And so on the 11th of January 2012, Tokyo Jihen announced that they will spit up.

It’s hard to say how I feel about this. It is the band fronted by Shiina Ringo after all and she is, in my opinion, one of the greatest singer/songwriters around today. The whole band is extremely talented at what they do but it feels like the group has become less than the sum of its parts.

From their release of Variety, the band’s third album, Ringo loosened her grip on the song writing duties and allowed the other members to have a crack at it. The result was three largely unfocused albums with a few excellent songs (on necessarily the ones written by Ringo) and some songs elevated to greatness when performed live. Perhaps she chose to do this because two of the original members left after their first album, not content to be in Ringo’s shadow.

Ultimately it was Ringo’s decision to end it and I hope that this means that she has something fantastic planned for us. The track she wrote for an upcoming film is wonderful and though it is an instrumental, it has shades of the old, badass Shiina Ringo about it. Looking at it the other way though, she may take this as an opportunity to retire, only to dabble in producing and writing for others. She has been doing this for some time now and so far it has been with people with an nth of her talent.

For the other members though, it frees them up to concentrate on their own bands. Of these other members however, it has only ever been HZM, one of the aforementioned early splitters, that I have ever had any in real interest in. His band, Pe’z, are simply a wonderful Jazz band. Kameda is simply a music producer at heart, although he will probably continue to play the bass for Ringo, as he has always done. Ukigumo is perhaps the only other member I’ll keep an eye on. Songs like Meisai, OSCA and sa_i_ta show that he is a great writer but the lad just can’t sing, which puts me off a bit.

Anyhow, for good or for bad this is the end of Tokyo Jihen all we have left to look forward to from them is a farewell tour and a couple of live releases. RIP Tokyo Jihen but long live Shiina Ringo (and the others I guess).

A few months ago analogue TV switched off here in Japan. For me this was not much of a loss because I never really watched much. Mainly due to the reception being so terrible in my house and my lack of a TV guide. Months after the switch off I finally decided to give Japanese TV another go and bought a digibox. I was a bit of an anime fan in my youth and some of my favourite TV shows ever are Japanese so I thought that there would be a few choice morsels out there for me to watch.

I was wrong.

I know it’s kind of common to have a go at Japanese TV but whatever you have heard is true. There really is very little of worth on the box. Almost all day it is a collection of variety shows and cooking programmes. Quiz shows are also popular but almost never seem to have regular members of the public on them. Instead the same set of celebrities appear on almost every station and every programme, they end up becoming famous simply being on the telly but no one can remember what they did to get there in the first place.

Despite my best efforts I’ve yet to see a Japanese TV show that eclipses the cultural level of Noel’s House Party. Once, while channel surfing, my housemate’s girlfriend exclaimed with glee that some classic telly was about to come on. The programme, which was about 10 years old, consisted of a race where a man had to run to buy an ice cream, come back to the start line and give it to his partner to eat as fast as possible. Hilarious brain freeze moments ensue.

There is bad TV in every country though. The reason I am writing this is because last night I think television sunk to perhaps its lowest depths in history. Watching the TV at half past one in the morning is never the moment you expect to see thought-provoking television but that isn’t really what you are after at that time. My housemate and I weren’t that excited at the prospect of another cooking show, as we turned the channel to be greeted with 6 men sitting around a hot plate. Shortly after we noticed that Boys Love Party was written in the top left corner of the screen. At that moment one of the guys on the screen picked up a takoyaki ball from the hot plate, shared it from the fork with one of the others and then kissed him.

This prompted my housemate to shoot out off his chair and yell (please excuse his language), “WHAT THE FUCK” three times. I have never seen a man look so bemused and shocked at the same time. After calming ourselves down we continued to watch and were confronted by the image of 6 men in a room playing Pop Up Pirate. Between each go they would kiss and touch each other in an awkward way. All the while being watched by a bloke and 6 women, who would randomly scream and giggle. The game culminated in one of the men licking the little plastic swords and then realising that the pirate had already popped without them noticing.

I am not sure what this programme was trying to achieve, it wasn’t funny. At best it was uncomfortable for everyone involved and at worst it was homophobic. Perhaps there was some clever subtext I am not understanding, such as parodying yaoi, but I doubt it.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Japanese TV, there are some shows that I like but I can count them with one hand. I would love to find more interesting TV, as it would be good Japanese listening practise for me, but the more I watch the more disgusted I become with it all. If anyone reading this could recommend me some good Japanese TV I would really appreciate it.

I have heard that there are more programmes worth watching on satellite TV but the country’s top satellite company is called BS Satellite so I don’t hold out much hope.

