a-cubed.info

After visiting Japan in 2007 for the Worldcon (Nippon 2007) Charlie Stross wrote in his travelblog that Japan had “got our future, damn it!”. I’ve just moved into a new-build apartment in Tokyo and thought I’d share some initial impressions of up to date living conditions in Tokyo, some of which clearly represent Charlie’s impression, but some of which are not ideal or futuristic. (more…)

I went to IKEA in Minami Funabashi in Eastern Tokyo yesterday. I kept noticing the music because it seemed like they’d copied a random selection of music off my media player: Suzanne Vega, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and many others. Obviously, I’m in their target audience. I didn’t buy anything, though we may get a sofa from them, at least partly because they keep stock in unlike most of the companies where it’s a minimum three week, and up to eight week, wait.

I’m part of the committee running HalCon next month in Omiya just North of Tokyo. It’s a (hopefully annual) bi-lingual Japanese/English SF convention. We’ve got two guests this year, Charlie Stross from the UK and Ooishi Masaru from Japan. As part of our con online presence we have a blog on which I posted the following piece about Charlie Stross, which I thought might interest people here as well.

Charlie’s Just This Guy I Know (more…)

In all the time I’ve spent in Japan over the last three years I’ve never felt a significant earthquake. People keep asking me if I’m OK whenever they hear there’s an earthquake in Japan, but I’ve either slept through the minor ones tangible in Tokyo or they’ve been in Hokkaidoor Kyushu. But, we’ve just moved in to a new apartment on the 9th floor of a building and on Sunday night there was a minor tremor with epicentre close to Tokyo. I definitely felt that one. It seemed to go on for quite a long time, but I suspect some of that was the building anti-earthquake measures stretching out the energy into smaller vibrations which go on for longer, rather than shorter time scale but bigger movement. Or maybe it was just a relatively long but minor earthquake. This convinces me about my wife’s concerns regarding furnishing the new apartment fully, making sure particularly the bookshelves are securely fixed to the walls, and have either bars on the front of the shelves, or doors with anti-earthquake latches on them.

As this blog has been down for a while due to technical issues, I posted this on my LJ already. From 1st April I have a new job. I will be a professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics, at Meiji University in Tokyo. I will be travelling to Japan at the beginning of March.

So, I’ve managed to go swimming twice more and it reminded me of a couple of thing that are different that I didn’t mention in the previous post on this.

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Yesterday I went swimming for the first time in nine years. I haven’t been swimming since I moved to Reading, and the last time I remember being in a pool was during 2Kon in 2000. I’m pretty out of shape and have been gaining weight again recently. I blame the stress, but also the disruption to lifestyle that the travelling I’ve been doing produces. It’s hard to take regular exercise and eat healthily when you spend a third of your time jet-lagged and ten 1-4 day trips away from home in three months is awkward. So, while in Tokyo for the summer I figured that swimming would be a good habit to get into. There’s a public pool attached to a nearby High School (the usual deal of the School provides some of the funding and gets first dibs for lessons/competitions while the city provides the rest of the funding and it’s open to the public the rest of the time). So, swimming in Japan was an interesting experience. (more…)

In December 2007 I took the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test/Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken) Level 3. The pass rate is 60% and I fell somewhat below this with an overall score of 54%, including a very disappointing score below 40% in the Listening section. I took the test again in December 2008 (it’s run worldwide and for all levels concurrently and only once per year at present). It takes them three months to process the results, which I got in the post this morning. This time round I passed well, with an overall 70% (280/400) and scores of 69/100 for Writing/Vocabulary, 78/100 for Listening and 133/200 for Reading/Grammar.
The Level 2 test is the one that shows a proper functional level of Japanese, though and that will take me at least one more year and probably until December 2010 until I can pass that one. Then it usually takes another two years to get to Level 1. Apart from anything else, for Level 4 you need 120 kanji, Level 3 needs 300, Level 2 needs 1000 and Level 1 needs 2000 (this is approximately equivalent to High School graduation literacy in Japan).
So, a long way to go in learning Japanese but a satisfying milestone.

So, I found a reasonably priced book on Amazon.co.uk available through one of their external sellers. Said seller is in Florida. As always when ordering such things I got three emails confirming the order: Amazon confirming the order; Amazon confirming the payment to the external seller; the external seller confirming receipt of the order. The odd thing is that the external seller sent me their confirmation message in Japanese. As this is a prolific external Amazon seller, whose trading name I vaguely recognise, I can only think that I’ve ordered from this seller via Amazon.co.jp (with whom I also have an account, of course) and their system somehow managed to tie up the two separate accounts – not difficult by any means given I don’t try to hide my identity particularly on these transactions, but it would take some work since the co.uk and co.jp accounts and indeed stores are separate entities.

I noted the other day that Pizza Hut in Japan is translated into Katakana as Piza Hatto. I commented that Hatto was more like boshi (hat) than koya (hut). I was then informed that everyone in Japan thinks that piza hatto refers to a Pizza Hat, since the logo (only in flash, I’m afraid) looks rather like a hat (instead of interpreting it as the roof (yane) of a small building). It just goes to show what a logo and translation can do to the meaning of your company name!