacchiguu

harvey — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:16:08 +0000

Time to learn some 90s Japanese slang!!!

バッチグー!!!

I can hardly even remember why I wanted to blog about this phrase…

Ah yes, I do remember now. So I’m slowly working my way through Devil Survivor, a sweet strategy RPG for DS, and there is one character that says this phrase over and over again.

Bacchiguu. It's ばっちり + Good.

バッチグー
bacchiguu

The rough translation of this phrase is, “very good.”

Now, to be honest, this is not “cool” Japanese slang. In fact, it’s a little lame and outdated. Using it will be sure to score you a few laughs the first time around, and maybe even the second time too… But if you live in Kansai you might just earn yourself a slap upside the head for using this phrase. Consider yourself warned.

Let’s learn the phrase, and the background!

This phrase is a combination of two words. The first is ばっちり. The second word is “good,” which becomes グッド (guddo) in Katakana.

ばっちり is a legit Japanese word that means something is “perfect” or just “great.”

Here are some other words that may help you out when talking about バッチグー with your Japanese friends.

死語 (shigo) a dead word.
合成語 (gouseigo) a compound word.
ふるっ！ (huru!!!) a way to strongly emphasize that something is OLD and 古い (hurui).
もういいから！ (mou ii kara!) “OK OK, would you please quit saying that already!?”

I read on some Japanese blog that the character from this old cartoon called BONOBONO says バッチグー a lot…
Watch it for yourself though.

Related Posts:

Unbelievable! Old School Japanese Slang