Yesterday I went to my first ever pro-league baseball game in Japan. And it was A W E S O M E. I lurved it. Actually baseball is not huge in Holland and I was never that interested in the game, but since I played it with a friend of mine in Tokyo 5 years ago for fun I started liking it more and more.
Since I live in Osaka, the Osaka team Hanshin Tigers is the one to root for. I’ll have it no other way. The Hanshin Tigers rock. Well except yesterday. Exactly the game I see live and they lose. Hey its NOT my fault, lets get that straight heh.
Japanese sports are soooo very different from European sports. Everybody is so cheerful and happy, EVEN when they lose. That is one of the reasons I seriously HATE sports in Europe. Always hooligans, always drunk (well here too actually hehe) and always fighting. It should be like the sports here in Japan. The thing is, f.e. amongst the hundreds and thousands of Hanshin fans there were a few Hiroshima fans shouting. You CANT do that in Holland. If f.e. a Real fan is amidst of Ajax, Arsenal or Roma fans, it will be his last match. Not here.
My friend and I were actually sitting at the quiet side of the stadium, right across the field was the core of the fans, singing, chanting, waving huge flags. I learned that Hanshin has a few songs/cheers/anthems, but I couldn’t make out any of them, so we just hummed the same sounds heh. Plus they use these 2 plastic bats, smash them together on the beats.
Check it out in the video, not really clear, but in the end you can see some bats being smashed together.
The first 4 innings went smooth, points for both teams. Hanshin Tigers had a bit trouble getting into the game but managed to score 4 points in the 3rd inning. After that it went downhill for Hanshin. for 5 straight innings they didn’t manage to score 1 single point.
BUT, the crowd didn’t give up. Almost at the end of the 6th inning everybody in the audience started inflating balloons. The audience was completely filled with balloons and when the teams changed at the 6 to 7th inning. PWROAP!!!
Thousands of balloons flew in the air. What a friggin nice sight. And it helped. Hanshin Tigers got strength again. from a 5-11 score they score 3 points and made it 8-11. But unfortunately, not enough.
European (soccer)fans should take an example of this. This how sports should be.
Go Tigers.
a crappy video I made with my cellphone. Note to self: bring HD camera next time.
Click on the image to see he big version. Today not many kanji’s to explain but rather the meaning of the whole. As you might expect the image explains half of the sign.
だれかがきっとみているぞ
あやしい人見つけたら
110番
We’ll only handle this part of the text. As you can see on he image, it clearly shows a ninja sneaking in a large hallway. Of course this is forbidden in Japan.
だれかがきっとみているぞ
Somebody is almost certainly looking at you!
あやしい人見つけたら
If you see a suspicious person (あやしい人)
110番
Number 110.
Thus meaning, if you see a suspicious character, dial 110!
The kanji in this lesson are
人 ひと (hito) or にん (nin) which means: “Person, man. It can be used for a counter like 二人 (futa-ri) - 2 Persons. Or you can use it as a person from a country. F.e. American – アメリカ人 (America-Jin).
the other kanji is
見 from 見つけたら which comes from the word 見つける (mitsukeru) which means: Find, locate, discover, to detect. 見 on its own has a similar yet a different meaning: 見る(miru) – to look, to see, to watch or to view, which are the most common meanings for this kanji. 見 and 人 are very important kanji’s and you will often see these around.
Here are some common words that make use of the same kanji:
Today, January 17 2010 it has been exactly 15 years since the terrible Hanshin Earthquake. The earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 (which is not THAT big, but shaked horizontally instead of vertically (or so I have been told) took 6434 lives and left more than 300.000 homeless.
I thought back about what I was doing at the time the quake hit, 15 years ago. I was only 15 back then, and I didn’t get much info about the earthquake then. Maybe because it was a far from my bed story or maybe I was just too busy playing. In the last 2 years Ive picked up a lot of information and insights from the quake.
The quake that had its epicenter in Awaji an Island below Kobe, had a magnitude of 7.3 which isn’t extremely high. But the quake in Kobe apparently shaked horizontally which is why is caused way more damage than any other earthquake with the same magnitude, not to mention of course that everything in Japan is built adjacent.
Here you can see what I meant:
I found a HD documentary about the earthquake in English which is self explanatory.
Check it out.
Something completely new today. Well new…Not sure if it’s done before, but I introduce you, the PapiGiulio Japanese Sign Meanings Education or a.k.a. PJSME. Errrr something like that. What I do is, I pick (a) sign(s) in and around Japan every week and explain the meaning of the signs and/or the kanji in the signs. Depending on how much signs I have I will for now post only 1 each week.
Readers who are interested in adding signs or would like to know the meaning of some signs, please by all means send me an email with the signs and ill be happy to translate the signs (of course your name will be included in the picture) and post it here.
I thought this might be a good idea for both my study of the Japanese symbols and of course fun for the readers plus for people who want to find their way around Japan, even though they now have almost 90 % translated in English heh. Oh and please DO correct me if my translation is wrong.
