On Host Clubs, Racism and Robotics

This is a pretty snazzy little documentary by Japanese-American Adam Yamaguchi for the show "Vanguard".



Usually when I see Westerners talk about Japan about TV, especially when they talk about major cultural differences like femmy men pouring drinks for yuppie spinsters, or the emergence of robots in the workplace, they present it as being extremely weird-yet-common place (in a "that's so Japanese" sort of way), so it's refreshing to see something that's well analyzed and with a knowledgeable host.

I still don't quite get the robot thing though. Maybe Kyushu is too inaka (ie. the boonies), but I've never seen a robot in Japan. Not once, ever. But, unlike other news magazine documentaries I've seen about the robotics-versus-immigration debate (or, "non-humans versus sub-humans"), this documentary actually talks about cultural differences behind this phenomenon.

I was thinking too, about how people act in stores. I was just at the grocery store and was watching the kid in front of me at the till. The cashier was using ultra formal Japanese with him but not making eye contact. The kid took his change, didn't look at her or respond, and just walked away. This is not really unusual in Japan, and from a fuh-fuh-fuh-foreigner's point of view, at first it was kind of nice, but the ultra-formal Japanese sounded so scripted anyway after a while that now it doesn't even feel like they're talking *to* me. My point is, replace that cashier with a robot and no one would notice.

And I really feel sorry for the Koreans, Chinese and Brazilians in the documentary. I mean, there are enough angry rants in here as it is so I'll save it, but I feel for you, dawgs.

Edit: I want to become a host because, as some of you know, it's been my life-long dream to get drunk every night and talk about virility for some old grand-mama who might be-- nay-- is decked out like a Christmas... tree

The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in the LL Room

Or, "How To Be An Asshole So Overtly That No One Can Really Be Offended" (volume 1)
Or... "I had a really terrible week at work."

If you're a long-term reader, you may remember, my pièce de résistance "The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in a Japanese Office Environment", which gave instructions on the following leftist revolutionary activities:

- If a coworker leaves a stack of papers on your desk, hide it

- Abuse the laminating machine

- Blame your own bad English on your "dialect" (etc.)

I wrote a guide on being an ass of an ALT, which many of us certainly are, but many of my Japanese coworkers have expressed concern that I took the ethnocentric route and ignored the Japanese point of view, because, dammit, we're all human beings and human beings are basically evil, spiteful simian turd-throwers.

So, in my second volume, I will give advice for any team teacher unlucky enough to be forced into working with a lazy, stupid, badly-dressed punk of a gaikokujin. Sometimes, if they push you, you gotta shove back.

So let me present, the The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in the LL Room.

1. Talk about the ALT to the students in simple, understandable Japanese in front of the Japanese-speaking ALT.

Have you ever walked into a classroom, noticed an ALT chatting with some students, and announced in a loud voice "彼は外人だから英語がぺらぺらだね！" (He's a white, so that's why he's fluent in English!"). If you have, then you're probably the former principal at my school.

2. Got team teaching class? Mark some papers!

Your prefecture spends $40,000 a year to bring a foreign language teacher in to assist you in your classroom to enrich the classes for both you and your students.

But this is probably a good opportunity to get some of that pesky marking done. So while the ALT is up at the front of the class "assisting" you, you should stand at the back, completely ignore him or her, and get the real work done. Marking tests and quizzes.



(Alternative: still ignore the ALT, and give him or her these tests or quizzes to mark!)

3. Bring up the war with a nuance of blame (even if the ALT is not American).

There's absolutely no better environment than an international communication class to bring up the war. Not only bring it up, but avoid any association with your country and any aggression, while still demonizing the enemy. POWs? Huh? Unit 731? What's that? Seriously-- what is that? I've never heard of it. Should I know? ...Let's talk about Hiroshima instead.

