I found Curazy’s list of Japanese words exported into other languages quite amusing. I’m still not exactly sure if it’s meant to be serious or not, considering how it includes shio taran, which is a totally coincidental close phonetic match of the Hungarian phrase (sótlan) of the same meaning (“not salty enough”). I’d say some of the others are similar coincidental matches too. Nonetheless, I decided to come up with a similar list.
Kumano Kodo Beer
Imagine that this post is written in ojou-sama Japanese. I’m adding “desu wa” to the end of every sentence in my head anyway. If you don’t get it why, the previous sentences were not meant for you.
The 古道 (kodou) stands for “old style”, which made me cautious after my not so pleasant experiences with the Beer Hearn “old-style IPA”, but unlike that, Kumano Kodo is a brown ale, and I guess that made all the difference.
Ads
People don’t like ads, yet they keep the online world rolling. Showing ads is pretty much the only source of income for free social networks. I don’t know how it works on facebook, since I don’t ever use that on my phone and on my computers everything is adblocked, but twitter has promoted tweets showing up every now and then. At this point I turned off adblock on twitter, because some of those ads are actually interesting.
For example I found the cloud host the blog is running on through such a promotion, and promo codes are still paying for it as well. While there is also the occasional irrelevant promo, those can be just dismissed, and judging from how they tend not to show up again, I guess the site learns what I care about. Which is good.
Ads like this, I don’t mind.
Rebirth
On Wednesday, during my lunch break, I wanted to sort out something about my credit card on the phone, but then the dear device decided to freeze rock solid in the middle of the call, terminating it. At this point I somehow managed to contain my rage, took out the battery and tried to power it up again.
Without any success. It sat in front of me for minutes and not even the Sony logo would show up. Now that made something snap in me, and then the wall made the screen of the phone snap too. I used it for a year, when I had it replaced for similar reasons. I again got the same Xperia VL, because it’s still the best phone on the lineup for me (and the smallest).
I just finished setting up the essentials (Google, Line, Twitter, Dropbox), and now let’s how it will work all right at least until next spring, when some discounts on my contract expire, so I’m thinking of switching phones at that point. Although if I can’t find anything under 4.5″, I’ll just stick with this one.
Rhythm
Sadly, I’m getting used to this sick style of life, that I work from 10am to midnight every weekday, get close to no sleep on Thursday nights thanks to Shirobako, then on the weekend maybe get half of the stuff I should do done. At least I think my body got used to tighter sleep schedules, since I’m no longer so irritable late night as I used to be.
Not sure if that’s a good thing though. I’d so much rather have a few hours of actually usable free time every day, but alas. At least work’s getting busy, so I’m not sitting idly all day just to get fucktons of work dumped on me at 10pm. I also actively adjust my workflow so that I can minimize idling and maximize my free time. Not that it’s easy.
Otaru Bakusyu Pilsner
Another beer from Hokkaido, this time their pilsner. Lager beer and thus pilsner are quite close to my heart, so I was looking forward to this one.
Baird Beer Wabi-Sabi Japan
The label of this beer looks just simply black at first glance, and that caught my attention. Honestly I was expecting a stout at first, but then looking closer, it did say pale ale. A pale ale with green tea and wasabi in it? Sounds like a challenge…
Oh!La!Ho Captain Crow Extra Pale Ale
You know, I’ve always felt that the name “pale ale” is misleading. Even now the first impression of the word “pale” is that it would be light, just how the mass-produced commercial lagers are watered-down versions of the real thing.
Obviously, that’s not why pale ales are called pale, and once I realized that I was quite excited to try out Oh!La!Ho’s extra pale ale.
High
It’s been a while since I last got caffeine high. It might’ve been a year or two back when I knocked back 4-5 cups of freshly brewed coffee during a late-night translation session.
Questions
Just read that piece on Gaijinpot about questions we get asked all the time, and I decided to compile my own list. There are a few questions that are bound to come up when I meet someone for the first time, such as…
- Where are you from?
- Is English the official language there?
- What is your language like?
- What is your country famous for?
- How long have you been in Japan?
- Why did you come to Japan?
