Dispelling common Japanese misconceptions about translation: advice for the aspiring

So the other day I got a mail from a friend I used to work with saying that another friend of hers was looking into how to get started in translation. As she knew that I've recently done the same, she figured maybe I could help give him some friendly advice, and set up a meeting. I have been translating at every job I've had since I got to Japan about 3 years ago now and been accepting freelance work on the side for more than 2 years, but I'm really just getting started at doing freelance work fulltime, so I wasn't sure how much advice I'd be able to offer him. I figured that some experience is better than none though, and as he was just starting out my advice couldn't hurt really.

There are a few things that I feel Japan usually misunderstands about the world of translation, so I stuck to the basics. Here's what I told him:

1. Lots of people think that if you can understand both languages you can automatically be a translator - false. Translation involves 2 main skills: understanding the source text and skillfully putting that into words in the target language. For example, for me this means that I not only have to be able to understand what is written in Japanese, but also need to be able to write well in English. There are plenty of people that aren't very adept at writing in their own language, and if you're one of those people then you're going to need to work at that to be a good translator. It's not just about accuracy (although that is important, it can be pedantically overemphasized amongst Japanese translators), but also about style.
   
   
2. Just because you know both languages doesn't mean you should translate both ways. Uggh... this is probably the most common and annoying misconception in Japan, even with translation companies. In the rest of the world, people generally translate into their native language, basically because no matter how well you learn your 2nd (3rd, 4th, etc.) language, you will always have tiny imperfections or not know all the colloquialisms of the foreign language. In Japan, many people think of a translator as someone who translates between both languages in their pair, and then add an extra step by having a native speaker check the work. I don't care how good Kenji's English is I guarantee that mine is better, and likewise he's always going to know more Japanese than I. From a quality standpoint, whenever possible I should leave translations into Japanese to them, and they should leave translations into English to me.
   
   
3. Work in-house for at least a year or so, and get yourself a specialty. While not strictly required, both of these help for sure. Working in-house means that you often have direct access to the person who wrote the text in the first place and can confirm hard to understand clauses directly. It also means that you have time to build your skills and specialized vocabulary.
   
   As far as a specialty goes, you will make far more money in the long run translating a niche market than you will in general translation. Law work, including patents, and medical work can easily command twice the price of general translation work, but even technical fields such as IT or engineering can make money. I forget where, but one place I saw online said that in the long run it's most important to pick your specialty based on what you enjoy as opposed to what the most expensive field du jour is.
   
   
4. Decide rates based on the source, not the translation! The reason for this is simple and logical, and looking around at some translation companies I can't believe this escapes them... if I'm translating from Japanese to English, I have control over how many words I write, but I can't do anything about how many characters are in the original source text. Thus to take any question of the translator just being wordy in order to inflate their fee and focus on making the best possible translation they can, you should base payment on the source. It's the most fair way to do things.
   
   
5. A word-for-word translation is not always the best translation. As mentioned in 1 above, you are writing for an audience, and different audiences understand things differently. If you have a warning label in Japanese that says "please do this," it should be in command form in English, not left as a kind request. Also there are entirely too many direct translations out there that come off as very stiff and hard to read.
   
   
6. Keep up your skills and never stop learning. In order to do this, you need to read regularly in both languages and also write in your native language, e.g. the target language you're translating into. Many people realize they need to continuously work on their 2nd language, but neglect to work on their native language skills as well. These skills will totally fall off if you don't use them!
   

Those are the basics I believe. Specific rates and all are whole different can of worms... maybe I'll get into it some other time.

Got published again...

Ok now this announcement is a little late for sure, but as it's somewhat interesting (to me, at least) I figured I'd put it out there. Besides, normally I'm doing confidential stuff which I'm not allowed to talk about, so this is fun for me. :P

As I've been paying the bills as a translator lately, I've been seeing a whole bunch more stuff and reading a bunch more lately. Most of the time I'm working with technical stuff like manuals and work specificiations and such, but I also get some general translation coming through which can be fun.

For example, the other day I was asked to translate one line for a manga called 蔵人(kuroudo) ... here's a review from Amazon:

舞台は島根県。

そこにある日本酒を作っている蔵に外国人が訪れます。
彼の祖母は、外国に渡った日本人で、昔、日本で日本酒を造っていた父親の蔵を想いながら孫である彼に伝えます。

近年、日本酒離れが多い日本で、外国人が日本酒の作りに参加するという観点は
「夏子の酒」を書いた原作者ならではの作品だと思います。

無くなってしまった、自分の蔵を巡る修行の日々。日本語もわからない異文化の中
どうやって酒作りにクロードが携わっていくのか楽しみな一巻です。

The stage is Shimane-ken.

A foreigner visits a sake brewery. His grandmother was a Japanese who left for abroad and told her grandson how her father used to make sake while reminiscing about his brewery.

In a modern Japan which has largely broken away from sake, making a manga about foreigners taking part in sake brewing is something that could only be done by the author of "Natsuko's Sake".

The days of training through making the rounds of his own brewery that is no more... this book tells the interesting tale that our hero Claude has taken on, to learn how to make sake in a different culture without understanding Japanese.

While I argue with the premise that he's the first to come up with the idea of a foreigner brewing sake, it does sound somewhat interesting if the author does it right.

Anyway, so I found out the other day that the book that I translated the line for got published, woo! You can see my work in the June 5th edition of Big Comic Original published by Shogakukan. If you're in Japan then check it out next time you're in a conbini or something.

To Work or WBC, and Fake Swingers

Everyone at work seems totally distracted, and I don't think it's because the two owners (also brothers) had an escalated altercation that broke into fisticuffs last night (true story).

No, I would have to say that it's because about half the people currently in the office are closely huddled in front of the tv by the entrance watching the World Baseball Classic. They told me that yesterday Japan beat the US in the semis, but personally I could care less... I'm more interested in the NCAA tournament, even if my team's already out. If you don't care about either I won't hold it against you. As much as I'd like to ignore it, I guess it really is true that Japanese love their baseball, and even more so than they do soccer.

