Comments on: March funny photos

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 06:53:20 +0000

Hey. That McDonald's sign is in Shinjuku, right? Kinda near the station (on the same street as those few awesome disc union shops!)! I snapped that too last time I was there… I'm moving to J in a few weeks (got a job!). But I'll be in Kobe. From the looks of things, I'll still be spoilt for hardcore shows in Kobe and Osaka though! Will still have to make it up to Wall and Antiknock a few times a year though!

By: adam

adam — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 04:34:21 +0000

if u really want a laugh, go to the military museum at yasukuni. war with US was started b/c the US shut off japan's oil supply. pearl harbor, apparently, was unavoidable. the millions of murdered chinese? nary a mention. taiwan's annexation was, well they didn't explain that…..not too different from what the US does with some egregious parts of its history but still shocking in its baldness.
definitely wanna know more about the special machine!

By: 23 Wolves

23 Wolves — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:28:16 +0000

Special Machine in Floor is really, really special. I can't believe you didn't move in?!?! That thing…It's a mondo-boggler!

By: d.arctor

d.arctor — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:47:06 +0000

Hey, what happened to the "about me" part of this site, where we could see what a whacky weirdo you are, with your massive Hello Kitty doll collection etc.? It was the cherry on a fantastic Internet japanophile sundae. (I mean that as a compliment)

By: rk

rk — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:04:24 +0000

MANDOM!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8bqVL0VXrE
After watching that commercial, it's pretty obvious what Mandom owe their success to: Charles Bronson.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:21:19 +0000

This isn't some kooky Japanese phenomenon, you're familiar with linguistics, right, sort-of? With code-mixing, people naturally throw in words from other languages where and when it seems more normal (it's not necessarily some made-up English-fetish thing either, this stuff happens naturally over time). This is just the written form of that, but with the added efficiency (?) of being able to explain the word in kanji just in case grandpa gets a hold of junior's comic books.

Of course sometimes it is some made-up 'English is cooler' fetish thing, but read some high-level pretentious academic stuff and you'll see them throw in french and german left-and-right (sometimes with footnotes, the poor-man's furigana).

By: admin

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:20:05 +0000

@Riley: clearly the boxes are just an excuse to have a floor machine.

@szaszha: dude! You are not seriously saying “racial prejudice is ok if we get to hate vk fans too?” I understand what you are trying to say, but there are SO MANY better ways to say that thing. I mean, damn.

@ben and steve: you guys are correct. But still, wtf?!?? Explaining a made-up Japanese word with reference to another word which is not Japanese at all? But spelled in japanese? Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

@relatively mature: I love how you are agreeing with my point and yet phrasing that as a denial.

By: Riley

Riley — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:19:07 +0000

I like how the floor machine takes up more space than the boxes.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:17:03 +0000

I was gonna say the same thing as Steve, as someone who reads tons of Shonen manga it's super common to have a 3 or 4 character compound (Especially for uber-sweet attack moves or phenomenon or something) in katakana as a special reading. Often enough they even make up their own kanji compounds which is both artistic and entirely confusing at the same time.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:30:45 +0000

Oh my god floor machine! Don't you love when you think you've seen everything, and then the world is just like "You ain't seen nothing yet, boy!"

About that comic book page, authors will often use furigana for common jargon, rather than just to help kids pronounce words. Like, you might pronounce those words written in kanji to [someone familiar with the jargon] and they'd say, "I don't know what you're talking about", and then you'd say "countaa no alarm.." and they'd be all "OHHH countaaalarm!" So yeah, it's for people who understand the terminology.
And then your next question is probably, "if the japanified-english phrase is more popular, why have the kanji in the first place?" That's because not everyone reading the comic book might be familiar with this jargon! "Countaa no alarm, what's that? Damn this pretentious author, Where's my kanjis!?"