tokyographers

Just letting you all know that I’m going to fall behind on some of the lesser parts of the site, like the Daily Japan posts, the box office rankings, and also the information database. Right now, I’m in the process of overhauling the site and giving it a new look, as well as a new backend. This should hopefully make it easier to eventually integrate everything into a single site, rather than having the main site so separate from the blog, the forum, and the Links site. Anyway, look forward to that in the near future (if things go well).

In other news, Ai Otsuka’s newest album is off to a good start! It debuted at #1 on the daily rankings, at more than double Tokyo Jihen’s “Variety” (another album I’ve been looking forward to). Go Ai-chan!!

I love the way people are remixing and mashing up various parts of pop culture. For example, take these awesome Fanta commercials from Japan, which have been circulating around the internet for some time (this batch has English subtitles):

I love these just on their own. But some anime fans have attempted to recreate the commercials using footage from a particular show, set against the commercial’s audio. The beauty is in how unexpected some of these scenes can be, and how closely they can capture the feel of the original ads sometimes.

I’m surprised there aren’t more of these, and not all of the ones out there are that great. But even the bad ones have some gems in them.

Here are a few for your viewing pleasure:

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Lucky Star

Touhou Project, manga style

Pani Poni Dash!

I just found out about a puzzle game called Yosumin, created by Square Enix. It’s apparently pretty popular online, so the company is porting it to the Nintendo DS.

You might be better off trying it out first, and then if you’re still confused, come back here to read how to play.

Here’s the setup: you get a 9×9 grid filled with different shapes (called yosumin), looking very reminiscent of Bejeweled. But instead of trying to line up similar shapes, you’re trying to find rectangles whose corners are all the same. Once you find one, just click on the corners (actually, you just need to click on two opposite corners), and the whole rectangle will disappear and be replaced by new shapes.

The goal of each stage is to clear a certain amount of each shape. For example, the first stage is just to clear out 5 of each color. So if you clear out a 4×6 rectangle with blue corners, that counts as 24, and you’re done with that color. If you clear out only a 2×2 with yellow corners, you still have 1 left to go.

There are four types of clears (or “keshi”):

• choi-keshi: a rectangle containing 15 or fewer
• yaya-keshi: a rectangle containing between 16 and 30
• sugo-keshi: a rectangle containing more than 30
• yosumin: clearing the entire grid

All of them, except for the choi-keshi, adds some amount back to your timer. In later stages, there will also be a shining “kami-yosumin,” which counts as any color and will add a big amount of time to your timer if you can clear it.

If you’re stuck and you can’t find a rectangle, listen for the voice to say “kocchi, kocchi!” and then scan the grid for a pulsing shape. This is a hint pointing out to you one of the corners for an available triangle. There may also be times, in later stages, where the whole grid will be suddenly replaced.

Another twist is the “deka-yosumin,” which are large versions of the yosumin and take up multiple spaces. You can clear it as normal (even if it’s only partially inside your rectangle), but if you’re using it as a corner, you have to include the whole piece. For smaller rectangles, be aware that you may have to click on the deka-yosumin and two other corners (rather than just clicking on two opposite corners).

One other obstacle in the later game is the “waru-yosumin,” which basically counts as no color, but can still be cleared if it’s inside a rectangle.

On the left side, there’s also a box titled “himitsu,” which is a bonus effect. If you clear four rectangles of the same color consecutively, all yosumin of that color will get replaced with yosumin of a different color. This doesn’t permanently remove the color from the grid though; they can still reappear after you clear other yosumin.

At the end of each level, you’ll see your results: the first row just shows what stage you’re on. The second row is your score based on the cleared yosumin. The next row shows how many seconds you took to clear the stage, and awards you a bonus depending on how fast you did it. The row after that is a stage bonus, and then finally it shows your cumulative score and how many of each color you cleared.

When you’re ready click on the button to go to the next stage. (After you click on it, you’ll have to sit through an ad first, so just wait for the continue button to appear at the bottom.)

