This blog has moved here.
I wanted to try out the blogging software known as Expression Engine, and when they offered a free version of the package to a limited group I jumped at it.
The real reason, though, was that I really wanted a much more expensive piece of technology, but can't nearly afford it, so I had to find a cheaper way to satisfy my technology/gadget urge, kind of like methadone for heroine addicts.
Anyway, the new site is up and functioning, but I haven't gotten the colors down yet. So think of it as kind of like a house with boxes stacked up in the corners. Which is appropriate, because my real house is like that as well.
I'm experimenting moving over to a new blogging system, so things might get a little messy around here for a while.
Sorry.
So I had a good time in Tokyo, if a hectic one given the fact that I was helping organize a translation conference and also giving two talks.
Here are a few pictures.
First, I went and met another translator before the conference at Japan's most famous intersection in Shibuya.
While I was waiting I spied this mom and her mohawked baby. This photo provides persuasive evidence for the necessity of a licensing system for procreation.
Next, here is me giving my bit of a presentation on helping create the newest edition of the largest Japanese/English dictionary in existence. I only talked for about 10 minutes, while more senior editors gave longer talks. I related a few examples of tough entries that I worked on, and thank goodness those who had better solutions waited until after the talk to inform me of them.
One of the benefits to having friends who are smarter than you are is that they write articles and publish them on the web in forums somewhat more, er, selective than blogs.
Here is one such by Nils Gilman:
The abstract:
Gilman argues that the Republicans have transformed themselves into the first ideologically-defined American political party to achieve success, while the Democrats remain an old-fashioned non-ideological party serving group interests. These partisan differences are manifest in approaches to governing: Democrats prefer to bargain and compromise, while Republicans assume that a majority entitles them to full control over policy outcomes. To challenge the Republicans successfully, Democrats must abandon the old-style of governing as policy tacticians and adopt an ideological approach to governing in the classic European sense.
Tomorrow I'm off to Tokyo for a translator's conference. It's the annual conference of JAT, a group of about 500 translators of which I am a board member. I am also heavily involved with this conference, as I am the registrar and also speaking twice.
Every year (it's held on alternating years between Japan and another country) there is a plenary session which everybody attends before going off to their respective talks. Since the theme of the conference this year is "The Translator and Entrepreneur," the plenary session is about how to succeed at the business end of things. Now, before you start laughing, I am going to talk about my experience incorporating here in Japan (which is a much bigger deal than in the US) and how it has changed the way I do business. I'm going to do so not from the perspective of someone who has it all figured out, but from the perspective of someone in the midst figuring it out.
Here's my blurb:
Zachary Braverman: Pros and Cons of Forming a Company
It seems to be a perennial question among translators whether or not it is worth the slings and arrows of red tape and hefty fees to incorporate in Japan. Sharing my experience will far from resolve the topic once and for all, but hopefully my particular story will shed some light on the topic in a way useful to others. There are of course many reasons to incorporate, and perhaps just as many reasons not to. I would like to discuss some of these reasons in the plenary session.
Next, I'm speaking Sunday at this talk:
At this IJET session, Prof. Watanabe will describe the history and editorial process behind the dictionary known among translators as the Green Goddess, and translators who worked on the dictionary will give their accounts of the unique challenges presented by a project of such large size and scope. Since the publication of the fifth edition in July 2003, the dictionary has continued to be revised and expanded, and the speakers will look ahead to how the dictionary will evolve in the future.
I wrote here about my experience helping edit this dictionary.
At the conference I'll pick out a few choice words that I contributed to and talk about how brilliantly I translated them...Only to have the 50 more experience translators in the room raise their hands and suggest something better.
An Interesting Article
OutRage and Queer Youth Alliance went to the protest march at Trafalgar Square to show their support for people of Palestine. But they also urged the Palestinian Authority to halt the arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals.
As soon as they arrived at the square members of the two groups were surrounded by an angry, screaming mob of Islamic fundamentalists, Anglican clergymen, members of the Socialist Workers Party, the Stop the War Coalition, and officials from the protest organizers, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
They variously attacked the gay activists as "racists", "Zionists", "CIA and MI5 agents", "supporters of the Sharon government" and accused the gays of "dividing the Free Palestine movement".