This brings to mind something only tangentially related but that has always struck me as funny - the fake swing. Whether it be a fake golf swing or a bat swing, you will see people doing practice swings all over the place here, from the office to the train platform. Don't believe me? Well there's even a poster about it. This guy has an umbrella, but you'll see it more often than not totally empty-handed, and in addition to the baseball/golf swing you may see a budding pitcher practicing his curve ball depending on who you watch.

What prompts this you might ask? A trip to any school sports club will provide the answer. I first ran into this back as an exchange student when a friend joined the tennis club - he told me that for beginners they actually have you just swing at air 100 times to practice your form before you're "ready" to step up and hit a ball! Who knows how long it'll take you hitting a ball before you're ready to actually take on an opponent, maybe years.

You may be thinking that this happens in baseball practices all over the world, and indeed my capoeira instructor harps about form when we practice as well. But if you think this and you haven't seen Japanese people practice then you don't know what I'm talking about - they can just practice swinging for hours without playing a real match or scrimmage, which to me is like making a cake and then not eating it. They are obsessed with proper form and will take it to the utmost extreme. I don't know if their desire for perfection before they even get started is admirable or masochistic, but at times I think it's a little from column A and a little from column B. It'd certainly take all the fun out of sports to me. I guess it's better than having them read a book about how to hit a ball, but I still think the best way to practice hitting a ball is to... hit a ball. With someone, preferably in a situation somewhat gamelike. Call me a purist. :P

English Company Names in Japan

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Canada: welcome to the EU

I'm having a hell of a time trying to get hits on the board for this new website at work... the people who normally handle search engine optimization (SEO) have only done so for Japanese pages and aren't exactly fluent in what changes are needed for an English website. Most of their knowledge carries over, but it still means I need to put in some effort that they can't... sigh.

So anyway skip forward to me talking to this one SEO person about our google analytics account - she tells me we got a hit from someone in Europe for some reason, which I thought was odd since I had just checked it and the only hit I saw outside of Africa and Japan was in Canada. She pulls up the map, and sure enough I had to explain to her that it was in fact Canada and not Europe.

How the hell does someone make a mistake like that you ask? Well let me just show you the Japanese version of the world map and let you figure it out:
They put themselves in the center of the map, making them just as arrogant as the Europeans, and putting Europe where a Eurocentric mind might expect to find Canada. I guess it's one of those things that you usually just take for granted, but it does tell you a little about how you view the world. You can really mess with kids by showing them different maps of the world and how Japan isn't at the center of them. By the way, I think the kings of map manipulation for the purposes of self-gratification are still the Aussies...

Little red horsies

Hey, look what showed up at work 2 days ago! Forgive the quality of the photos as they were taken with the camera phone.

Also, the other day I was pretty close to buying a '95 Skyline GT-R, but we decided against it because of a nice puddle of oil dripping from the engine. I will have one soon enough though.

Ridiculous rates!

OMG, seriously has anyone been keeping track of the exchange rates lately? My job has me looking at them frequently lately, so I'm probably more up to date than most, but I'm sure you all realize the turmoil the stock market and financial districts across the country, as well as the world for that matter are doing. The UK, Ireland, and other countries around Europe have been pulling similar "socialist" acts as the US bank bailout, but all attempts to save the sinking ship that is the world economy seem like a bucket brigade for a 5-alarm fire. I've recently found that I have one friend who lost their job as a direct result of this, with very little warning and no severance of any kind.

I personally don't really think the bailout was that good of an idea and wouldn't mind those to blame for the whole deal to writhe in the filth of their own makings (e.g.: the people who loaned beyond their means and the banks that goaded them into it), but that's easy to say from way over here on the other side of the world. From here though, it didn't look like the bailout was very popular on that side of the pond either, signaled by the fact that it took 2 times for it to pass. My favorite report on the whole thing came from our friend Jon Stewart over at the Daily Show, with a series he calls "Clusterf#@k to the Poor House":

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Anyway, over here we have an entirely different problem - the Japanese Yen is probably the only currency in the world that wasn't hit hard by the bank fallout, probably since Japanese banks went through a similar crisis about 7 years ago and are already on the way out of the whole mess. While currencies around the world are dropping like a tactical nuke on Iraq, Japan's Yen remains the financially robust stalwart that is weathering the storm - the beacon from the lighthouse shining over these rocky financial times if you will. The problem is not only that the US Dollar, Euro and all currencies tied to them are falling around the world including the British Pound, Canadian Dollars, NZ Dollars and Australian Dollars which I've been watching, but also that many people around the world are buying Yen because of the security they provide, which drive the price even higher. What do you get then? Well you get 93.9yen to the USD when the rates were at 107 just a month ago, or 127yen to the Euro which was at 160, or 150yen to the Pound which was at 200. That is a full 33% increase on the value of the Yen related to the Pound, meaning that if for example you wanted to buy something from Japan that costs 2million yen you will now have to pay 13,333Pounds instead of the 10,000 price of a month ago.

In short this means that I as an exporter currently have a large uphill battle in front of me and am pretty much forced to weather the storm. Shit. Worldwide recession? I think it's a possibility.

Now of course the flip side of this is that it would be a great time to send money home... if I had any to spare. Damn moving fees.

Doug gets no sleep

...along with the rest of the frickin country!! Ever since moving down to the Tokyo area, I've been averaging about maybe 4-5 hours sleep. I work sometimes as late as 7:30pm (average of maybe 6-6:30, which I don't mind as I'm paid hourly), and cannot for the life of me get to sleep before 1 most of the time. This is bad considering with the commute I wake up at 6, thus no sleep!

But as I say, I'm not alone in my struggle against the sandman. I read this article at my favorite Japanese weird fact source that says Japanese may cost themselves up to 30bajillion doll hairs per year in productivity from not sleeping, and I for one will agree if it means that they'll let me come in at like 10 or so. But seriously, I totally agree with the whole idea that staying in the office long hours does not necessarily mean you get more done. Work smart not hard, all the way. I'd do an experiment and see how much work I could get done just doing the 9-5 but sleeping more, but as I said I'm paid hourly and like the overtime bonus. That and I don't want to go to sleep all early and miss out on all the fun to be had staying out til last train with friends or vegging out watching downloaded American tv shows and movies.