4. What's his name? I think it's "ALT" or something.

It takes time -- and time is money, as the students inexplicably all know how to say in English -- to ask the foreigner it's name, and it probably wouldn't understand the question in the first place, so let's call it by it's job title. The ALT. No wait-- ALT-sensei to be polite. Well... ALT-san, anyway. And the ALT don't mind if you use it's job title to describe it while talking about it in front of it as though it wasn't sitting right there looking at you. It is an ALT after all. It's like calling a spade a spade, or a German Shepherd a German Shepherd.

If correctly used, this guide will ruin all international communication, effectively destroy the chance that the ALT will choose to recontract, and spread hideous lies about xenophobia in Japan the world over.

Disclaimer: Dear bosses, there is no Nishimura-sensei. If there was, I'm sure he would be very nice.

The Difference Between "Gaikokujin" and "(Go Home You F'ing) Foreigner"

One of the first things any ALT hears during orientation back in their home country is "don't try to change things." The system is what it is, the culture is what it is, and trying to change everything will probably alienate you further and cause you much frustration and gnashing of teeth. 99% of the time, this is true.

But back last winter, I was given a stack of essays to mark by students who made a trip to Asia Pacific University, a major international school in Beppu, Oita Prefecture. They met some of the foreign students there, of which there are many, and came back and wrote about their experiences. Most of them were okay, but maybe 20-25% of them kept referring to the full-time Japanese speaking students as "foreigners".

[Editor's note: In Japanese, gaikokujin (外国人) means "non-Japanese", though literally means "foreigner". It's applied very liberally, and has no particular negative nuance despite exclusion and generalization. Japanese people generally don't refer to people by race or nationality, for better or for worse. Most people here just think of people as being Japanese-- or not. So if you're a Canadian tourist, for example, you think of yourself as being a foreigner in another country. However, if you're a Japanese tourist, you might think, 'Ooooh look at all the foreigners here.' And just a side note, last time I went on vacation to Canada I said in shock and horror "God damn there're a lot of white people here!"]

So they kept calling these Chinese and Indonesian and Sri Lankan students "foreigners", and it kind of dawned on me how the students clearly don't know the difference in nuance between the benign word "gaikokujin" and the much more negative word "foreigner", so I showed them the distinctly negative definition in the Oxford English dictionary:

1. a person who comes from a different country
EXAMPLE: The fact that I was a foreigner was a big disadvantage.

2. a person who does not belong in a particular place
EXAMPLE: I have always been regarded as a foreigner by the local folk.

and left it at that.

Next essay, a couple of students talked about "the foreigners" [actually "foreign" fish from tropical "countries" invading Japanese waters], so I figured, yeah, I guess I really can't change anything. If Japan wants to be weird and xenophobic, they can do it without me.

But then when I got to school today the teacher from this particular class asked me to correct a draft of a speech one of these students wrote, and the whole thing was about the word "foreigner" -- about realizing through the experience at the university and my little lecture about it that the word "foreigner", or even "gaikokujin", can hurt or offend people. He went on to give his own opinion that this is left over from Japan's period of national isolation and said we should try to look at each other as being simply human beings before than anything else. Dude! I was absolutely floored, because, to be honest, I've been really sick of the whole "gaijin" issue lately. Sick of it being an issue. Both for recent depressing personal reasons, and broader reasons [for the latter, read the last two posts].

This is the first time where I know-- not hope, but know that I've made a difference here. So despite whatever you hear at orientation, if there's something that's really important to you, don't just do the whole "ALT gaijin clown" thing even though it's easier and it's what they want you to do, but do your duty as a teacher and as someone representing your country and at least try to tell people about your point of view. If you do it respectfully, it won't hurt the wa, and someone out there might just be listening.

You know what I mean...