The box at the bottom of the game is just tips and other messages, so you can ignore it. There’s also a Menu button on the bottom-left that will pause the game, and you can set your options: the top button returns to the title menu, the next button returns to the game, the next row is the background music volume (none, low, medium, high), and the bottom row is the sound effect volume (none, low, medium, high).

That’s all you need to know - the rest is figuring out how to get a good score! Go ahead and play, and see if you can beat me!

(Note: The first button in the start menu is to Play the game, and the second button tells you how to play.)

The Nisei Week Festival is currently going on in the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles. I haven’t yet had a chance to go, but my brother went on Saturday with his friends. He took some pictures, but it was mostly around the Tofu Festival.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read a short article in Nikkan Gendai introducing some of the current slang that young people in Japan are using. I always find it interesting to learn new Japanese slang, because the way they combine existing words and phrases is often very interesting and amusing. Usually, it’s just abbreviating phrases (which isn’t so creative), but sometimes you really have to wonder why some of these phrases are so common that they actually need to make up slang for them.

Anyway, I thought I’d share the ones in the article (and I’ll likely share more in the future when I come across them). I’ve heard of some of these before, but most of them are new to me. So, let’s learn some slang!

The first section dealt with love and men:

• Chakare (チャカレ) - Comes from “chat” and “kareshi” (boyfriend), used to refer to an online romance.
• Netomo (ネトモ) and Riatomo (リアトモ) - “Net” plus “tomodachi” gives you a term referring to an online friend (who you haven’t actually met), while “riaru” (real) plus “tomodachi” refers to friends you know in real life (IRL for all you online junkies).
• Seishinteki chichi o dasu (精神的乳を出す) - Translates to something along the lines of “put out your inner bosom.” Instead of a woman physically sticking out her chest, she uses a more subtle form of sex appeal to attract a man.
• Rahoo (ラフー) - Comes from combining “rabu” (love) and the name of the search engine Yahoo! The word refers to when you’re looking for romance. (I’m not sure if it’s applied only to people actually taking out personal ads online.)
• Ganburon (ガンブロン) - A mix of “ganmen ga busaiku” (ugly face) and “ronge” (long hair). Apparently there are enough of these men in Japan that an abbreviated term was required. You can even use choganburon (チョガンブロン) for appropriate occasions (the “cho” means “extremely”).
• Emoi (エモい) - A simple transformation of the word “emotional” into a Japanese adjective. Used for when someone looks very emotional or troubled.
• Do-N (ドN) - Derived from the common terms ドS and ドM which, like S & M in English, refer to sadism and masochism, respectively. Here, the N stands for “normal.”
• P-kei (P系) - Comes from “pocchari” (chubby) and “kei” (group, system, etc., the same as used in Akiba-kei and other terms). Used as another way of saying someone’s “debu” (fat).
• B-sen (B専) - Comes from “busaiku” (ugly) and “senmon” (specialty). This word generally refers to men who prefer “ugly” women. Similar in use to Debu-sen (デブ専), which refers to those who prefer chubby women. Both can also refer to women liking men, but it’s less common.

The second section covered school-related slang:

• Ona-chuu (オナ中) - Used for saying you’re from the same middle school (”onaji chuugaku”) as someone. Similarly, you can use ona-kura (オナクラ) to say you’re from the same class. Humorously, the article mentions to not mistake it for “onani chuu” (”in the middle of masturbating”).
• Momo-ten (桃点) - The “ten” (点) is the symbol used for percentages on tests, such as 80% (80点). Failing a test is referred to as aka-ten (赤点), where the “aka” means “red.” Because “momo” means “pink,” you can use “momo-ten” to say that you’re close to failing. On the other hand, if your paper is almost totally free of wrong answers, you might refer to it as shira-ten (白点), because the “shira” means “white.”
• GHQ - This abbreviation stands for “Go Home Quickly.” Also known as jitakubu (帰宅部), this refers to students who aren’t in a school club, and consequently don’t stay after school to participate in club activities.

