New Music and Japanese

Uwa~… I’m not doing as many blog posts as I used to. I think I’m going to try for at least 3 or 4 a week. I think that’s a good number… enough so that I don’t get bored.

Anyway, seeing as how it’s summer, I’ve got a bit more time to devote to hobbies and stuff now. Lately, I’ve been listening to more music and watching more movies and TV than I have before. So, I went on a bit of a music, movie, and TV binge… it’s fun! And not nearly as unhealthy as a food binge! YAY!

So… some of the new music I got included (what I think is) the entire Coldplay discography, the entire Ellegarden discography, the entire Explosions in the Sky discography (up til now), Mogwai’s “Mogwai Young Team” album, “Hey” byPixies, some classical music (Liszt, Mendelssohn, a ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION albums, the entire Chatmonchy discography, and three albums by the Shins (“Chutes Too Narrow”, “Oh, Inverted World”, and “Wincing the Night Away”).  And I’ve listened to hardly ANY of them… hahahaha…

I’ve put all my Coldplay music on Shuffle and I’ve played through about half of them, which means that I probably haven’t heard… about half of them. I should probably get around to listening to more Coldplay at some point. I think my favorite Coldplay song at this moment is “Swallowed in the Sea” on the “X&Y” album. It’s a sad, melancholy sort of song, like most of Coldplay’s music. Most of it is about forgiveness and acceptance.

Explosions in the Sky’s and Mogwai’s music is a bit harder to write about because they are almost entirely instrumentals. They’re… awesome. That’s really all I can say. My favorite Explosions in the Sky song would probably be “First Breath After Coma”. It starts out slow, but then builds to a fantastic climax… before receding back to being slow. It’s atmospheric. There’s really no other way to explain it. As for Mogwai… haha… I actually haven’t heard listened to much Mogwai… so I can’t really say much about it. It’s good, but I don’t like it as much as Explosions in the Sky. Explosions in the Sky is sort of like a modern-day progressive rock orchestral piece. Their songs have to be taken in one piece. Otherwise, it kind of loses its effect… so if you listen to any of their songs, listen to the entire song.

“Hey” by Pixies is also a good song. I don’t really understand the lyrics, but I like the instrumentals, especially the bass throughout the song.

Chatmonchy is probably my favorite band. It’s a three piece (guitar, drums, bass, and vocals done by all three) Japanese girl rock band. They’ve had quite a bit of success in Asia, but I don’t think they’ve ever topped the Oricon Top 30 Singles or Top 30 Albums list, which is basically the list of the top 30 Japanese singles/albums sold in the week. I think the highest they’ve ever reached is #2 on both charts. ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION/アジアン・カンフー・ジェネレーション is another of my favorite Japanese rock groups. Their music tends to be heavier than Chatmonchy’s songs, which often leaned towards more bubble-gummy pop but lately has been a bit heavier too. My favorite Chatmonchy song is “Last Love Letter” and my favorite ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION song would probably be either  ”Re:Re”, which has an awesome guitar and drum intro, or “After Dark”.

NOTE: The video of the PV is kind of weird.

As for The Shins… truthfully, I haven’t listened to any Shins music except for what I already had… so I can’t really say much about the new stuff.

On a sidenote, I’m self-teaching myself Japanese! I dunno if it’ll turn out to be a good idea or not… *shrugs* Either way, I can get Daryl to help me when I get back to college in August… or September. I can’t remember which.

On the Subject of Love

Today, I found this old (5-years-old… so it’s ancient or something) article about jun-ai (“pure love”) on a Japanese news website. Here’s the link:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20041230ks.html

Anyway, it was talking about how the most popular Asian (Japanese and Koreans) dramas (ドラマ) in recent times (recent for 2004, at least) were about first love between two young high-schoolers, usually at 15, which is incidentally the year that many Japanese teenagers enter high school. This love was characterized as being platonic (meaning NO SEX), painful, and eternal, seeing as how one of the lovers would die at a young age at 17, which is incidentally the year that many Japanese teenagers enter their last of high school (Japanese high school spans 3 years instead of 4… I was really confused the first time too), leaving just enough time during the season for pain and stuffs, which is good for ratings.

Last year in college, I saw the movie adaptation of one of the dramas that the article mentions. Both the drama and the movie were titled “世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ”, or phonetically, “Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai o Sakebu”, or translated “Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World”. For those unfamiliar with the story, it’s sort of like “A Walk to Remember” starring Mandy Moore, except in Japanese and based off of a different book. For those unfamiliar with that story, it’s about a guy and a girl who start off not really liking each, then go to really liking each other, then the girl dies from cancer, then the guy is really tore up about it.

The central theme in these “jun-ai” (“pure love”) stories is that it’s a pure, painful first love (“hatsukoi”) that is never consummated and remains eternal because of the circumstances, not necessarily death. Sometimes, one of the characters has to leave for a period ranging from one year to a decade. During this time, the love remains and the re-emergence of one of the characters reawakens the same feelings. Special importance is placed upon the fact that it’s “hatsukoi” because the Japanese believe that first love is unmarred and untarnished by the experience and knowledge that seasoned daters know. “Hatsukoi” is typified as being more passionate and more beautiful because the lovers don’t know how things can possibly go wrong. And of course in “jun-ai”, they never learn because it ends before it can go wrong.

