teh Forum

Sigh...this forum floats along without any direction...

Here is some high-brow humor to ease our journey:
http://www.misternicehands.com/

whats with these fancy shmancy intellectuawhos!? I just dont get that ype of snooty, nose-in-the-air humor....

I'll explain it to you just one more time. And I'll try to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and only use small words so that you can follow along. OK? OK.

The image is a pre-post-modernist metaphor representing mankind's inevitible struggle in a duplicitous world whereby the metaphysical and the physical are conjoined in a manner such that he is continuously faced with paradoxically contentious contemporaneous shifts in balance between...between...between...

So, now that the Mary Celeste seems to have at least a skeleton crew again...

what are yous all drinking tonight?

Realistically, I have a choice between beer and imojochu. (Tonight it seems to be fish cooked in miso, and I don't have any white wine in the house). I think I'm going to pour myself a big imojochu on the rocks and maybe pass on the evening run tonight.

So, what's your poison?

I have to admit that I haven't been drinking very much for the past month, but that all changes tonight. I've had a rough week at work (in between stupid forum posting). I'm planning to have some of that nice Blanton's which has been collecting dust on my shelf.



Mr. S, db: what say we have a "Thai Bowl" night soon? That Thai restaurant in Ebisu followed by bowling in Ebisu.

I know what db does cuz he's very forthright about it, but what do Mr* and Goemon do in Tokyo? I'm always curious about how other people make their crust in this country.

I met an American bloke in the children's clinic yesterday who was very cagey about what he's doing in Matsuyama but quite open about having been an investment banker in Tokyo until last year. Now I must know what he's doing here.

Ocean: I'm a corporate cog for a large American telecom equipment provider. I'm here cogging for our Japanese division and have been cogging for a little over 5 years here. But I'm quitting soon to open an authentic NYC pizza place. I may even hire Mr.* as a delivery boy...

I just realized that my lady's parents are from Matsuyama; I knew they were from Ehime, but didn't realize they were from where you're at now. Obaa-chan is still living there, so we may make a journey down one of these days. I'll give you a shout out if we're in the area.

Well, you and Mr * will definitely be making a crust in your pizza place.
Just make sure Mr * doesn't let anybody go sticking bombs on his neck.

Definitely give me a shout if you're down this way.

Ocean11 wrote:I know what db does cuz he's very forthright about it, but what do Mr* and Goemon do in Tokyo? I'm always curious about how other people make their crust in this country.

I'm working for a small japanese company doing software design and development..... but being that i'm bored to death at my company, i'm always looking for something else.

G: I believe there are others (Dan, Ryland?) that are interested in the pizza venture.... count me in! We'll show em how it's done NY style!

... but... uhm... no explosive necklaces.... (what a bizarre story eh?)

Ocean - Likewise... I've always been curious. What brought you to Japan in the first place, and what did you do before you had the translating business?

Well done. Way to find the most immature joke on the internet. I challenge anyone to beat that.

BTW I am in Santa Cruz, California right now...which may go part of the way to explain my relative absense from forums for the past few and next buncha days.

Mr *, which version of my CV would you like? The official one has me coming to Japan to pursue my interests in Japanese cinema and military history (true enough on one plane of reality). The 'honne' version though can be summed up in one word -- snatch.

My GF of uni days came to Japan and sent lots of letters on cute Japanese paper saying what a blast it was, and suggesting that I join her in Tokyo. Despairing of ever getting laid again, I made up my mind to pursue my interest in Japanese military history, and found a teaching job in Osaka. (It didn't occur to me get out a ruler and calculate how far distant Osaka and Tokyo actually are). Anyway, after precisely one shag of the GF, I dumped her, although not before receiving the precious gift of non-specific urethritis which I duly passed on to my new Japanese girlfriend (thus impressing her with the qualities of English gentlefolk).

I got out of the conversation school job after less than a year and became an 'AET' and later, a teacher to regional civil servants. Disgusted with my treatment as a teacher, I formed a couple of trade unions and had to develop my Japanese to cope in negotiations and read documents and laws. That's how I got started translating. I really wanted to work in something creative and to do with computers, but I got sucked into technical translating instead, which I don't like very much. I worked in a small company in Kofu and then moved to Epson in Suwa for 3 years. I made a nuisance of myself there by being rude about the Anti-Personnel Department and they had their revenge by not renewing my contract. This happened to be in the peak of a pretty good snow season, so I was quite happy to have time to snowboard, plus my old department at Epson was then paying me more as a freelancer than as an employee.