I don't know about you, but if I were gay I wouldn't go protest in favor of a group that killed homosexuals.
I guess I'm just small-minded that way.
(Via Roger Simon)
Once a couple years ago I bought an album of Chopin Etudes by Ashkenazy, since I really knew nothing about his music other than that it is favored by pianists. I turned if off after about 10 minutes. Way too flowery and ostentatious, while somehow still managing to be basically boring, I thought.
Today I put it in again on a whim and turned it off after about 10 seconds.
Does anybody like that shit?
This article from the NYT is interesting. It describes the xenophobia present in a little fishing village on the northern tip of Japan. "Japanese Only" signs seem relatively prevalent there, but they certainly aren't in other parts of the country. I only saw one in Oita, and haven't seen any in Kyoto.
There is only one time I have ever been refused entrance in Japan because I wasn't Japanese. I was attempting to enter an underground casino in Tokyo with my girlfriend at the time (who worked as a card dealer in another place). The guy at the door said "Japanese Only" when he saw me, and I instantly jumped from placid gentle Zak to the angriest I think I have ever been. White hot anger. However, those places are all run by Yakuza, so I didn't want to get in trouble over it. Instead I just threw my oshibori (a hand-towel I had been handed before being told to leave) straight in the guy's face and left. I then went and blew several hundred dollars of my not-so-hard-earned-money at another equally disreputable establishment (I was on a Japanese government grant at the time).
Said girlfriend explained later that since the underground casinos are all run by Yakuza, sometimes they have run-ins with rival Chinese or Korean gangs, which is the real reason for the Japanese only rule. She also told me they cheat.
There is also something very telling hinted at in this article. The Japanese give lawlessness of foreigners as an excuse, but in fact foreigners are statistically less likely to be involved in crimes than Japanese. There has been a spate of Chinese and Korean crimes lately (or at least they have been getting more attention), so there is now much more mumbling about "those lawless Chinese and Koreans..." I've overheard several conversations along these lines. (Being a white male, however, I'm in a totally different category, so Japanese feel no cognitive dissonance when looking me in the face and explaining how foreigners are lawless and are responsible for Japan's decline in safety. I've had this happen several times as well. )
If, then, foreigners are statistically less likely to commit crimes, but they seem to have gotten a bad reputation, what is the reason for the discrepancy? Well, I'm sure part of it is just good old fashioned xenophobia, which Japan has no shortage of, but there is also a more interesting factor as well.
The perception that foreigners commit more crimes has taken root partially because the crimes that foreigners do committ here tend to be more ostentatious. For instance, a couple months ago "foreigners" walked into the second floor of a posh jewelry store in Tokyo, punched out the one employee who was there, then walked out with millions of dollars in diamonds. Now, this heist was incredibly low hanging fruit, but I don't think a Japanese person would have done it. It just took too much cojones.
Similarly, there are lots of other instances where the crimes that foreigners commit here seem all the more egregious because they are the sort of crimes the Japanese themselves don't usually commit. This makes them more memorable and conspicuous, making the perception shared by many (but not all) Japanese somewhat more understandable.
Anyway, the article.
In a society where consensus is prized, this city of 27,000 has drifted along for a decade with "Japanese Only" signs dotting commercial streets. Ironically, many excluded sailors come from Korsakov, a port hailed at City Hall as Mombetsu's Russian sister city. Some bars that say "Japanese Only" employ hostesses from the Philippines, Romania and, yes, Russia.
In 1995, Japan ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. But since then, Japan's Parliament has dragged its feet on carrying out laws. In a country where harmony and homogeneity are national goals, the constituencies are small for diversity and for enshrining the rights of minorities. "No Foreigner" signs are seen as practical ways of avoiding possible social unpleasantness, especially in establishments that involve alcohol or bathing.
In a legacy of the Edo period, 1603-1868, when Japan sealed itself off from the outside world, Japan today ranks near the bottom among major economies for levels of foreign investment and numbers of foreign residents. In elections last fall, one prefectural governor only grudgingly apologized after calling foreigners "sneaky thieves." In a recent poll, a third of the respondents said they did not want more foreign tourists.