Now my office certainly isn't one of those places where you automatically have to stay just because your boss doesn't want to go home yet, but they do have enough to keep you busy at times... especially my department. One thing that you might find crazy if you've never worked in Japan though is that every Wednesday is "go home on time" day, implying that no one does any other day of the week. Seriously, it's on the calendar.

Ding dong, the Hulk is... transferred

Yeah, that's right - feast your eyes on this guy. Take in all that manliness, and then zoom in and check out that killer look of determination (you may know it as the "Eye of the Tiger") on the face of a guy that looks like his head is about to explode. This, my friends, is one Hidenori Kasajima - winner of the Mister 40-y.o. division of the 15th Tokyo Open Bodybuilding Championships, 3rd in the Mister 75+ kg division, and last but not least.... the guy that hired me for my current job.

That's right, my boss is Ah-nuld, the Governator. Or more properly, "was" my boss for all of maybe a month and a half. Try if you will to imagine this guy wearing a suit. Not working? Well not to fret, it didn't really work for him either apparently. While I did find him entertaining with his unique and uh, colorful "English" and his laid back attitude, he in the words of a certain coworker who shall remain unnamed was not cut out for this job. I also saw just a little taste of his infamous temper, which I luckily didn't stick around long enough to experience 1st-hand. Let's just say you don't wanna get between this guy and his twinkies.

For sloppily handling probably one of the singly largest projects my company is current undertaking, he got about the worst punishment they delve out to people here - getting transferred. Not only that, but my job as editor-translator meant that it was my honor to write the guy's transfer notice on his last day! Mess with a billion-dollar project? Get transferred. An elementary school teacher gets caught selling the largest hoard of girls gym shorts amassed ever and upskirt shots of 10-year-old girls? Transfer him. Caught embezzling? Fine him $1,000 and then transfer him. Charged with manslaughter or rape a farmland animal? I'm gonna go with transfer to New Zealand, the land of Hobbits and sheep.

Firing just seems so rare out here... with the exception of being in the public eye. Politicians seem to drop left and right, but then again they "resign". I have my doubts as to how voluntary some of the resignations are, but these guys are grade A boneheads. Not that I ever really met a politician that I liked, but you know just sayin'.

Working in Tokyo

Ah yes... Monday is a get-out-of-work free day and my roommate's out riding horses or some such nonsense, so I'm enjoying a nice, relaxing evening at home alone for a change. Except for the wannabe biker gang kiddies that keep buzzing by my window, which reminds me that if anyone would like to purchase me a BB gun for Christmas it would be put to good use. In lieu of that, I would also accept some fine beers such as this or this.

So working in Tokyo isn't exactly for the faint-hearted in my opinion. I figured that since I've been working here for at least a good month or so, it was about time for me to give people the breakdown.

Where do I work? I work at IHI Corporation, which is one of the three heavy industries companies in Japan, as a translator in the construction department. Ok, well technically I'm employed by a dispatch company who sends me to IHI, but tomayto-tomahto. Oh, and technically I'm a "translator", but I do very little actual translation work. I do a bunch of editing though, as well as a whole bunch of random stuff which is teaching me all kinds of useful vocabulary, like butt-welding (*snicker*), and the Japanese word for terms like sphere tank and wiring control panel.

As for attire, now that Cool Biz is over I have to wear a tie to work, but I was told that a jacket's only really necessary for big meetings, which I won't be a part of for a little while.

Interestingly enough, most of the people at work can speak English, or at least understand it enough that they can navigate through all the documentation here, which is primarily in English since most all our business is international. Most all of them have been interesting places, either due to work or otherwise. I've talked to people about experiences in India, China, Taiwan, Qatar, UAE, Algeria, Mexico, Houston, Cali, Oxford, Cambridge, and probably some others I'm forgetting. Most of them are pretty cool people actually. With all the business trips people take (it seems half the people are gone at any given time), there's a new snack from somewhere around the world that someone brought back as a souvenir pretty much every day.

So let's see... how about a walkthrough of a normal day. So first off is the commute. I have to wake up at 6 to set out on a 10-min. bike ride to the station at around 7ish, after which I use my ridiculously expensive monthly train pass to take 1 transfer on a 1-hr. train ride to work. This is by far the least comfortable commute I've ever had to deal with ever... driving an hour in rush hour is one thing, but at least there you have your own space. Now I have these oyaji salarymen that sometimes wreak of b.o. because they don't believe in bathing in the morning (that's reserved for after dinner on the nights they don't stay too late at work or drinking) breathing their halitosis all over me and falling asleep on my shoulder as I struggle to find enough space to get a book in my face to pass the time. Oh, and room to breathe - always important, but sometimes a challenge. Seriously, if you have not experienced this first hand then you have no clue what I'm talking about - it's nuts. I seriously believe that there are sardines in cans that have more shoulder space then you do in one of those trains... it's like those old contests where you see how many people can fit in a phone booth or VW Beetle or something. This is easily the worst part of working in Tokyo thus far as I spend 2.5-3 hours daily in overall commute time... that's about the average too, by the way. Definitely moving closer in next year some time, but that comes with its own headaches... and the area's not exactly cheap.

So after arriving at work around 8:30, I wave hi to the guy whose job it is to bow and say good morning 1,000 times in a row as everyone walks in. You may call him a security guard I guess. So I get in the office and greet everyone on my way to flick on the computer in my nice, cushy leather chair with a great view from the 19th floor of a 25-floor building in a huge and open office room. There's nothing but high rises in this high-rent district of town, and my company owns the entirety of the Toyosu district in which it resides. You don't get your own desk here, you sit at a big long desk with no dividers together with all the people in your section instead. So then this chime rings which sounds JUST like the chime that goes off at the beginning of class in schools here, and they have a little 5-min. morning meeting in which they make announcements and then break into sections where everyone says what they have popping for the day. I found out this past week though that once a month they have a bigger meeting a few floors down which you have to go to, and at the end everyone points their fingers towards the front of the room and chants some bizarre company pledge which I didn't quite catch all of.