Big Daddy America and His Taste for Those Oishii Japanese Hamburgers

I haven't really paid attention to Adbusters since I left Canada-- well, specifically since I went from being a poor student to really poor student who couldn't afford to buy a copy, but McDonald's Japan's ongoing... uh... somewhat racially insensitive advertising campaign (involving much stereotypical gaijin boobery) and the flood of concerned white people on Debito.org's forums talking about writing ineffectual letters to McDonald's asking the company to voluntarily cease what I assume is a multi-billion yen campaign got me thinking: it would be so much easier just to culture jam the hell out of it. If Japan's legal system is as "weak" with "really no protection for this type of thing" as some people claim, then maybe they should take another route. For example, if Mr. James is so offensive, how about covertly decapitating his cardboard cutout next time you're at Mickey D's? You could even slash his corrugated belly as to make it appear to be seppuku if you want to get really theatrical (you could even make a cardboard wakizashi and leave at the scene of the crime). I'm pretty sure the actor that plays Mr. James might be considering doing that already anyway. At any rate, there are some excellent comments there though, so I do recommend taking a look. [And, no, I'm not going to explain here what the big deal is or what my own opinion is.]

But like I said, this all led me to Adbusters, which has an article on their front page called "The Soul of Japan", which surmises that Japan's current socio-economic crisis is a psychological reaction to the country's subservience to America since the end of WW2. This article, written by a Japanese-American university professor runs the gauntlets of articles about Japan appearing in Western media-- ie. mentions bullet trains and anime and kawaiiness. He also very curiously mentions Mishima Yukiyo, who back in the 70's famously tried to inspire some soldiers to overthrow the democratically elected government and reinstate the emperor by giving a rousing ultra-nationalist speech from a window high above, but was so high up that the soldiers could hardly hear him, and those that could started laughing. Realizing what a total ass he'd made of himself, he committed seppuku and had his teenage male lover cut off his head. Another dead hero.

(Kelts, the author, does have some pure gold quotes from Murakami Haruki though, who says in horror of the mid-20th century influx of Americana: "It was everywhere. And we’re not French, you know. We liked it." But I digress.)

Anyway, the author repeatedly sympathizes with nut-cases like Mishima and fascists like Ishihara Shintaro (pictured together to the right -- the far right), and claims that the emasculation of Japanese men is the result of the younger brother relationship the Japan apparently has with the US -- along with being kawaii. He quotes visual artist Murakami Takashi, claiming,

"Evolution teaches us that cuteness is a symptom of dependence, urging adults to care for infants, puppies and kittens who are, after all, entirely helpless. A Japan shaped by its reliance upon big brother/big daddy America would naturally perfect this form of expression. Murakami’s theory goes: Be cute, and Daddy might be good to you, however much you hate 
it – and him."

I'm going to go ahead and say, I heard this before, and it strikes me as bullshit that fits snugly on Western stereotypes of Japan, that somehow Japane is over-saturated with bunny-soft sakura-pink cuteness. Ugh. Was the guy who horked into the sink in the staff room this morning just being kawaii? What about the pock-marked teenagers that laughed at me at the grocery store?

But, also, Canada has a similar sentiment about the US. Back in the mid 20th century, like everywhere, there was sudden a massive flood of American pop culture and media, and most people since have had a very ambivalent view of our neighbours. We have politicians who stomped on George W. Bush dolls on camera and said little quips like, "I hate those bastards!" [read: fired] (and we also publish magazines like Adbusters for that matter), and then we have Canadians who totally buy into anything Hollywood and talk about American foreign policy using the disturbingly self-inclusive phrase "we". My point is, Canadians too have spent the last 50 or 60 years wrestling with this, and how our own country's identity and culture fit in, and no one would say that we, for instance, like hockey because it appeases the Americans with the innocent ever-winter lumberjack image. Catch my drift?

The article ends with a sense that Japan is picking up the pieces, working out the baggage from World War 2 and overcoming the present pseudo-Western materialism, and finally starting to build self-confidence for a future where it may even culturally eclipse America. This is where my BS-alarm goes off again. I do think Japan has a self-confidence problem, but I don't think that comes from having post-war diplomatic or cultural links to the US. I think it comes from not having enough links to the outside world if anything. I think a lot of Japanese people are very insecure about their country's place in the world as an active member of the global society.

