A couple of weeks ago, for my Japanese homework, I wrote a short piece about an interesting article I found about Steve Jobs, Zen and how it relates to the products Apple have created. It struck me that, for the first time I had written something in Japanese that I felt was interesting enough to put on my blog, even though it was largely just regurgitating what it said in that article I found. So, after having many people check if it was ok, I have decided to make this my first ever bilingual blog post.

さいきん、短い作文を書いた。作文の内容は見つけた記事についてだ。始めて日本語で本当におもしろく書けたと思う。たくさんの人が直してくれて後、これはぼくの始めて二か国語で書いたブログになった。

読んでください。。。。。

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今アップルはとても成功している会社です。
Now Apple are a very successful company.

さいきんおもしろい記事を読みました。
Recently I read an interesting article.

記事にはスティーブジョブスが日本のやり方を考えているからアップルは成功している会社ですと言っています。
The article said that Apple were a successful company because Steve Jobs has a Japanese way of thinking.

記事を書いた人はジョブスが禅が好きだから「間」について理解しています。
The guy who wrote the article stated that because Jobs is interested in Zen, he understands the concept of ‘Ma’.

英語で「間」は「space」とか「room」とか「time」です。
In English ‘Ma‘ can be translated as ‘space’, ‘room’ or ‘time’ as well as other things.

それはおもしろい観念だと思います。
I think that is an interesting idea.

２００８年にジョブスはフォーチュンマガジンに「何もかもをやってしまわない事をほこりに思います」と言いました。
In 2008 Jobs said in a fortune magazine interview that he is as proud of the things Apple hasn’t done as the things it has done.

アップルはいくつかとてもうまくいっている商品があります。
Apple only has few really successful products.

ほかの会社たとえばソニーはたくさん失敗した商品があります。
Other companies like Sony, for example, have many not very successful products. (Remember the Rolly?)

たぶんアップルのほうがソニーより日本てきな会社です。
Maybe Apple are a more Japanese company than Sony.

でも僕は自信がありません。
I’m not so sure.

でも日本で皆はiPhoneがほしがってうるのを知っています。
However, I do know that everyone in Japan wants an iPhone.

Original Article

What’s the date today?

Well, according to my research, the date today is 23/05/13. It could even be 23/05/2013 if you are feeling funky. This is not the case in the USA or Canada though, they would think that today is 05/23/13. The Japanese have decided to be different too, for them today is 13/05/23.

Except it is not that easy.

Often the component parts of the date are not separated with a slash or a hyphen but with kanji. So today’s date ends out looking like this: 13年05月23日. 年 means year, 月 means month and 日 means day. It’s a fairly straightforward conversion.

It doesn’t end there though.

When I first came to Japan, I eventually had to go through the process of opening a bank account. I was armed with a Japanese letter explaining what I wanted to do but very little Japanese of my own. The process was fairly simple, I just handed over the letter and my details and sat there sheepishly as the clerk did everything for me. When she came to fill in my date of birth, I got a bit of a shock. She had written “58″ in the year field. I was instantly filled with feelings of insecurity, did I really look like I was in my 40s? When I questioned her about it, she somehow communicated to me that this was the year I was born in the Japanese calender.

Apperently, in 1873 the western calender was introduced to Japan and while the Japanese do use western years they also have their own system based on the reigning emperors. The year 2000, for example, which happened to be the 12th year of the reign of the current emperor, whose posthumous name will be Heisei, is called “Heisei 12″. I was born in the Showa era, so that is the reason that I have a birth year in the high 50s here.

So that means today, in Japan, the date is 25年05月23日. I’m glad that we’ve finally gotten to the bottom of this.

Imagine if we did the same in the UK, this year could be “Liz II 60″. I suppose it wouldn’t really make any difference. It would be easier to keep track of when the Jubilee years were, I guess.

The area around Harajuku and Yoyogi Park used to be loads of fun on a Sunday. Now it is less so, I cast a disappointed eye over the place.