So here I am. Happy enough on one level, bored and frustrated on others. With hindsight, there were some shakes of the dice that seem like awfully good luck, while others seem pretty disastrous.

Japan is alright though. I'm probably freer than I would be in England.

Ocean11 wrote:Mr *, which version of my CV would you like? The official one has me coming to Japan to pursue my interests in Japanese cinema and military history (true enough on one plane of reality). The 'honne' version though can be summed up in one word -- snatch.

Ahhh.... ya gotta love honesty like that. fantastic!
I must admit that wasn't my original motivation, but the yellow fever took hold shortly after I hit these shores...

How long did it take you to reach a level of proficiency in Japanese that you were able to do translation. I'm currently slugging away at studying kanji right now, and it seems like it will be a long time before I'm able to really read a book or a newspaper....

It took about 7 years I guess. I still never read Japanese newspapers or books - reading Japanese is a chore, and I won't do it unless I'm paid to do it, or some other major benefit will result from it.

(Terrible confession - I can't actually read Japanese, I've just found a method of translating it using a cunning combination of tools that bypasses the cognitive centres of the brain.)

Ocean - you have some pizza work experience right? Maybe you can help out this little venture. Seriously though, we gotta come up with some hair brained scheme that can keep us busy in Tokyo with some change in our pockets. Ideas...

-bar / chill night club

-some kind of website / service / something catering to gaijin in the city.

-magazine / printed words of some sort

What else we got?

Pantsless shabu shabu joint?

You've gotsta have grease to make pizzas - that's what I learned at Pizza Hut.

You need some combination thing like in Fight Club, you know liposuction, soap, and dynamite. . . How about liposuction, pizza (with the human grease), soap (if there's any grease left over - probably not if you make it the Pizza Hut way), porn, drugs, and dance clubs? These can all be combined in intricate and profitable ways.

Seeing as I'd rather cut off my left leg (it's a bit duff anyway, actually) than live in Tokyo, I'll provide planning ideas stimulated by my boredom here, and you can get things started in Tokyo. Then I'll import the model to Shikoku, touting it as a Tokyo thing, and get all the naive country girls down here involved and my boredom will be cured for good.

Think 'grease'. Grease, grease, hmmm...... doushiou....

(If you're familiar with the charming website fuckingmachines.com, you can see how grease would be useful there too. That site is just crying out to be localized for the Japanese market. And I would be just the man to get that going!)

enderzero wrote:Pantsless shabu shabu joint?

I do believe the correct terminology is "no pants shabu shabu".
....and I think thats a great, but overdone, Idea. How about "no pants pizza parlor?"

"no pants pizza parlor?"

While I agree that most businesses tend to improve their finances when they move to a "no pants" policy, there are some notable exceptions. "No pants pizza parlor" is definately one of them due to the following theorum:

Drunken Salarymen + Latent Adolescent Hormones + Greasy Hands from Pizzas + No Pants Waitresses = Yeast Infections + High Insurance Costs

Mama mia!

I haven't noticed any upturn in sales since I started my No Pants Translation. My office chair now has a somewhat greasy look and feel to it though.

G: Gross man... that was just way too thought out....

Ocean: I wonder if your clients know they're getting the added bonus of no pants with their translation....

There is always... No-pants-bookstores,
No-pants-donner-kebabs,
No-pants-"legal"-drugs-kiosks,
No-pants-wireless-stores,
and my new favorite, No-pants-pachinko.

Whatever we do decide we must get some no-pants-girls to hang out near the popular stations and hand out no-pants-tissues.

Not safe for work intelectual endeavor; melodious incantations of adoration:
http://www.limmy.com/playthings/xylophone/

Wow, that's an odd xylophone. I'd swear one of the notes makes two distinct sounds when you hit it.

Websites are quite different now compared to when I started surfing the web.

I agree...now it is harder to find free porn.