....
"I refuse to accept Russians because they make a lot of trouble," said Kazuko Sasaki, owner of the Torichiyo Bar here. Citing several cases of Russians who have walked out on bills, she said: "I end up covering the losses. I have called the police three times."
"At another bar along this street, a Russian suddenly jumped on one of the bar hostesses," said Ms. Sasaki, a woman in her 60's who tends the bar alone. "Four policemen came over, but this Russian was so massive, they had a hard time getting him in the police car. This Russian was so huge and powerful."
...
"Japan has an innate fear of the unpredictable and the unprecedented," he said. "You never know what the foreigners are going to do, or this has never happened before so we don't have system for this."
Two minutes by patrol car from the bar district, Yoshimasa Yamanaka, a police officer who tabulates crime statistics, said Russian crime here was "small."
Last year, when about 8,500 Russians visited, the police received around 50 complaints about Russians. Last year, 9 Russians were arrested for theft, compared with 263 Japanese.
Kind of makes you think about that American Girl Next Door we've been staring at for the better part of the last week, pointing gleefully at the private parts of some naked Iraqi prisoner. Who is that nitwit, most of us have been asking? Well, that nitwit is us.
I was linked to by an Italian blog, and, wishing to see what was being said about me, ran the paragraph through Babelfish, the machine translation service at Altavista. Here's what it came out with:
I am thinking next to a post on the blog relati you to Japan and have uncovered this garbato and intelligent weblog, an other blog, to instead has nailed me for its images, an other astonishes me for the combination of the daily paper and the spectacular one
I'm not sure what it says, but I am feeling a lot more secure in my job as a translator.
By the way, does anybody speak Italian?
I don't have a lot to say about Kyoto at the moment, but I have a lot of new pictures up.
They're here.
I have a lot more coming, as well. What a great city for photographing Kyoto is.
This wood statue, about 4 feet tall, is a god of good luck and fortune at Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto, probably my favorite (because it sits on the slope of a beautiful mountain). We went here the first day or two after coming to Kyoto.
I'm going to write about Kyoto tomorrow, but I haven't said anything about the move from Kyushu. All I have to say is, moving sucks, but the more money you can throw at it the better. We decided to hire a company that would pack everything for us, especially since Maki is gravid.
I've always wanted to use that word.
They even managed to bring along the bookshelf that I cudgeled together with a bunch of "L" hooks and a power drill. I never imagined that it would make it out of that Oita house--I always thought I would just dismantle it and throw away the timber. I certainly don't think it could be taken apart and then reconstructed.
However, on a whim I asked the movers if they could transport it, and, after some serious hesitation and teeth-sucking (Japanese people tend to suck air through their teeth when trying to decide what to do), they said OK on the condition that I wouldn't hold it against them if my experiment in woodworking fell apart.
Miraculously, it made it into our new house (which we have dubbed "Fushimi Tower" for the height of the house and the name of our new neighborhood) intact and is waiting for the books to be unpacked. I was going to ask them to carry it up to my office on the third floor, but figured that would constitute seriously pushing my luck.
I've renamed the blog from Kyushu Journal to Translator's Note.
Someone tell the New York Times.
My shakuhachi lesson was a good one. It was supposed to be for 3 or 4 days, but it turned out that my teacher only had about 2 and a half to spare. That's OK, though, because by the end of the second day I was running on the fumes of the exuberance I appeared with. I have no idea how this 55 year old man can come back from a week's worth of travel, play shakuhachi (which is pretty physically intensive, as musical instruments go) with me for two days until past midnight, all the while setting up the inn he runs for a large banquet, then leave again immediately for a few days on a shakuhachi-hunting excursion (we actually left on the same train). I was exhausted just trying not to fall too far behind.
Every night I'm there we go to an onsen, or a public hotspring. The one near his house has lots of pools, a waterfall, and good food. He always orders about 3 times as much food as any two people could possible eat over my ritualistic protestations. After eating we go soak in the onsen for about an hour and he tells me interesting stories about famous players you could never print. Then we go back home play for another few hours.