With all that being said, I do think that the article is correct that Japanese youth are now more than ever very strongly invested in the world around them and are not just interested in American pop culture, but their immediate mainland Asian neighbours and beyond. Kelts is also right, of course, that the LDP's goose is cooked and Japan's future is wide open. That goes without saying.

However, this article and that recent Time Magazine article both seem to have a very ethnocentric view of Japan, with the former largely interviewing Japanese writers and artists who have extensive international experience but paying no attention to the millions of Japanese people that have never even left the country, or even their own respective islands. I love all those Murakamis, but what would a person who thinks Japan is it's own continent distinct from Asia say about globalization? But this overwhelming notion that Japan's future somehow rests in the hands of America, or "the West", is something that Westerners think about a lot, but isn't a big domestic issue here. I think the assumption of Japanese subservience to the West is by and large a Western one.

Where this all links up to Mr. James gaijin circus campaign, itself sponsored by McDonald's (an Adbusters-targeted multinational that is a global champion of equal opportunity employment)? I'm not sure, but something to do with de-orientializing our view of Japan and de-occidentializing their view of us.

Smile!

The BBC published an interesting article about how facial expressions -- the most basic and meaningful form of communication -- are not universal and can change quite dramatically from culture to culture. The study, carried out by Glasgow University, dealt specifically with Westerners and East Asians. This is great for me since I'm a Westerner living in East Asia.

According to the article, "East Asian participants tended to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects took in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth." The study concluded that because of the relative importance of the eyes in conveying emotion, it can make things a bit ambiguous (and, really, a bit socially disastrous) cross-culture.

For example:


One of these faces expresses fear, and the other, surprise.

The article didn't mention smiles at all, which is interesting, because I think that's the biggest difference between Eastern and Western facial expressions. Here's a page from Canadian comic book artist Guy Delisle's book "Shenzhen":


Of course, this is not to say Westerners don't do this. To quote my old Japanese Studies professor, "is a matter of degree". I think we all do this -- dry laughs and sad smiles to smooth over anger or sadness or anxiety. I do this pretty much every day at work. I even know people who heartily chuckle when they're scared. The difference, I suppose, is people in East Asian people tend to do this at a higher frequency and maybe in different situations than Westerners.

In Will Ferguson's book, "Hitching Rides with Buddha" in Canada, or "Hokkaido Highway Blues" elsewhere, he talks about being given a ride by a Tokyo University professor and his less-than-enthused wife, who was "nodding with that painfully polite smile that many uninitiated Westerners mistake for being a sign of friendship. It is actually a sign of extreme disease." Later in the book, he describes someone smiling to express inexpressible sadness.

In other species such as chimps, I should add, baring ones teeth in what looks very much like a human "smile" is actually a sign of hatred.

Aside from the obvious anthropological reasons, the reason why this is all so important is -- like I said at the beginning -- facial expressions and body language are the cornerstone of human communication. In inter-cultural communication, being able to read things like expressions can be essential for assessing a situation. And so I'll end this with an open question-- has anyone ever had serious social faux pas with people from different cultures stemming in nonverbal communication?

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (5)

Last time I believe I made some promise about writing real entries, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. This might be another way of saying that life's been pretty swell lately but not in a write-about-it-in-my-blog sort of way. Do you want to hear about how good eel tastes? Care for the details of playing guitar, about why I chose not to watch the solar eclipse [damn evil spirits] or recording my own model versions of Martin Luther King-themed speeches for the annual prefectural speech contest? I didn't think so.

Anyway, here she goes. I transcribed the Japanese from paper while drinking-- nay, imbibing a White Russian and watching The Colbert Report (because that's how we roll), so if you notice any typos, let me know.