After reading this and after watching the dramas, I feel a bit sad. Obviously, I’ve never been in any sort of “jun-ai” or “hatsukoi” situation. I wouldn’t really know what I’d do if I was though. I think that if I ever lost any that I was closely romantically linked with, I don’t think I’d be any good in that department. Currently, I don’t love anyone unconditionally, and there’s been only one case when I have, and that turned out kind of disastrously (or rather, it kind of just fell flat). But… I think I’d want something like that. As opposed to other people’s descriptions, the definition of love to me is like “hatsukoi”, a blind, unconditional, unfettered willingness to give one’s self to another person. It doesn’t have to be returned, and it doesn’t have to be mutual, and it might not exactly be healthy. I think if I had that sort of blind, unconditional, mutual love, I think it’d be enough for me. I don’t think I’d want anyone else after that.

Japanese Comedy

I spent at least an hour watching Japanese comedy on Youtube. Now, Japanese comedy differs from American comedy in that it relies predominantly on wordplay and Japanese pop references. For example, one of the videos I found was about a guy who was looking for his phone in a lost-and-found center and while he’s there, the other phones begin to ring. The ringtones were integral to the comedy in the video and played a key part to the ending. So, basically without knowledge of the Japanese language (both spoken and written) and without knowledge of Japanese pop culture, Japanese comedy is both incomprehensible and boring. So yeah. LUCKILY I KNOW SOME STUFF! ^-^

So, I’m going to post some Youtube videos here to link to some Japanese comedy videos. YAY!

This was the first one that I watched, and I still think it’s the funniest.

This video is by a manzai pair called Taka and Toshi. A manzai pair is basically composed of a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke), and the straight man hits the funny man on the head when he says/does something stupid. On a sidenote, I think “boke” also means “idiot” or something like that.

And this is by Tomonori Jinnai, who is a Japanese actor and comedian. He sometimes uses large screens as visual props, but he didn’t in this one. I think this one is pretty funny, but the greatest punchline is kind of incomprehensible if you don’t know anything about Japanese TV dramas.

Playing Around with Japanese

I figured out how to write Japanese on the computer with a normal keyboard. Through an application on Windows, I’ve managed to get a thing on the right side of the toolbar that allows me to switch out between English and Japanese. Basically, when I use the Japanese language tool thing, I just type out a Japanese word or phrase in romaji, and then the computer allows me to scroll through a series of hiragana and kanji. On Word, I can also use the mouse to write the characters, and then you can select the right hiragana or kanji. Here’s a couple examples:

Shiyouganai: 仕様がない

Ohayou gozaimasu: お早うございます

Nihongo: 日本語

Itadakimasu: いただきます

Tadaima: ただいま

Momo: 桃

As you can see, I’m having a lot of fun with it.

Super Fun Looking Games

I found two new IPs, “Bayonetta” and “Infinite Space”, being developed by an independent Japanese video game company called Platinum Games. Platinum Games originated from a merger of two games companies, one of which was Clover Studio, the makers of the graphically-interesting games “Okami” and “Viewtiful Joe”. Clover Studio was funded by Capcom but was dissolved in 2006-2007. It’s founders then merged with another company called ODD Incoporated in 2007 to create Platinum Games, which now has a 4 game deal with Sega.

Anyway, Platinum Games recently released a deliciously violent Wii game called “MadWorld” with an awesome black-and-white art style. It’s AWESOME.

Platinum Games is about to release a new RPG game on the DS called Infinite Space, where you control and customize a starship and a crew. It’s coming on in Japan this summer with a NA release sometime later this year. There’s a series of anime short films that had been released periodically to promote the product, and I’m trying to find them now. I’m hoping to get the game when it comes out, because it gels so well with my science-fiction loving mind. The other game is an action game for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 called “Bayonetta”. It’s been developed by the Kamiya Hideki, the creator of the “Devil May Cry” games. Anyway, the titular main character has fucking GUNS in her high-heels.

I still don’t know too much about the gameplay, but if the Devil May Cry games were great so I’m expecting this to awesome as well. And the high-heeled gun shoes looked pretty awesome too.

Voice Recording, Learning Japanese

I’ve figured out a way to get an iTunes account without using a credit card. Yup yup. I’ve downloaded a bunch of different apps, including a voice recorder app called iTalk. It’s generally easier for me to assemble my thoughts verbally, so I’ve been wanting to get a voice recorder for a while. I went to the UNC student store earlier this semester and found one for $30 to $50 (I can’t remember). So… yeah, I didn’t buy it. Nope.

So… yeah, I found a voice recorder now. Which is good. The only two bad things is that the files are a bit big for the amount of time that’s recorded and I also can’t sync the sound files to my computer yet.

I also found a fairly entertaining Japanese podcast designed to teach phrases and conversational stuffs. It’s quite good. It’s on iTunes and it also has a website here:

http://learnjapanesepod.com/category/ljp-blog/

It’s not designed as a primary teacher thing… I think it’s more of a supplement to teach a little bit about life in Japan and some conversational bits. It doesn’t teach grammar or anything, but it’s interesting… and I like it.