When Japanese people become fans of something they do it properly, almost to the exclusion of all other things. Take X Japan fans, some will take gigs as an excuse to dress up in a mad Visual Kei fashion and sing the chorus of Endless Rain for about half an hour.

Once I went to an X Japan concert and there was a girl about 5 rows back shouting the name of their deceased ex-guitarist over and over. By the end of the show her voice was reduced to a horse whisper. As I got up to leave I saw that all this was emanating from a girl with thick black eye shadow streaming down her face and clutching a doll of the guitarist tightly. It was quite a sight.

I don’t personally know any mental X Japan fans but I do have a group of friends who absolutely adore Oreskaband. Oreskaband are an eight piece all girl ska band from Osaka whose music is quite fun and lively but hardly ground breaking. They sometimes travel the country going to gigs, record TV appearances to put on DVDs, play in bands covering Okeskaband songs, play in other bands performing music inspired by them and collect as much merchandise as possible. It was through them that I became aware of the film Lock and Roll Forever.

Lock and Roll Forever is a film by the producer of High School Musical, starring the bloke out of High School Musical and, I assume, made in the style of High School Musical. It features a story about the members of Oreskaband as they journey to the US in an attempt to make it big there. It is a nice enough film, it features some funky song videos sandwiched between a load of dull but inoffensive plot sections. The overall story seems a little pointless and nothing really ends up happening.

I wonder why this film was made. Judging by the involvement of the producer of High School Musical, it is aimed at American teenage girls. Perhaps they were trying to break the band in the USA (something that will probably not happen in a billion years). If that is the case then they fell at the first hurdle, despite the fact it was filmed in 2008 it has yet to be made available in any format in either the US or Japan. Oddly the DVD has been released in Nordic countries, I have no idea why. Maybe the Swedish wing of the Oreskaband fan club is particularly vocal. It was the Nordic DVD that I ended up watching where it was given the more politically correct name, Girls Just Wanna Rock.

When all is said and done this film is only worth watching for the musical sequences. While not as good as anything from the likes of Yellow Submarine, some are nicely presented and worth a look if you like ska music or songs about Papayas.

Once upon a time I knew a lady who really liked that endlessly repeated on E4 TV show, Friends.

I have nothing at all against Friends (despite that episode where everybody from the UK is evil except for Richard Branson), you can’t deny that it is funny. However it is far from the best US sitcom available. That particular honour goes to Seinfeld.

I told her about Seinfeld and how it was so much more interesting than Friends and she seemed sceptical but willing to give it a try.

Seinfeld is almost unheard of in Japan but I knew I had seen a boxed set of DVDs somewhere on my travels to one of the various HMVs around the country. So we searched through various shops, turning Fujisawa upside down but no DVDs were found.

Fast forward to today and unfortunately we are no longer in contact but on a trip to BOOK OFF I finally found what I was looking for. It was a boxed set of the first couple of seasons of Seinfeld. The front had nothing out of the ordinary, just another picture of the usual four faces but on the back of the box there was a little slip cover. On it was the Japlish sentence, It’s 笑 time. From my extensive use of twitter I had already found out that 笑 or more precisely 笑う means ‘to laugh’. So I read out loud, “It’s laugh time”. The person I was with instantly corrected me. “No, it’s show time.”, she said.

I soon realised that on the back of that Seinfeld box was a pun and it was a multilingual one too, which makes it all the better. Lets not get technical but I may have mentioned before that kanji have multiple readings, the so called On reading and Kun reading. Due to the fact I have not yet studied 笑 and had only seen it in the wild, I only knew the Kun reading (warau). So this sighting, on a Seinfeld DVD box of all things, was the first time I witnessed the On reading (shyo).

So the words on the back of the box are a play on the English phrase “It’s show time”, but because 笑 is used it not only means it’s time to start the show but also that it is time to start laughing.

And because you are about to watch Seinfeld you will laugh.

It’s amazing how much Seinfeld has inadvertently taught me about Japanese culture. Now all I need to do is track down episodes of The Super Terrific Happy Hour and I will be an expert in all things Japanese.