Original Japanese translation

例えばホール＆オーツやクイーンに、とにかく卑猥なものを･････。

マリコが自らの人生をトヨタに預けた時、彼女は、国民を洗脳するためにある日本の“和”への義理や尊敬や自己犠牲といった感覚を体験する事になる最後の世代の子供となった。

一九七五年以降に生まれた僕のような人間はどうだろう？僕らのことなんか忘れてしまっていい。僕らは繁殖し、よく食べ、際限なく増殖し、また際限なく壊れていく。それに、僕らに世代なんてものは存在しない。

マリコは僕の“シーン”について、いつもお姉さんぶった説教を始め、そんな自意識過剰で無意味なメヌエットが終わると、ＯＬとして稼いだ給料でまたバーバリー製品を買いに出かけた。彼女は一九九四年に千葉の歯医者と結婚し、僕のおいとなるはずの子を妊婦した。姉貴とは一年一度しか会わなかったが、僕が自分の人生をどれだけ無駄にしているか説教されるはめになった。

ずいぶん生意気なガキに聞こえるかもしれないけど、少しでも気休めになるなら、僕が自分に一番厳しいわけで、そんな厳しさは、僕を含めた無世代が受け継いだとしても、同時に、ダム、道路、食糧生産、人口衛星の打ち上げ、経済産業省、農業科学といった、この国の多くの遺産を維持することなどできないことを意味していた。いっそ、そんなすべてを爆破してしまった方がずっとおもしろいのかもしれないけど、自分にできないことはあまり言わない方がいいだろう。

My translation back into English

For example, on Hall & Oates or Queen. Anyway, really filthy stuff.

When Mariko handed her life over to Toyota, she became a child of the last generation that has to experience feelings of obligation and respect and self-sacrifice to the Japanese concept of "harmony", which exists to brainwash the public.

What are people like me who are born after 1975 like? You should forget about us. We multiply, we eat a lot, we breed endlessly and also break down endlessly. Besides, we don't believe in things like "generations".

Mariko would start to lecture me like a big sister about my "scene" and when she'd finish her ego driven, meaningless minuet, she'd go out again to buy Burberry products with the salary she earned as an office assistant. In 1995 she married a dentist from Chiba and became pregnant with the child that would become my nephew. I'd only see my big sis once a year but I'd always end up being lectured about how I was wasting my life.

I probably sound like quite the spoilt brat, but if it's any consolation, I'm hardest on myself and this severeness implies I cannot maintain the many inheritances from this country such as the dams, roads, food production, the launch of man-made satellites, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, agricultural science, etcetera. Really, it would probably be more interesting to blow all these things up, but I guess I shouldn't talk about things I can't do myself.

Commentary

There was a lot of odd non-JLPT vocabulary here. For my own benefit, I'll give a few examples of the curios I found.

際限なく・さいげんなく・Endlessly, without end -- there seem to be lots of ways to say this. Another one for the pile.
妊婦する・にんぷする・Basically means "to become pregnant", though as a noun this means "expectant mother", so it might be interpreted as "to become an expectant mother".
羽目になる・はめになる・To flatter, or to relax one's chi if you want to get technical -- but, the whole phrase "少しでも気休めになるなら" means "if it's any consolation", which is kind of neato.

Shout outs

Quick shout out to Kozo who posted his own translation of the last block of text in his own blog. He, I believe, can be counted as being a native speaker of both English and Japanese, so he picks up on some of the finer grammatical points that skip right over my head. And, he knows exactly what Burberry is, which is a little suspicious ;) [Disclaimer: I understood that it was a fashion company from context, but refused to acknowledge the existence of such a brand]

ザ・バーバリー

I'm still considering making a separate study blog, or maybe a half-decent multimedia job that could land me my next blog at some nerdy IT corporation. Maybe a third Japanese Studies blog that could get me into grad school somewhere half-respectable?

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (4)

I think this is it. Next time I'll go back to posting real content. Honest.