Having pretty much ignored handheld gaming for the past few years, I shocked myself at the beginning of this Christmas break by buying myself a brand new Nintendo 3DS. I think the fond memories of playing Mario and Mario Kart games during my childhood swayed me into picking one up and copies of the latest versions of those games.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been having so much fun with these games, at what has turned out to be a fairly trying time for me it’s been nice to be able to lose myself in these fun little experiences. At that time when other companies are releasing ‘multi-media devices’ is nice to see Nintendo just release a toy. A brilliant little toy which is enjoyable no matter your age.

Despite being so enthusiastic for this device the first thing to impress me about it was not the 3D screen, the Streetpass feature or the augmented reality games but the inside covers of the boxes.

They have nice little illustrations on them and when you put them into the case they match up to the little windows and make loads of little mini pictures.

I thought it’s quite a funky idea.

Simple things please simple people I guess.

Winter has been especially unkind to me this year. I have had more than my fair share of little illnesses over the last couple of months and as a result I had to take a few sick days off work. I imagine this is a bit of a headache for the people who had to rejig my schedule at school. They work fast though and I received my revised timetable via email a few days later. It shocked me to open it up and see this, however.

Click it to view it nice and big and you can see it says, “Shaun took a rest”. Now, if this schedule had been written by a native English speaker I would be fairly insulted. I wasn’t so much having a rest, as coughing my guts out. I wasn’t so much swinging on a hammock slipping Martinis, as finding extremely painful to eat due to tonsillitis. This wasn’t written by a native speaker however and to understand why they accidentally insinuated that I was living it up, you have to look at what the schedular wrote in Japanese.

What is written on the Japanese schedule above basically translates to: “A section [of the schedule] was revised because Shaun Sensei was absent on 28th November“. Nobody is calling me a lazy bugger there. The word that is causing the trouble is 休む (yasumu). It means “to be absent” or “to go to bed” or “to retire” or “to suspend business” or “to take a day off” or…. or…. or….

To cut a long story short it can mean many many things. Just have a look at its definition in my dictionary…

What this little event here teaches us is that you have to be very careful when using a dictionary to translate something directly. While the meaning can be the same, the connotation is never mentioned, which can lead to many a misunderstanding. So be careful not to accidentally imply things about people when using your dictionaries.

Now if you excuse me I have to go yasumu now. I will leave it up to you to guess in what sense I mean that.

イギリスではクリスマスは家族のお休みです。
In England Christmas is a family holiday.

家族は一緒にたくさん食べたり、プレゼントを交換したり、ゲームをしたり、口喧嘩したり、します。
Families do stuff like eat lots of food, exchange presents, play games and argue.

そんな訳でクリスマスの食べ物はたくさんあります。
For that reason there is a lot of Christmas food.

美味しい食べ物が多いけどきらいな食べ物もあります。
There is a lot of tasty food but also food I don’t like.

美味しくない食べ物は芽キャベツとかミンチパイです。
Unappetising food includes Brussels sprouts and mince pies.

ミンチパイはすごい悪い奴です。
Mince pies are really evil buggers.

僕はミンチパイが好きじゃないでミンチパイも僕がだいきらいです。
I don’t like mince pies and they really hate me.

ミンチパイだけが僕をアタックした事がある食べ物です。
Mince pies are the only food which has ever attacked me.

中学校の時、家庭科を勉強しました。その授業では色々な料理をしました。
During secondary school I studied Home Economics. In those lessons we cooked various things.

クリスマスの時ミンチパイを作りました。ミンチパイがきらいだから、僕は嬉しくありませんでした。
At Christmas time we made mince pies. I was not best pleased because I don’t like mince pies.

オーブンを開けた時、ドアの内側に手が触れて熱かったのでパイのトレイを落としてしまいました。
When I opened the oven door, the inside of the door touched my hand and because it was hot I dropped the tray.

手が痛かったけど反射的にトレイを拾ってまた手を火傷しました。
My hand hurt but by relfex I went to pick up the tray and burnt my hand again.

だれも見てなかったけどミンチパイは僕を笑っていたと感じました。
Nobody saw me but I’m sure the mince pies were laughing at me.

その上ミンチパイは嘘つきです。
On top of that mince pies are liars.

ミンチパイの中にはミンスミートが入っているけどこのミンスミートには肉が入っていません
Mincemeat is inside mince pies but this mincemeat has no meat.

ミンチパイのミンスミートにはぶどうとかアプリコットとかさくらんぼとか甘いシトラスの皮とかナッツとか色々なスパイスが入っています。
Inside mince pie mincemeat is stuff like grapes, apricots, cherries, sweet citrus peel, nuts and various spices.

何でミンスミートと言うか分かりません。
Why it’s called mincemeat I’ve no idea.

MERRY CHRISTMAS