My "boss", the guy that hired me, has only actually been in the office half of my time here as he's been all over the place. And by all over the place, I mean that he's now in Algeria after a stop in Paris and Ankara (Turkey), from which he'll be back on the 15th. But then he leaves again on the 16th for another couple weeks and meetings with big important people, and I hear that he's set to spend a few months or possibly a year on the site in Algeria starting next year some time. I also hear (and see... it's my job to read/edit the contracts) that working on-site means 10-hr. days, 6 days a week, which makes road trips sound like more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys. Oh, and apparently due to civil unrest or something, if you're on the site and would like to leave to go into town, you're only allowed to do so with guard escort.

So anyway, my day goes on until 5:30-6ish with me doing different random stuff pretty much everyday and talking to the girl whose job is apparently to flirt with me. Honestly I have no idea what she does besides make copies for people and turn the lights off at lunch (gotta save every little ounce of energy!!!), but she apparently speaks pretty good Chinese which is cool.

Stuff I've done? Editing/arranging/shipping a subcontractor proposal for a 1-billion dollar job with something like 20 lbs. of documentation, corresponding with said prospective subcontractors, hunting down and delivering all kinds of data and info for said clients, a little sudoku, some translation, watching the guy at the desk in front of me fiddle with cool CAD drawings of plane fuselages and LNG tanks, and figuring out what the hell things like gantt charts and event chain diagrams and BoQs are all about and how to read them. Along the way, I have found new functions in Word and Excel that I never knew existed in an effort to make things look nice and purty, since that's my job. Yey.

So that's it in a nutshell... oh, and I just realized the other day that now between me and my 2 brothers, we're now all doing something related to construction at one level or another. Weird how things work out sometimes.

I could go on, but I have a feeling few will have the mental stamina to trudge on further so I'll save it for another day. I think I talk too much sometimes.

A new milestone in the world of Japanese humor!

This day is a truly great day for Japanese people.

You see, since arriving at my new place of business a few short weeks ago I've been hanging out with this one guy in my section in particular. It only makes sense since he's the only guy on my side of the office that's my age and sits diagonally in front of me - he also knows all the younger people at work and has some interesting friends. So the language of business in the office is usually Japanese, with 2 glaring exceptions: one is my boss, but calling that English is a stretch sometimes, and the other is lunch with my new cohort. We speak Japanese in the office and out with friends since I don't want to alienate anyone else, but I know he doesn't get any other chance to practice and he's good enough to hold a decent conversation, so I don't mind it at lunch.

In fact, I've taken it upon myself to teach him some of the finer details of the English language, including humor, and I think he's catching on pretty well. I'm working hard to dispel the whole concept of the "American joke", which is basically the Japanese way of saying "I think you expect me to laugh, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

So I started by trying to explain sarcasm to him and am easing him in slowly - he sees what's going on, but told me that the total deadpan straight delivery I give him still throws him off some. It's to be expected. I swear a tear almost came to my eye today though as he caught me totally off guard today - the exchange went a little something like so:

(he buys an energy drink, complaining of fatigue due to playing Mahjongg too late in celebration of Hump Day, which I of course explained to him in excruciating detail a couple weeks back)

Yudai: I'm sooo tired! *cracks open drink and proceeds to chug*
Me: You know, you should be careful with that stuff - it'll make your breath wreak!
Yudai: You mean, like your mother?
Me: *remembers telling him about "your mom" jokes and struggling to stifle laughter* ...yes, YES!! Exactly like my mom!

Compared to most Japanese people this guy is a comic genius! I've met some that have spent a whole year in the US and still don't understand things like sarcasm, and this guy's telling momma jokes after just 3 short weeks! I think it might be time to up the ante and put him on the fast track. I feel some South Park and Chappelle's Show coming on in his near future.

Summer of Doug, pt. II - closing shop in the Shich

Insomnia and ska music... sigh. For some reason, ska bands can cover just about any song and make it sound more fun.

Alrighty, so the first step in my recent exodus started about 400km away up in lovely Miyagi, which I will not soon forget. Thanks for the memories, Shichigahama peeps. Knowing that this move was coming up meant that I spent the last few months actually trying to both plan things out and make the best I could of the remaining time I had with my friends up north. Good times were had, but those last couple weeks were extremely hectic, both professionally and personally.

The big factor with that at work was that my last week of work was the annual Sister City exchange between Shichigahama and Plymouth, MA in which I was the head interpreter/liason and played a big part in planning. Every year they alternate between Plymouth and Shichigahama visits, and this year was Plymouth's turn to send kids to Shichigahama. Of course, my old boss being the natural entertainer that he was garnered quite a bit of (positive) attention from the town officials over in Plymouth, inspiring them to accompany the normal kids group and double my work load as I now had to organize two delegations instead of one. This basically meant that for the 10 days they were in the country, I was working every waking moment as I showed everyone around during the day and fought crime by night... I mean, entertained the adults. Oh, and just to add, these 10 days just so happened to overstep the length of my one-year contract with the town by 4 days, meaning that I was paid extra to stick around. Sweeeet. This also mean that for those last couple days I was sharing the apartment with the new guy as technically it wasn't my place anymore.

So what does "entertaining" mean, you ask? Well, it means that it was my job to take them out to a baseball game complete with phallic-shaped balloons that they ritually shoot off on the 7th inning stretch (mail me if you wanna see the pics), interpreting a beer factory tour complete with a stop off at the beer garden afterwards, several wild and crazy karaoke sessions, an excellent free concert with Hajime Chitose that I was looking forward to pretty much the whole week, some awesome free meals at 5-star hotels and meetings with governors and mayor-type people, and day trips all over the place from Tokyo to Fukushima to Miyagi. It was exhausting and yet some of the best fun I had in my short year there at the same time.