It had been about 8 months since I'd seen him last, and he said I had improved more than he thought I would. Of course, he often says this, which means he must have consistently low expectations. There were lots of times during the 2 day lesson when he said something like "You have a beautiful sound...It's the flute." Meaning: It's your incredibly nice instrument just as much as your technique, so don't get cocky.
He also told me that I had the basic techniques down for San-An, which surprised me as it's one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. He followed that up by saying that my playing of the piece was still boring as shit (a literal translation, but the Japanese doesn't sound so vulgar).
I love it the way he can bring my expectations up and slap them down. It's the smile he says it all with that makes me not want to deck him.
He actually has a very interesting metaphor about style. With practice anybody can play in type letters, he often says, likening playing to writing. What is much harder is playing with brush strokes, the kind where you can see the fine black traces of the very tip of the brush as they fade into the white of the page. The former I can do, but the latter is still beyond me. Still, the former is no mean feat, and the latter is more fun to work on anyway.
Whenever I go up their to practice with him I can practically feel myself getting better. It's like a physical sensation of expanding. Then, when I return home I can feel the contracting back to my previous state, or something maybe only a little above it. Each time I return home determined not to "contract" again, but each time it happens. Still, something does feel slightly different this time, like I've caught onto a slight ledge in the slope that I can hang onto to keep myself sliding back downwards. Traction, if you will. Let's hope.
This article is about Erowid, the most comprehensive site on the web dealing with information on narcotics. It's run by a couple friends of mine, and I even do some editing for the site once in a while. The article is both interesting and balanced, a rare find given the subject in this day and age.
If you donate 40 bucks to the site, you get a great mug with this design. Every morning I debate whether to use my Erowid mug or my Injewcon mug for my coffee.
I just don't know how I'm going to explain these things to my son when he starts to read...
...You must have come looking for some way to waste time. I am too busy being productive right now (hah!) and unpacking our new house to accomplish this in my usual witty yet insightful manner.
So, in the meantime go read this.
It had me rolling in my chair with laughter.
What are you still doing here? Get! Go! Be gone!
...for passing her medical boards. Not that I doubted she would.
She starts work as a lowly, pathetic, shat-upon intern at the glorious Kyoto Medical Center tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it, honey
Meanwhile, we are still living in post-move cardboard-box hell. Posting to resume (relatively) shortly.
One of the places on the web I most consistently find insightful, unpredictable, and humurous writing on the web is Real Live Preacher, whom I've written about before. I don't know why I get such a kick out of reading the blog of this Baptist preacher from Texas. Perhaps it's his combination of humility and gumption, which is on display in his latest post, which is an image that for some reason just tickles my fancy:
A church man came to see me the other day. A churchy man, an important man in his church. A deacon I think, maybe. He came to see me and our little church. He came to see if there was anything of interest going on here.
I was wearing jeans and a Snoopy t-shirt at church that day, which put him off a bit, but the real surprise came when he found that I couldn’t answer any of his questions.
“How many members do you have?”
“I don’t know.”
My answer, or lack of an answer, stunned him. He squinted a moment, trying to understand a thing that seemed impossible. It just isn’t possible that a pastor could not know how many members are in his church.
“You don’t know?”
“No. I could print a directory and count the people, I guess. But there never seems to be an occasion when we need to know how many members we have. So I never get around to counting them."
“Huh!” He frowned in an exaggerated way and nodded his head slowly and deliberately. This is one way that men tell you they don't agree with you but are going to be polite and not argue the fact.
“What are you running on Sundays?”
This is the way church people ask about worship attendance. The number they are looking for is a weekly average.
“I don’t know.”
“Really?” >
“Yeah. I mean, someone would have to count everyone each Sunday and run the numbers and all that. Again, there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to do it, so we don’t.”
I wanted to be helpful, so I said, “Sometimes this room is pretty full. Then other times I notice it’s not as full. And then sometimes it’s sorta empty, you know, on a slow Sunday.”
I can't believe he kept asking questions, but he did.
“How many are enrolled in Sunday School?”