Original Japanese translation

十分にいいところだった。だって、埼玉はコンゴじゃないんだろう。彼女たちが、そんな世界とそこに暮らす人々を見捨てたことはあまりに屈辱的だった。親友のテツもまた、信じられないといった様子で、モルモン教徒について聞いた話を教えてくれた。なんて呼べばいいのか分からないが、その教区司祭か神父かが、ひと月に１回、少年たちを一室に集めて、マスターベーションの罪悪について説いたことを。全員に特殊な透明インクのペンと紙を渡し、前の月にマスターベーションした回数分だけ、コイン大の印を付けさせた。それから紙を全て回収し、壁に画鋲で留めてから明かりを消すと、部屋にたくさんの星が現れた。それは実際、とても美しそうだった。とにかく、司祭はそれを「罪の世界」とかそんな名前で呼び、翌月の若いモルモン教徒たちの使命は、その星を全て消していくこととなった。

突然、僕とテツは、これの彼女の子バージョンがどんなものなのかは、ただ想像するしかなかった。

０４

えっ、僕かい？僕は一九七五年東京の少し北で生まれた。たった一人のきょうだいは、一九七〇年生まれの姉のマリコだったが、彼女の感受性が僕とあまりにかけ離れていたため、それこそ一九五五年に生まれたんじゃないかと思えたほどだ。

自分はどういう人間と思うかを、彼女に聞いてみれば、ひとこと目からたぶん、バーバリーの全商品を所有していることを自ら話し始めるだろう。もしバーバリーがタンポンを作っていたら、マリコなら絶対に買ってるはずだ。彼女が若い時に最も熱中していたのは、八〇年代のデュラン・デュランをパックた安っぽい外国人バンドだった。未だに彼女は、月曜毎に原宿へ出かけており、体育館の外でロカビリーの衣装を着て踊っていた時代のことをよく覚えている。なんて恥ずかしいなんだろう。本当に最悪だ。僕ら姉弟の最大のケンカは、僕がフェルトペンで、彼女が大切にしていた一九八二年から一九八六年のミュージック・ライブの表紙に、オッパイや牙を描き込んだ後に起きた。

My translation back into English

It was a perfectly good place. After all, Saitama isn't exactly the Congo, right? Those girls who abandoned the world and all those that live there were extremely demeaning. My best friend Tetsu also, in a state of disbelief, told me what he heard about Mormons. I don't know what to call it, but the parish priest or the father gathers all the kids together in one room one time per month and preaches on the sin of masturbation. He gave everyone some paper and a pen with special transparent ink and makes them mark down the number of times they masturbated in a month. After that, he collected all the paper and after tacking them to the wall, he cut the lights and in the room the stars appeared. That actually must have been beautiful. Anyway, the priest called that "the world of sin" or something, and gave the young Mormons the mission for the next month of extinguishing all stars.

Suddenly, Tetsu and I could only imagine while child-versions of these girls were like.

Chapter 4

Huh? Me? I was born in 1975 a little north of Tokyo. My only sibling, Mariko, was born in 1970 but because her sensibilities are completely different from mine, I could almost think she was born in 1955.

If you ask her what kind of person she is, probably in a word, she would first say she was the owner of all of Burberry's merchandise. Supposing Burberry made tampons, Mariko would definitely be buying them. When she was young, what she was most crazy about was the cheap foreign band Duran Duran. Still, she often thinks of the days when every Friday she'd go down to Harajuku and dance outside of the gym in rockabilly clothing. How embarrassing. Really the worst. The biggest fight we had as siblings happened after I drew tits and fangs on the cover of her precious concert calender from 1982 to 1986.

Thoughts

Exhausted. I'm not sure-- I actually have no idea who or what a Burberry is. Also, it took me forever to realize that 原宿 is "Harajuku", despite being plastered on Gwen Stefani-themed perfume bottles everywhere.


Also one of those annoying instances with those mutant words where the first kanji is the Japanese-reading and the second is the Chinese-reading, for you linguistics nerds out there.