Yerrrr well let’s start of with a simple one. click on the image above. What you see is a Japanese firehydrant. And of course very easy, the kanji (Japanese markings) on the firehydrant of course stand for the meaning: firehydrant also known as Shoukasen (消火栓)
The interesting part about this word is that it combines the words Extinguish/Erase (消) and Fire (火) …get it?
So what have we learned:
消火栓 = しょうかせん = Shoukasen = Firehydrant
I will not go into the deeper details for each kanji, because that might be too difficult for some of you.
Happy New Year everyone. Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu! あけまして おめでとう ございます！
Hope everybody survived new years eve. 2010, a new year, hopefully filled with positive vibes.
I don’t remember talking about the typical Japanese customs on new years day, even though I think it’s not very different from the rest in the world. In the morning everyone starts a grand breakfast. Unless you live alone, it will be prolly a bowl of cereal. In Japan the breakfast usually consist of Sushi, Fishcakes (蒲鉾 kamaboko), Dark soybeans (Kuromame 黒豆) and many other DELICIOUS foods.
What follows after the breakfast (well not necessarily after, but now for the heck of it). People check the mail for New Years cards, or nengajyou (年賀状)
Like many Japanese traditions, there is a specific etiquette that has no equal in Western culture. While Christmas cards arrive anytime from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, nengajyou are expected to be delivered on January 1st. Even though this is a strict rule, don’t be surprised when some cards arrive a day later.
You can buy nengajyou cards almost anywhere in December and they usually come prestamped, saving you a lot of hassle to buy stamps or going to the postoffice. Plus the upside of the nengajyou is that you can put them in special mailboxes that can also be found almost anywhere in December.
Since some of the designs of the nengajyou are quite simple and boring, many people spend some time to make their own designed nengajyou which is usually (I come to find out) a picture of their child(ren) or photo from a big event that year (wedding). But of course you also have other “cool” designs. Unfortunately this year I was a bit late with both the xmas cards and the nengajyou so I had to buy some simple nengajyou’s. But definitely next year I’ll be making my own. Note to self: start thinking on a nice 2010/2011 concept
Waiting for your bundle of nengajyou (they literally arrive bundled together) and reading the flood of New Year’s wishes on January 1st is a cherished holiday tradition, similar to waiting for presents and opening them on Christmas.
So I expect a lot of nengajyou’s from yous! Happy new year
2009 was both a good and a bad year. Ive made a lot of progress in my own field (3d modelling) and of course improved my Japanese which is both good. On the other hand I lost both my grandmother and grandfather in 1 month which wrecked me. The thing I’m mostly sad about is that I couldn’t give them a proper farewell, especially my grandfather. It goes without saying that I miss them a lot.
I got to meet Faisal for the first time in real life, which was awesome. I had a great time! I heard he will be moving to Japan in 2010. He bought a nice crib somewhere in Tokyo Shibuya where theres a lot of sexy Japanese women heh.
I got my first photo shoot assignment which involved 2 friends dressing up as Maiko’s! You can find the whole photoshoot on flickr only for now, will up it to my facebook profile one of these days. click here
And other noteworthy things: Going to a Japanese wedding twice, which I have to say, that Japanese weddings are friggin expensive. More on that later. The moms came over from Holland, colleagues leaving my office, 1 day holiday at Maizuru, friskyRadio finally managed to get John Digweed on air in Monaque’s October show, friends of mine become fathers. (why all of this noteworthy? actually I dont know, p*ss off!)
But it has been a slow year on the photography front. Shame, I have to check more into that this year.
AS for now, counting down 5,5 hours left until NY. Goodbye 2009, I loved you, but I wont miss you.
Aaaaaand he’s back! As the Japanese would say, Hisashiburi everyone.
It’s been 5 months give or take if im not mistaken and im really GLAD to be back. Some new ideas for my blog, lots of venting to do. God I missed it. And this is all possible thnx to the one and only friskyGeek.com. Thanks alot bruv, I owe you big time.
I had to get a new url, since the transfer of my .com URL failed and it got locked by the effin registrar. For which thanks a lot you pugface c*nts. So im currently located on a secret server somewhere 10000 miles below sealevel. Heavily protected and….. ahh nah, just prolly in someones shed.
I am however very pissed off at losing ALL my data. I made countless of back ups, but apparently forgot about the database backups. F*CK!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ah well, guess its time to start with a clean slate.
Lot’s of things happened in the time I was gone. Im still in Japan, loving my life in Osaka with the missus. Yes we are STILL married. Can’t believe she didn’t kick me out yet. I did the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam beginning of December. LEvel 3. Not sure if I made it. 3 parts: Kanji, Listening and Grammar. Im 95% sure I got the Kanji, 80% sure about the listening part, but the grammar I think I failed HORRIBLY. The results will be in in February so hang on.
And of course it’s ALMOST NEW YEAR. 1 day and counting. I have to admit I’m not to keen on celebrating christmas and new year in Japan as it just ain’t the same like in Europe or the States. But I do digg the Japanese christmas cards they have here (as you can see above) click ere and ere.
So what better way to start the new year with a new, well semi new, too friggin lazy to make a completely new design. Wish everyone happy holidays and an outstanding 2010. Im sure it will be a SPLENDID YEAR.
