Learning a new language can be an incredibly frustrating experience. You’re forced to suffer through tyrannical instructors, dispiritingly dull textbooks and an excessive focus on things like grammar and verb conjugation, while all you really want to do is go out and use your newly- acquired language skills to swear at people and pick up foreign chicks. If only there was a way to make learning a new language more interesting and, even more importantly, more entertaining.

Well, leave it to the Japanese to come up with the solution. Combining their renowned love of pornography with their reverence for education, some ingenious visionaries have created a way to make learning English fun by making it sexxxy. The result, a video entitled Mina-san no Daisuki na SEX wo Tsuujite Eigo wo Benkyo — roughly Studying English through SEX — not only teaches practical vocabulary that everyone can use, but also provides unintentionally hilarious skits to demonstrate the lesson material.

So what are you waiting for? Take a gander at the most effective English learning tool ever created, starting with Lesson 1: Sexy Words. Let’s Sexy English!!!

[AVI, 15.8MB]
This video can also be found on YouTube here.

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Note: While the video doesn’t contain any nudity, it probably wouldn’t be considered work-safe. Also, although the beginning is a little slow, be sure not to be miss the ending!

Tokyo is home to many highly exclusive restaurants. The kinds of places that put in place certain measures to keep the riff-raff out: exorbitant “seating charges,” guest lists, entrance through invitation only, that sort of thing

This place is apparently so exclusive that it’s only open for a single hour each day.

I wonder how they manage to stay in business.

Well, after being hax0red!!123 twice last week, I figured that it was about time I upgraded to WordPress 2.02. Fortuntely, everything seems to have gone pretty well (unlike the last time), but if anyone notices anything that’s not working properly, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know.

Thank you!

I was walking in Ginza a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon a curious sight:

Tables were set up along the sidewalk and a group was offering free stress tests to anyone who was interested. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest was indeed high; a crowd had gathered around the tables and people were patiently awaiting their turn.

I suspected that something fishy was going on; there had to be an ulterior motive. And sure enough, there was:

It all became clear: The folks giving the tests were Scientologists and those stress testing machines were actually E-meters, the useless device favored by whackjobs for evaluating their level of whackjobbery.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. These days people don’t seem to shut up about how stressed out they are (yes, I realize the irony of me saying such a thing), and Japanese folks are particularly notorious for this. You can literally see them beaming with pride when they make categorical and oft-repeated statements such as “We Japanese are hardworkers,” “We Japanese are always busy,” “We Japanese have a strong, fighting warrior spirit, unlike you fat, lazy American scum who just love to sit around on your fat asses, being fat. Fatso!!”

In addition, Japanese people are generally quite trusting and tend to be a bit less cyincal and a bit more gullible than their Western counterparts. Combine these two factors and you’ve got a population ripe for the picking by con men and scam artists (religious or otherwise) looking to take advantage of the unsuspecting and make a quick buck.

Well, after getting several nasty looks by the Scientologists for taking photos of their racket selfless service to public, I continued on my way. I suppose an upside to being a cynical and apathetic bastard is that it’s relatively easy to avoid getting caught up in silly things like cults, schemes, politicking or even human relationships, for that matter. Yes, being lukewarm about nearly everything certainly has its advantages.

You know what kind of translations I hate the most?

“No,” you say. “We couldn’t care less.” (Unless, of course, you’re American, in which case you say “We could care less,” which, I’m sorry, doesn’t make any sense.)

Well, regardless of whether you could or couldn’t care less, I’m going to tell you anyway. Ready?

Spreadsheets.

This morning this ridiculous mess arrived in my inbox with a request to translate it by 5:00pm:

Yes, a single A3-size sheet of paper, stuffed full with all sorts of charts, graphs, boxes and lists, all requiring translation into English. Never mind that an English sentence requires something like a minimum of three times as much space as its Japanese counterpart; splitting the document up isn’t an option. And thus, in an effort to preserve the formatting, text is shrunk, columns are widened and even more hair is lost from my rapidly balding head.

The worst part is that deep down, I know that no one is actually going to read it. Sure, it might be skimmed, glanced at, looked over, but certainly no careful perusal is going to be taking place. Thus is the triviality of the translation of spreadsheets. A letter has its recipient, a presentation has its audience, but a spreadsheet exists for no one.

I’ve been working a lot of overtime recently, often being the last person to leave the office at night. As a result, I’ve been pretty brain-dead for the past two weeks or so, walking around in a daze and hardly taking any notice of my surroundings.

So you can imagine the little jolt I received this morning when I came into work and saw this hanging on the wall:

Yep, it’s the flag of the present-day Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, although it’s perhaps more widely recognized as the flag of the former Imperial Japanese Military and a symbol of Japanese nationalism. So what was it doing hanging up in my office? Well, it seems that today is the anniversary of the establishment of the Japanese Imperial Navy, and my slightly eccentric bucho (who, incidentally, is now my de facto boss) is apparently somewhat of an ardent nationalist and felt the need to celebrate.

I suppose the equivalent in America would be someone decorating his/her office with a Confederate flag, but I doubt that would fly in most workplaces today. Although nearly every visitor to our office gave a startled reaction when walking through the door, most of my coworkers just giggled uncomfortably and played it off as just another one of the bucho’s wacky antics (last autumn he adorned the intercom with several persimmons tied together with twine).