This took me through to August 10th, which was both my and the delegation's last day in Shichigahama. I accompanied them all the way to the airport and saw them to the gates, after which I and my old boss went downtown to share a few drinks and such along with a CIR from a few years back that's working in Tokyo... or at least is for now. He gave his boss a 2-month notice that he's leaving the country the day we met! I had half my luggage with me at the time and went straight from there to my new home here in Yokohama to sleep on the floor (and by this I of course mean a futon) since I hadn't bought proper bedding yet. I still had to go back and get the rest of my stuff which was left behind and sort out the car situation... you see, a car down here would probably be more of a burden than an asset, so it was with great pain and regret that I bid farewell to the coolest car ever and the fastest wheels I'd ever owned - the party wagon. I hope your next owner appreciates your coolness as much as I, my friend.

Ok, next time I'll pick up with the first days down here in Yokohama with its concerts, clubs, and parties.

Bond, James Bond. In Japan!

So the enigmatic job title that I currently hold is CIR, short for Coordinator of International Relations. The title is purposely vague because you never know what might come with it - some translate and interpret all day while I run beach parties and wine tastings, with some English and culture classes thrown in there for variety. I've also recently given a speech about Maryland and attended a couple wedding parties held at work as a sort of liaison of sorts and will also get to go to a concert, a beer factory tour (beer garden visit included), and a baseball game when I'm showing a delegation around in a few weeks as interpreter and tour coordinator.

However, this all pales in comparison to this:

That's right, Bond! A CIR down in Kagawa Prefecture is parading around like Bond on tv and events in this Bond-obsessed area in attempts to persuade the Bond people to shoot their next movie there. Apparently there was a Bond book which features this prefecture in its climax, so they've petitioned for it and do all sorts of Bond events, including picking a local Bond girl to parade around with our young hero, Andrew Cockburn. Lucky bastard.

Now don't get me wrong - the cosplay photo shoots and hula dancing randomness of Shichigahama is cool, and I've been on tv and in print a few times myself, but this is one job that I think anyone could enjoy. Sad thing is though, I'm sure they picked a Brit specifically, and photos come with the applications so I'm sure they screened for that as well. Sometimes being blond sucks... but then there's the rest of the time, so I'll be ok.

By the way, there's vids and all here if you missed it above, so by all means check it out.

And here's a personal account from the lucky bastard himself from the CIR forums:

When I first arrived in Kagawa, there was already quite a lot of 007 stuff going on. The latest (absolutely awful) 007 novel is called "The Man With The Red Tattoo", and the climax of the book is set on Naoshima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea owned by Kagawa. In the book, there's a G8 summit on Naoshima which is threatened by terrorists with killer mosquitoes, and Bond naturally saves the day. When the people of Naoshima caught wind of this, they realised that if only they could get "The Man With The Red Tattoo" made into a film then THEIR ISLAND would be in a Bond movie!!!!

So starting in 2004, with the help of the prefectural government, Naoshima has been campaigning for the next Bond Film to be made here. So far, efforts have included an 80,000+ signature petition, the creation of a 007 museum on Naoshima (well worth a look if you go to the island - it's free and really cute), and several awareness-raising parties, including the one I participated in 2 weekends ago, with the theme of "Find Kagawa's Bond Girl", and one we had to coincide with the release of Casino Royale last year, which was called 「００７電車でGO!!」, and we all took a train to the famous temple in Kagawa, Konpira Jingu, and watched a sacred fan dance and prayed for the success of Casino Royale and that the next film would be made in Kagawa. Then on the way back we had an hour long booze up on the train with live music (a harpist!), and a 007 general knowledge quiz. Truly random. At the party we had a couple of weeks ago, they had me up on stage in only my swimming shorts doing fire-poi at half time in the judging, and then after that some of the contestants wanted to speak in English so I had to interpret that to the crowd still half naked. A cool Martini, shaken, not stirred was very much in order once I had that over with!

It's pretty good fun being Bond.. Every couple of months there's a flurry of media interest in the campaign, and we get film crews coming along to film me and Naoshima, and I dress up as Bond and point my replica Walther PPKand run around catching bad guys! Also at the last party, the final winner was a really cool lady called Sachie Manabe who just got back from a couple of years' study in America, and so is awesome at English and from now on, we'll probably being going on tv together quite a lot. (For instance next Tuesday we're off to the KSB studios to be in a news article!!!)

That's pretty much the whole story. The parties are really good fun, in Kagawa people recognise me as Bond every so often, and I get to be on tv as an action hero!

Enkai 101: Introduction to the Japanese office drinking party

Man, it's so easy to lose track of holidays out here... I totally forgot about Easter and kept on forgetting that today was July 4th, and that that actually means something! A phone call from my bro jogged the 'ol memory though, as did a couple emails and convos with people throughout the day who aren't as senile as I apparently am becoming.

So anyway, last night was a blast - we had a big party for everyone at work since we just went through the annual personnel shift. As documented before, there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, but these kinds of things happen annually. In my town they did it in July for whatever reason despite the rest of the country doing things in April. To show you how nonsensical it is, my boss got transferred from the international relations department to... ready for it? The water department! Because I guess they really needed someone who can give things a fresh and wide perspective concerning the town's water gathered from years of international experience. His replacement? A guy from the cultural policy department who's international experience includes a trip to Hong Kong and... well ok, apparently just a trip to Hong Kong. Oh, and he tells me he doesn't like planes either, so I think he's the perfect choice for a job that includes him escorting children on tours of the US eastern shore board. He's actually pretty cool, but it still makes no sense to me to make people with years of experience start over from square one every few years.