There were also quite a few words and phrases that I couldn't find in any dictionary, so some of this translation is strictly a figment of my own imagination. So if you or anyone you know has accuracy tips, please share.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (3)

Long time no see. Last time I wrote here I was just starting to study for the JLPT, and since then I studied for pretty much two-months straight, overdosed on Japanese, jumped into the Tafuse River, drowned, was resurrected and now am sitting in front of my computer writing again.

So I continued translating Douglas Coupland's Japan-only novel "God Hates Japan", which is not an anti-Japanese religious diatribe by the Westboro Baptist Church, but rather, a look at how Japan and the Japanese people are handling the country's own modern era in a vein similar to how Coupland has tackled Canada or before that, the United States in his other novels. So here's the third instalment.

Original Japanese translation

０２

そのため僕は木曜の真夜中を待って、二人の黒い自転車に忍び寄ると、ブリキ鋏でスポークを 中央の軸から切断してしまうことで、直接復讐を果たした。僕は誰が見ていようが全く気にならなかったし、実際、最低でも一握りほどの人間が目撃していただ ろうが、その後、警察からも誰からも連絡はなかった。

でも車輪のない自転車を眺めているのはおかしなものだ。まるで彼女たちが見つけ出そうとしていた星のような、家に帰ってからもなかなか眠りにつけなかった。あまりにむかついていたからだ･･････。

と うもろこしばかり食べてるマヌケどもめ、よくも僕らの国へのこのことやって来て、自分たちでさえ理解していない錆びついた絵空事を押し付けやがって。あい つらがキミコを誘拐したんだ。あいつらが、駅に入ってきた地下鉄の前へ押し出すように、リエコとカオルを殺してしまったんだ。

０３

そ の夜は気温も高く、暖かかった。僕は受験地獄のために猛勉強していなければならないはずだったが、ほんの一吹きのモンスーンで、とても集中なんかしていら れなくなった。僕はキミコが何を見ているのか想像してみようとした。一体どこへ行ってしまったんだろう。神殿の中へか？宗教は神殿が大好きだ。それとも神 様のもとへ行ったのだろうか？それにしても神様というのはあまりに日本っぽくない考え方だった。日本では一人の神様のところに行き、欲しいものを祈って、 もしそれで叶わなければ、また次の神様に祈りに行くんだ。

他 に何があるだろう？たぶん、僕は同時に、まともな理由もないくせに、どう見たって最低な、この地上の世界を見捨てる道を選んだ彼女たちに怒りを考えてい た。僕らは比較的恵まれた地域に住んでいた。テニスコートやキャヂラックや貴族の称号なんてものとは無縁だとしても、十分にいいところだった。

My translation back into English

Chapter 2

For that reason, I waited until the middle of the night, snuck up to their black bikes and by using a pair of tin snips to cut the centre shaft of the spokes, I took direct revenge. I didn't feel uneasy at all that someone might be watching, and in reality, at worst probably only a handful of people saw me, but afterwards, I didn't get any word from the police.

But staring at a wheel-less bicycles is really strange. Like the star that the girls were searching for, when I got home I couldn't fall asleep at all. Because I felt over-irritated...

These goddamn idiots eating nothing but corn, how dare they come to our country and push this rusty pipe dream that they themselves don't understand. They kidnapped Kimiko. They killed Rieko and Kaoru, like pushing them in front of a subway train coming into the station.

Chapter 3

That night the temperature was high and it was hot. I was in exam hell and should have been studying extra-hard, but with the mere gust of the monsoon, I really couldn't focus. I imagined what Kimiko must be looking at. Where the hell did she go off too? In a temple? Religions love their temples. Or, did she go below her God? Nevertheless, "God" isn't really a Japanese way of thinking. In Japan, we go to one god, pray for the thing we wish for, and if it doesn't come true, we go and pray again at the next god.