Perhaps the funniest moment of today came when one of the managers from the General Affairs Department upstairs, whom I had never heard speak a word of English, came down to our floor to make some copies, saw the flag, chuckled and then said to me in heavily-accented English, “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Things have been pretty hectic at work ever since I gave notice last month. My company was having some difficulty finding my replacement, and almost immediately began asking me if there was any way I could extend my stay. I declined several times at first, but after talking things over with Judy and agreeing that we were a) in no real hurry to leave, b) hadn’t found new jobs yet and c) that another few months’ pay wouldn’t hurt, we made the decision to change our plans to stay in Tokyo through July.

So that’s the news. Although I’ve been spending a lot more time in the “real world” than on the internet lately, hopefully I’ll be able to get myself back into posting regularly now that I’ve got a bit more time to spare.

I don’t really have anything else to say at this time, so how about a boring photo?

Last Friday night, Judy went out with her friend Sachiko to watch the latest Kwon Sang Woo flick, while I, after being the last person to leave the office, went home and plopped myself down in front of the TV to watch the least dreadful of whatever rubbish could be found on Japanese network television (yes, the exciting life I lead astounds me too at times).

Anyhow, around 10:00pm, Judy called and said that she and Sachiko were heading to an okonomiyaki restaurant in Ebisu and asked if I wanted to meet up with them. So I finished up my beer, dusted the chip crumbs off my shirt, put on some pants and headed out. Thirty minutes later, I arrived at the restaurant and greeted Judy and Sachiko (whom I hadn’t seen since the wedding) and met Sachiko’s boyfriend Makoto for the first time.

We consumed loads of monjayaki, okonomiyaki and probably a bit too much alcohol, and in short, had a gay old time. At one point, Makoto revealed to us that, in addition to being able to draw a mean sketch of a car on a napkin while drunk, he also has a far more amusing talent. Announcing that he was going to do an impression of the “Japanese royal family,” as he put it, he turned his back on us, removed his glasses, messed with his hair a bit, and then turned back around to show us this:

Judy and I promptly pissed ourselves laughing, eventually leading Makoto to tell us that we were laughing too much and to stop it.

So what do you think?

Nintendo released the new DS Lite in Japan yesterday. Although they had originally planned to simultaneously release three different color variations, the company, citing “manufacturing problems,” later announced that only the Crystal White version would be available on March 2nd, and the Ice Blue and Enamel Navy versions would not be released until March 11th.

Upon the start of the business day Thursday, reports of stores selling out their entire stock of DS Lites began coming in almost immediately. People who had spent the early morning queuing outside of electronic stores were disappointedly turned away within minutes of the stores’ openings. Information later surfaced that Nintendo had only shipped out a limited number of units, and there were (anecdotal) stories that even the larger chain retailers had only received around 20-30 units each.

I stopped by Bic Camera in Shibuya during my lunch break yesterday to check out the scene and was surprised to see quite a number of people arriving with the intent of getting their hands on a sleek new DS, only to leave dejected and empty-handed. Fortunately, I was able to inspect the new model and play the demo display (which, for some odd reason, most people seemed not to notice). Here were my initial thoughts:

• It’s smaaaall — Nothing like the GameBoy Micro, of course, but a nice compact size wider but thinner than the Gameboy Advance. Perfect for an on-the-go hand-held gaming system.
• It’s sexxxy — Not only is it small, but it’s incredibly stylish as well. Sleek and simple.
• It’s bliiinding — The screen is almost shockingly bright. No need to squint while looking at this baby.
• It’s fuuun — Well, for someone who has never played an original DS, the dual screens and touch pad are exciting novelties with potential for new and varied game play.

Of course, there were also a few points about the DS Lite that I coundn’t help but find disappointing.

• It’s expeeensive — Well, not that expensive, but I’m a cheap bastard. With all stores sold out, units are going for upwards of ¥35,000 (US$300) on auction sites (I even saw a few go for ¥45,000 (!) last night), so it looks like I won’t be getting one any time soon.
• It, um. . . appears easily dirtieeed — I’m really anal when it comes to electronics and keeping them looking neat. The plastic on parts of the DS Lite (namely the L & R buttons and the hinge area) seem to be made of an easily-tarnished softer plastic material. The model units in the store, which had only been on the shelf for a few hours, were already quite grimy in the aforementioned areas after being molested by all the grubby hands of people like me.
• It might be a little bit toooo small — Although it fit my hands just fine, I would imagine that someone with larger mitts might find the buttons a tad small and too close together.
• It’s sold ouuut — This doesn’t have anything to do with product itself, but it’s disappointing that Nintendo has botched things up this badly. Although I’m not one to buy a product on the first day/week/month of its release, the timing and reliability of future shipments remains uncertain, which makes me concerned about whether I might actually be able to pick one of these things up in the next couple of months if I did actually decide to get one.

Okay, I admit that the above is a pretty half-assed list, but this is coming from a complete non-gamer who still hasn’t even beat the original Super Mario Bros. and likely never will. Although I might consider getting the DS Lite at some point (heck, even my wife has been showing interest in that darn DS Training game), as always, I’ll probably wait to hear reviews from the early adopters, cuz, well, that’s just how I roll. If I do decide to blow my hard-earned moolah on this particular bauble, with any luck I’ll hopefully be able to just stroll into any electronics store in a couple of months and pluck one off the shelf.

Unless, of course, Nintendo continues to screw things up. . . .