Alas, I digress. So office drinking parties - the Japanese enkai. They're sort of like Vegas in a way - what happens at the enkai stays at the enkai (except in this blog =P). With places like Shichigahama where everyone's close, everything's really relaxed since it's like going out with family. You find out all the dirt on people and watch people make total asses out of themselves. I hear there are some offices where you're still expected to keep up pretenses and formalities, but here is definitely not one of those places. For instance, the other night the one girl we have in my office slapped both me and the facility director in the face at different points, as well as running around calling everyone by their first name (I've never heard the director called Katsuaki-kun... very funny stuff when you're used to everyone using 'san' and mostly last names). She was upset because at the last enkai we had a few months ago I talked her into drinking an Irish car bomb, after which she passed out sitting up in her chair for about 10 minutes and then spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom praying to the god of porcelain before someone drove her home.

Personally I don't think it was the car bomb that did here in as she had a nice little drink queue going before that as well. She's got all kinds of goofy drunken tales and adventures... and injuries. Like the one time she came in with a bandage on her leg from where she burned herself by curling up in front of her space heater in the winter and passing out after a night on the town. Or the time she couldn't sit down or walk right for a week because she fell right on her coccyx on the sidewalk on the way out of a bar. That, and she invariably talks about how much of the last night's festivities she doesn't remember - this time, it was at least half the night. So yeah, I don't think my one drink was the real problem there, no matter how much punch it packs.

Other things I've found out at enkais include the fact that one guy at work is separated but still married to a woman that does piano lessons here every week - they sat on opposite sides of the room at the party though and don't get along at all. Oh, and then there's the one guy that had a shotgun wedding yet is still happily married. Besides gossip, it's an opportunity to find out what you have in common with people and get closer to your coworkers, which is really the whole point. I first really got to know my best friend out here at the enkai, after which we've shared many a snowboard run and karaoke room, at which he can sing any Green Day song you throw at him. We've both helped each other out at work with different things as well.

So they have these ritualistic gatherings periodically- either for holidays like New Year's, or welcome/goodbye parties, or after big projects, etc. I hear that some offices have little games (some with prizes), or that sometimes people will dress up in goofy costumes and such, but in my office they just drink. A lot. No formalities or pretenses, just let it all loose and have a drink or 12. The next day, everyone shows up at 9 and suffers through the day together with that look of mutual satisfaction. From the sounds of it, I'm guessing Mike out in Korea gets the same treatment out there too. Yey asia! Where else can you go out drinking with your boss and call him a pustulating rectal wart and smack him in the face one night, then act like nothing happened the next day at work?

What's my job again?

So I constantly get asked what my job is and what exactly it is I do... even my one friend that works in the same facility (not my office though) had no clue what my job entails without further explanation. All he knew was that he'd walk in my office and see me pecking away at a keyboard all the time - if I'm busy I'm all over the place, but there's definitely a bunch of down time or prep time in this job depending on the time of year which sees me in front of a computer. Of course then there's my job title itself - Coordinator of International Relations. Could it be more vague? I mean sure it's accurate, in the sense that statements like "I eat food" or "on weekends I like to do stuff" are accurate, but knowing my job title doesn't really clear things up regarding what I do from 9-5, or sometimes 1-9 on the daily. It really is a rather random job though that has me all over the place at times.... coordinating international relations. Among CIRs across the country that I've spoken to however, it sounds like my office is definitely an exception as I don't hear stories of hula cowboys or cosplay photoshoots or salsa on the water from many others.

So I thought I'd share a story about one of the more bizarre functions that I perform. You see, in my time here I've found that if someone comes to my office and wants to speak English, that's actually part of my job. I thought it was sort of weird at first, but they've told me to just go and talk to people - sort of like a rent-a-friend one on one English club of my very own. Woo. I get random guests coming to visit every now and then, ranging from foreign residents, to students that want to study abroad or already have, to an old guy that retired and moved to the Philippines, to some goofy tall guy that came in wearing a cowboy hat and boots to go with his Johnny Cash bolo tie and all black suit, and most recently to a group of middle-aged women, which in Japanese I refer to as baachans, that have their own little baachan English club where they talk about baachan things. They have commissioned me to give a speech for them on Maryland next week actually, but that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is the head baachan. Her English really isn't that bad actually - she's a tour guide out in Matsushima, a tourist attraction not too far from here, and does tours in English and translates tourist info sometimes. The funny thing about talking to baachans in English though is that they are totally Japanese about it, which among other things means acting all super-impressed at everything you say or do while showering you in meaningless compliments and asking me if it's ok before doing anything. She has complimented me on not only my Japanese, but also mysteriously on my English... because I have a spectacular American accent. Baachans are like the social equivalents to the guy on acid that's amused by fast moving objects with bright shiny colors - doesn't take much to impress them. If they see me use chopsticks to eat sushi while drinking green tea their heads might explode.

So this particular baachan, the baachan boss if you will, called me up one day. I thought she wanted to confirm some things as I had just sent her the title for my speech, but she just starts going on and on about totally unrelated stuff which I had no clue about. She went on for about a good half hour about this guy she knew and the missionaries in my town and some other random stuff which I've probably just mentally blocked at this point. Basically, she just wanted someone to talk to in English. Then for whatever reason I agree to help her with some translation with Buddhas and shiny scepters and stuff - fax it off and sure enough, her comes the phonecall.

The last call I got from her though was totally out of the blue and absolutely puts all the rest to shame. So she calls up last week for apparently no reason whatsoever, and recounts a harrowing tale of her struggles at a local middle school. She prefaces this story with the disclaimer that she hurt her shoulder and was at first too embarrased to share it with her physician why, but apparently felt perfectly fine telling me, a complete stranger whom she just met a whole month prior. I've found that some Japanese will share stuff with you before other Japanese people since they figure there's less of a chance of you telling people they know or something. It seriously sounded like she had scripted this speech out - sounded way too rehearsed but hilarious nonetheless.