I was feeling a little sheepish, for some reason, though I have no intention of keeping these statistics.
“Yeaaahh,” I said, dragging it out. “The thing is, we don’t enroll people in Bible study. We study the Bible, of course. People are free to join us if they like, but we don’t keep track of it.”
I could tell by his face that he thought we ran a pretty sloppy operation at our church. If you really cared about doing the work of the Lord in this world, wouldn’t you count members and track attendance like any good business?
I got one final question, one last chance to redeem myself. >
“Do you have a ministry plan of some kind?”
He didn’t say, “Do you AT LEAST have a ministry plan of some kind,” but I assure you the tone of his voice made his meaning clear. >
"Ministry plan?" I racked my brain trying to think of what that might be. It sounded to me like some kind of marketing plan or strategy. "Well, you know, not formally, as such. I guess we would say that our plan is to do what's right, no matter what the consequences. We should do what we feel is right and good, whether it brings five people or five-thousand people to our door.
And that pretty much wrapped up the interview. He was polite and shook my hand before he left.
It’s a very important spiritual discipline for me to let people like this think that I am an incompetent fool. It is critically important that I not explain myself to them. I just wave bye-bye and let them go.
In my defense, I can answer a lot of questions about my church. He just wasn’t asking the right ones.
The rest you'll have to go read yourself.
I'm a totally non-religious Jew, but I think if this guy's church was near where I lived I'd go just to hang out.
Which reminds me a story the family rabbi told at my grandfather's funeral. He said that my grandfather always used to sit in the very rear pew and read totally unrelated books during the entire ceremony. Only during the sermon itself would he put away his own reading material and actually listen. Then, at the end of the sermon, he would give a thumbs-up or a thumbs down depending on the quality of that day's speech. That's an image I like, too.
We're in the process of throwing everything away right now in preparation for our move. Or, not everything, but we're going by the rule "If you haven't touched it in a year, toss it." And, at this point that seems like everything.
We have deemed the propper soundtrack for such an event is Burning Down the House, by Talking Heads. This is fun!
It is springtime in Oita, and the cherry blossoms are out of control everywhere.
This is actually a great time to move. The weather is great, and we will be left with a good lingering image of the place.
When the wind blows a cherry tree and the petals all flutter down, that's called a sakura-fubuki, or a "cherry blossom storm." I managed to catch one on video. (.mov, 14 mb)
Also a sakura-jutan, or "cherry blossom carpet," is what you get immediately afterwards:
I also managed to snap another picture of the robo-cars. This time I was on the highway alone, and I had to risk my life taking a one-handed picture while driving. But that's why I'm here: To provide you with diversion.
Given that our illustrious Attorney General thinks that a good way to spend precious manpower is to make a war on porn, I think this is absolutely brilliant.
Don't forget to click on the Ashcroft.
Via DPS.
Japanzine has selected me as one of the best Japanese bloggers.
Hmmm...
One has to questions their taste.
Maki and I have long joked that it would be me who cried when she graduated from med school, for it means Liberation from Oita and a Second Income!
Her graduation was on the 25th of March, but I've been experimenting with different ways of showing photos on the web. I've finally settled on Gallery because it satisfies my gadget jones more than JAblum, and doesn't cost any money unlike the easy and useful Exposure Manager.
Anyway, you can view (and make comments) on the pictures from her graduation here.
For years now I've been translating a series of monthly tips on shakuhachi put out by a very respected teacher (although not mine) here in Japan. Well, now one of his students is translating my translations into Spanish. Cool. Here is the original Japanese, followed by my translations, and now the Spanish translations of my translations.
1) "This is the ocean."
2) "This is snow."
3) "Just tell her you like her."
4) "If he keeps bullying you, beat the crap out of him. Here's how."
5) "You know, if the wind blows when you cross your eyes, they'll stay like that forever."
6) "Because I said so."
7) "Don't tell your mom."
7.1) "So you like 18 year-old scotch, eh?"
8) "A Wizard of Earthsea was my favorite book when I was your age. Chapter 1..."
9) "Never break two laws at once."
Number 10 I'm taking suggestions for. Any ideas?