What else is there? Probably, despite not having a good reason, and nasty now matter how you look at it, I was mad at these girls that chose a path that abandoned the world above ground. We lived in a relatively well-off area. Even if things like tennis courts and Cadillacs and the names of nobility are unrelated, it was a perfectly fine place.

Thoughts

Nothing mind-blowing here. Some of the grammar is a bit slangy, and lots of strange vocabulary which I won't bore you with. For some reason, the spell-checker doesn't like "snuck" as the past-tense of "sneak". Yup.

Just one small note, which is, it has occurred to me that posting several pages of a published novel-- published in the country from which I'm writing no less-- is morally iffy, so I should take this opportunity to say that this is really for the sake of my own studying. I'm only posting it in case anyone's interested or has comments.

And if anyone at kencho is reading this, this is how I spent my POD.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (2)

The second page I translated wasn't neeeeeeeearly as hard as the first one. It was actually pretty readable. Anyway, if you're into this nerdy stuff, take a look and give me your opinion.

Original Japanese Translation

逆に、カナダ人に典型的なブロンド髪のスコットは、クールなスケーター風にも拘わらず、彼もまたマヌケな感じがした。彼はモルモンの教団から支給されたダサい自転車でトリックもキメられ、キミコがはじめて彼に憑依したampmコンビニの前で、それをいつも披露していた。たぶん、そんな彼の陳腐な虚勢と完璧な歯並びが、後に宗教を見つけたキミコにウケたわけで、彼女の影響下にあったリエコとカオルも取り込んでしまったのだろう。

僕には、そんな噂がクラスで飛び交い始めたことが、とても信じられなかった。どうして彼女たちでなければならないのか？でもまず頭に浮かんできたのは、モルモン教が宣教師として、マヌケな連中ばかりを先進国へ送り込みながら、優秀な人間たちをシエフ・レオネやニュー・デリーといった僻地へ流していたことによる安堵感だった。

というか、宗教って一体ナンだろう……。そもそも宗教って本当に何なんだろう？いや、マジで……。僕だって別にイヤミな人間になりたくないけど……、さすがにキミコの目を見れば分かるさ。リエコにしてって、カオルにしたってそうだ。空っぽで死んだようなその目は、道路や廊下を歩いているときでさえ、ラーメン屋の看板や近づく人や車など、近くのものにまるで焦点が合ってないかのようだった。その目は地平線を見やり、夜空に浮かんだ一番星を見つけようとでもしているようだった。

スコットは僕らの世界から3人を奪った。人としての本質を消し去ってしまい、人間消臭剤に変身させてしまったのだ。

My Translation

Conversely, Scott, the typical blonde Canadian, regardless of his kakkou-ii skater style, also had an idiotic feeling about him. He'd always announce how he met Kimiko for the first time in front of the AMPM convenience store where he was performing tricks on his clunky Mormon Church supplied bicycle. Probably, that guy's hackneyed bravado and perfect teeth were the reason Kimiko found religion, and under her influence, Rieko and Eriko were also introduced.

When the rumours started flying around class, I didn't believe it at all. Why did it have to be them? But what came to mind first was, as Mormon missionaries, while they send no one but this stupid lot to the advanced countries, there's a flow of excellent people to remote places like Sierra Leone or New Deli.

Perhaps I should say, what the hell is religion? What's religion really in the first place? No, seriously. I don't especially want to become a sarcastic person, but, as might be expected, Kimiko's eyes speak for themselves. It seems she got both Rieko and then Kaoru. Those dead, empty-looking eyes, even when walking down the street or through the halls, when looking at ramen shop signs approaching people, cars, or with close objects, didn't change focus. It was like she stared at the horizon and was searching in the night's sky for the first star to appear.

Scott stole three people from our world. He erased their essence as people and transformed them with human-deodorant.

Thoughts

I'm not sure about the last two sentences of the third paragraph. One of those awkard situations where I knew what he was trying to say, but wasn't sure how to put it.