hello japan! (backlog flush #76 and travelog)

Note on Japanese writing -- I hope the encoding works out.

The writing near the McDonald's logos was katakana, not kanji. It said either ワタシメ　(watashime) or just ワタシ (watashi), which means "I/myself", followed by an X. The problem with the "wa" letter (ワ) is that if you write it sloppily, it looks like ku (ク).

The symbol for the Red Sox was the katakana for "re" (レ).

Did you learn any of the kana before you left? It's useful for reading all the hidden English loanwords.

--Nick Bensema Tue Mar 25 12:42:42 2008

frak. the encoding borked.

--Nick Bensema Tue Mar 25 12:43:23 2008

but wait, I looked in firefox and the encoding suddenly worked. But, yeah, I think maybe the comment thingy needs to be UTF-8-ified.

--Nick Bensema Tue Mar 25 12:57:23 2008

I think the "throw someone under the bus" has to do with the fact that, like getting pushed in front of the subway, it's something that happens so quickly that one can barely react, much less defend against the attack-- it's about being blindsided with a lethal attack.

That, or it's some sort of weird "Speed" reference to Keanu Reeves that I haven't figured out yet.

--LAN3 Tue Mar 25 15:03:49 2008

Heh, Nick, my language inability is so massive that I learned only the tiniest sprinkling of convenient phrases, never mind actual letters...

LAN3, that makes sense, still seems a little arbitrary.

And Yay Red Sox!

--Kirk Tue Mar 25 14:24:03 2008

It's too bad I didn't recommend for you that book that'll teach you all the kana in about a week. And it's still a bit of a struggle.

Also, weird how American sports can be watched over there. When I was in Tokyo, I saw part of a San Diego football game that was being played right here in Phoenix because of wildfires.

--Nick Bensema Tue Mar 25 14:56:48 2008

According to The Consumerist, there was some sort of outage at both Comcast and DirecTV which meant that sports fans who woke up early to see the game (which started at 6AM eastern, 3AM Pacific) were SOL. Comcasters got a $2 credit for the outage.

--LAN3 Tue Mar 25 19:08:59 2008

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