First she tells me that she teaches some Canadian exchange students Japanese at the middle school - ok, fine. And apparently the principal of said school told her to use the handicapped bathroom when she needs to since it's the cleanest. This particular day however, she used the girls bathroom on the 2nd floor since she was up there for her class. Sounds normal enough. So all the stalls are full since they're between classes, so she waits. A stall opens up, but the door to said stall is looking a little iffy. It's a little crooked and she has trouble getting it closed. Uh-oh. After a slight struggle, she gets the door closed and goes about her business. Upon completion, she has a little trouble getting the door open again. Oh no, what to do? She yells for help, but everyone's now in class and can't hear her calls. I'm biting my lip at this point as she verbally acts out the scene through the receiver. Now next, she said she attempted to climb over the door but got stuck, then whacked her shoulder but finally got over. I was trying soooo hard not to laugh at this point - I mean, first of all who does this happen to, and more importantly WHY WOULD SHE CALL ME TO TALK ABOUT IT??? In exscrutiating detail, in English no less!!

But hey, that's my job right? Sure. I have other functions, but this has to be one of the more bizarre ones - English speaker, extraordinaire. I seriously do get the impression that they just pay me to be the white guy sometimes. Meh, it's a living.

What I did on my Golden Week vacation...

Work!!! And not just work, overtime! That's right, this Golden Week, the one time of year that most people working full time office jobs take time off of their standard routine of feigning busyness staggered with the occasional interruption of real work, was spent working. (note: Japanese people do work hard most of the time actually, albeit rather inefficiently if you ask me.) Friends are taking trips to Vietnam, or Thailand, or China, or even San Francisco, and I'm at work helping out with the biggest event my office has annually.

The event? A 3-day annual cultural bonanza featuring Argentina. Awesome food, a great tango performance, some friends (new or otherwise), and 6,300 people. First we sold out on all the beer, then the wine, then the cookies and food. It was tiring, but I could deal with that kind of work all the time - outside in perfect weather, talking to people and having a good time. In addition to the performers we had flown/bullet-trained in from Tokyo and Fukuoka, there was a guy that volunteered to help out from Osaka that took a bus (crazy - at least 10 hours over the 2 buses) and a fellow CIR that came up from around Tokyo. She's the only Argentinian JET in the country. Oh, and the Argentinian ambassador was there too, with my job being to shadow him the whole day.

It's sort of a blessing in disguise if you ask me, since with Golden Week being the biggest vacation week for Japanese rivaled only by New Year's, all the big locations are 1) busy as hell, cramped with people and 2) at least twice the normal price. So yeah, I was spared that and given time off to do with what I would. And with that time, I have 2 4-day weekends, one of which will be spent in Tokyo with some friends. I've also gotten some much needed cleaning done around here, and yesterday got to take a nice leisurely jaunt down to Shiroishi to play some soccer on a really nice pitch.

I learned a little something yesterday... or I guess I should say I was reminded of something. It takes forever to get anywhere by car in Japan. No wonder they think 5 hours in a car is far - it's exhausting out here! See, now if I took the highway then I probably would've been down to Shiroishi in about 45mins. to an hour, depending on how saucy I was feeling that day. I also would've been shelling out something like 1500yen each way though, making it a rather expensive endeavor indeed. No, I instead decided that the weather was nice, so I'd take my time and take the regular roads. The problem there? Speed limits of 50km/h the whole way if I'm lucky, and a light on every single block. The. Whole. Way. So what should've been a 1-hr. trip becomes 2, and I barely make it in time for the match.

So yeah, if you're going by yourself and you can take the train or suffer the consequences - the trip would've been about 1:15 or so by train if properly timed. And if going with people, take the highway and split the outrageous fares. Oh, and I hear that June is car tax month too, because the super high fares and amazingly high taxes on gas aren't enough to keep the roads in good shape apparently. And this is why it's expensive to have a car in Japan.

1 in 60

Yeah, so the other day over the course of promoting a certain event aimed at the local foreign population I usually don't get to talk to I found out an interesting tidbit of information that I've actually been wondering about for a while now: the foreign population of my town. So here it is: 60 people. That's right, out of 21,299 registered residents 60 of those are non-Japanese nationals, comprizing roughly 0.3% of the overall population. That also means that I personally make up 1.6% of the overall foreign population of my town!

Going around, we talked to one woman from Hong Kong who is raising her family here, found that some Peruvians are working at a local factory, and stopped by the residence of another Chinese person, a guy whose wife is Thai, and a Brazilian's place. Oh, and as an aside I believe I've already met all the western population of Shichigahama - all 4 of us. That makes 2 JETs with Joe and I, then 2 missionaries that live up on the hill. Maybe that number's off if they have other family with them, but I know they're the only others here.

So that just goes to show you exactly how much I stand out here, and serves to show how my every move is known by most everyone around that matters as well as a bunch of people that don't. The question that remains is how exactly I can and should interact with said foreign population, and if there's anything personally that I can do that would make their time here easier or more enjoyable. I'll have to look into that... it's on the "to do" list.

Oh, and those numbers are well below the national average of 1.6% foreign population if you were keeping score, but then that's not really too surprising for a little beach town off the beaten track that's tucked just far enough out of the way to avoid getting too much attention. The only reason people would have to notice this place is if we make enough noise to garner being looked upon.

Back in the office... for now

So today's the first day back at work for the new year... I guess. We're in the office, but the place is still closed to the public until tomorrow I think. Everyone showed up in suits today, but apparently that memo didn't get around to me. A bunch of the important people around town have come by today to say happy new year, which means lots of bowing.

From here out though, I'm actually taking the next 10 days off to visit Thailand: the land of spicy salads, muay thai, painfully good massages, and clear blue waters. Yesterday I was on a ski slope with -10C(15F) weather, and the day after tomorrow I'll be on a beach with 30C(mid-80's F) weather. I've never been in a country where I couldn't speak the local language before, so this should be a nice little adventure. And with that said, enjoy your frosted lawns and windshields, and I shall see you on the flip side!

I shall leave you with the pride of my weekly picture collection - allow me to present: Monkey Crossing!!! It looks a bit more like a gorilla to me, but whatever it's still cool.

We hope you all a happy Merry Christmas!!