Hope you learned something new! I’ll see if I can put up another lesson when I remember some of the words I learned while I was in Japan…

I opened up a new section in the forums for translations of articles and interviews. There’s already one posted for an Oricon interview of Mika Nakashima for her new single. So go check it out! And don’t hesitate to add some!

Just thought I’d mention that I’ve switched the main Tokyograph site from a summarized RSS feed to a full-text feed. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but there were some issues with parsing internal code that made the feeds spit out a jumbled mess. But I’ve temporarily patched that up with an inefficient fix - I’m still planning to optimize that later on, but that shouldn’t affect you readers much.

In any case, go ahead and enjoy the new feed! If you still haven’t found it, here’s the link: Tokyograph newsfeed

Sorry about the lack of news updates on the main site yesterday. It was Valentine’s Day, so of course I had better things to do, right? Like help my cousin’s family move into their new house! Yeah, so now I’m really sore and tired… but I still managed to post some late news before I went to sleep exhausted yesterday.

I hope everyone else got to enjoy their Valentine’s Day in a more relaxing way!

Anyway, it looks like Tokyograph is starting to spread a bit! I discovered some links on other sites, and I also found out that someone created a syndicated LiveJournal account for us! In the past few days, we’ve basically tripled in terms of RSS subscribers - FeedBurner reported a jump from about 10 to about 30 (still small, but you have to start somewhere). So keep spreading the love, and I’ll keep doing my best to bring you the news!

I just watched a stage adaptation of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters (it’s currently running at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City until February 11). I haven’t yet read the book, though I’ve been meaning to for a few years. And now, after seeing it performed, I’m more interested in reading it, though it’ll have to wait until my brother finishes with the book.

This was my first time at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It’s a small venue, seating just a little over 300. There was no definite “stage” - most of the action takes place in a central area on the floor, but the setup also makes use of stairs leading up to a high elevated platform. There are also a few “stageside seats” surrounding the central area which put you almost in the middle of the action.

Despite the size of the theatre, the space of the venue was very effectively used. Staging was very well done with minimal props.

I have to admit that the story can be pretty hard to follow, especially at first, due to the multiple story threads that eventually become interwoven. I imagine it would be much easier for someone familiar with the book. But still, as long as you pay attention, the pieces of the story becomes much clearer by the end. And even without fully understanding every detail, you can still enjoy it for what it is - an examination of Philippine culture.

To fully appreciate the setting, one has to be familiar with the cultural context (I know I missed out on some of it, but I asked my parents to help fill in some of the gaps in my understanding). The story is set mostly in Manila in the year of 1982, during the Marcos regime. This was a chaotic time in the Philippines, coming out of a long period of martial law and still in the midst of revolution. Some characters in the story are based loosely on key people and events of the time.

Pop culture references run throughout the play. The first half, in particular, is rife with subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at Filipino culture. Most significantly, the form of a radio soap opera is used as a narrative technique, framing the real life drama of the Philippines as if it were just like fiction. But the true tragedy is that it really is an apt comparison - the Philippines is a soap opera in so many ways, from common culture to politics and media. And we’re not talking about the individual drama that everyone faces in life; the society itself suffers from a certain level of dysfunction.

It really reminded me of the problems facing the Philippines. Given all my work with Tokyograph these days, I’ve become rather removed from the issues, but I still recognize that they’re out there and that something needs to be done.

I found the cast, on the whole, to be very capable. My favorites were Ramon de Ocampo’s intense performance as the strung-out Joey Sands and Ivan Davila as the super-flamboyant “Perlita.”

Overall, I recommend the play to anyone interested in the Philippines, or who has familiarity with the culture. I felt that the production itself was very well executed, even if the story wasn’t perfectly cohesive. (From what I’ve heard, though, Hagedorn’s novel isn’t exactly easy to translate to the stage.)

Finally, a little caution for the easily offended: there’s plenty of swearing and some sexual content (no nudity at least).

Hey, I’m no artist, but I found a neat site through Boing Boing. It’s called Pictaps, and you basically draw your own character, then it renders it and you can watch it dance around. It also stores every figure drawn, so you can see everyone else’s creations as well!

Neat stuff!