So the above is what the caption on the lower right originally was going to say, but that's what they keep me around for, right? So it's getting to be that time of year around here and they are certainly into the decorations thing. Besides them working on the decorations around here for the past 3 days at work, I've seen a couple random houses around town that are lit up, which I never saw back in Chiba. It sorta reminds me of how way more people up in PA around my brother's place went all out for Halloween decorations than around my place in the 'burbs. So yeah, Christmas looks to be interesting - I'll try and get better pics once things are done and all lit up. I of course brought my Santa hat with me, which shall be for all intents and purposes glued to my skull for the better part of the next month.

And in other news, I would like to take this opportunity to say hi to Mike out in Seoul! I hadn't heard from him in a while, but I might have a chance to meet up with him in the not to distant future - we studied in Chiba together. Check out his blog if you want in the links. Oh, and as an aside, Mike's quote of the day was "feeding only breast milk 7 months aged babys may help in case of regurgitating babies." They have Engrish in Korea too!! Personally I like Chinglish... search around for some good Chinese English restaurant menus and you'll know what I mean. I also hear that they get Buddha's birthday off in Korea, and they call it Buddhanikuh. Ok, I made up that last part.

Now this weekend coming up is the annual JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), and I'm again taking the highest level. I failed last year with a 60% (70% is passing, btw) and am hoping to do a little better this time around considering I've been busting my hump on the books and have a lot more daily practice now. Normally this test means that you have the basic knowledge required to apply to tertiary educational facilities as a normal student, so that'd put me at something like the level of a high school senior if I could actually speak up to that level. All I know is that half the stuff I'm learning now is the kind of stuff that I'll either never use or have to go waaaay out of my way to do so - or just read more I guess as some of it's literary stuff.

Oh, and finally basketball. Sweet, lovely college basketball. I leave the country for a year and what happens? The Terps take the frickin' championship for the first time ever! Then I come back just in time for the past 2 years of lackluster mediocrity. Now I'm out of the country again, and here they come! 8-0! So I hear this Greivis guy looks pretty good and we have a decent point guard and stuff, but I haven't gotten a chance to actually watch any games yet. I'm trying to set it up to have this guy record stuff for viewing online on his Slingbox, which is one of the coolest things to come out since Hello Kitty toilet paper, along of course with the rest of the fine line of Sanrio inspired products. So cross your fingers on that one - if they keep it up and I can't watch games anytime I want by the time the ACC season starts I will not be a happy individual.

Ok, time to go to my tutor's before I check out Yodobashi Camera to point and stare at all the people standing in line for the Wii, which shall be released at midnight tonight I believe. I'd love for someone around me to buy it so I can go over and play it for free... I know, I'm such a nice guy sometimes.

My boss wears a girdle, and I have 2 month's worth of "pet bottles"

True story. So I'm back in town from Tokyo - had a conference in Shinjuku this past week and decided to go down early for a much needed vacation. I got a free ride down with a friend in his truck last Friday night, so I taught him some very useful English along the way. He now knows how to say "I gotta pee", "you are lame", "I'm a pimp", "you suck", and "I'll lay the smackdown on your ass." Gotta start with the basics, right?

So once we got down to Tokyo, the main 2 highlights were 1) food, and 2) meeting other CIRs from around the country. I had some pretty nice Korean BBQ, a Thanksgiving dinner starring pumpkin pie (but no gravy), some Mexican food twice, and some pretty good Indian food. On the people end, it was really good to network with people - in addition to fresh faces I got to meet a few people that I had talked to online but never had a chance to actually meet yet. It was fun.

Oh yeah, and there was this 20th anniversary dealie for JET, so they had a big reception and ceremony and stuff which I scored an invitation to - the crown prince of Japan was there, which was cool. Even cooler though was this one chick from Kyoto that spoke at the panel discussion they had in a really thick Kansai accent. If that means nothing to you, imagine some southern Georgia belle or a guy from the Bronx at a snazzy symposium and you'll get the same effect. I must say though that the Kyoto accent to me is totally hot! What can I say, I'm a sucker for girls with a foreign accent, even if it's a regional one in Japanese. Then again, Japanese accents in English are stupid to me, so I guess it isn't always true. Maybe it only works for girls that are already hot, in which case one could argue it's not working at all... ok, I'll stop now.

Where was I? Oh yeah, anniversary dinner which came with a free extra night in Tokyo, with which I went out to a club. I got to do my "tako dance"(tako = octopus). Then I come back, and my boss is wearing a girdle for back pains. He insists it's because he's too fat, but he's also been under a lot of stress because his dad's in bad shape - currently still in the hospital. So he says that he's as fat as an American, to which my response of course is that I'm American and he's fatter than me, which makes him fatter than an American. Then I told him maybe he should change nationalities. Since he's one of the like 5 people out of 20,000+ in my town that gets American humor he laughed.

And now for the other part of the title. What's a "pet bottle" you ask? Well, that's a pet bottle. Or more exactly, according to wiki... "Polyethylene terephthalate (aka PET, PETE or the obsolete PETP or PET-P) is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family that is used in synthetic fibers; beverage, food and other liquid containers; thermoforming applications; and engineering resins often in combination with glass fiber." Wiki is my friend.;P


See here's the deal: see that chart? That's a sample trash schedule from somewhere's in Japan. You're supposed to seperate things into like 6 different categories before you throw them away, and they give you this nifty color-coordinated trash schedule to sort out which day you're supposed to throw what stuff away. If you try to throw the wrong stuff away on the wrong day they give it back to you. If you throw the right stuff away but don't use the right bag, they give it back to you. If you don't get there by 8:30am when the truck comes, you get to hold on to it til next time. And the best part is that there are certain things, like these pet bottles, which only get tossed one day out of the month. That day happened to be last week when I was out of town, so now I have an overflowing pet bottle trash recepticle with 2 months worth of the things. I think I might have to saunter over to the local 7-11 in the middle of the night all ninja-like and dump them in their trash can, since that's about the only place you can find public trash cans around here. It's either that or wait until December 21st, the next pet bottle day. I wonder how many I could collect by then...

And finally, I'm cold. That is all.