Geisha, Interrupted

two!

I am two awesome years sober today!  Woo hoo!  Sorry about the blogging freeze, I just, I don`t know.  Besides having a million other things to do, I really feel like I`ve   outgrown this blog`s voice, insofar as urls can have voices.  If that makes any sense at all.  I`ve considered putting a formal end to my posts, but I would rather believe that a new voice will come along, eventually.   Ok, so, I`ll see you later then. Eventually.

P.S. Go Meeeeeeee!!!!!

Fun with Machine Translation

Ever since my book got published last April, I`ve been enduring what can only be described as a crash course in "acceptance" and "letting go".  My latest adventure in letting go has involved my reluctant acceptance that I will never be able to speak Dutch.

And this is a very inconvenient obstacle when one is the subject of a feature article in a Dutch Daily Newspaper.  

Being in the media is difficult enough.  I`ve had to accept how little control I have over the angle that any journalist takes on my story.  Getting interviewed for a news article is a bit like having your caricature drawn by a total stranger.  He may decide to accentuate the length of your nose or the size of your ass for the sheer entertainment value involved, and that is his prerogative.  It is also his job.

I was not so worried about this particular article, because both the correspondent and the photographer who worked with me were really wonderful.  But wonderful or not, reading about myself in the media is a lot like looking at my reflection through a kaleidoscope or a funhouse mirror.

That being the case, I have to say that reading an article about myself --which has just been processed through machine translation software-- can be best likened to looking through a kaleidoscope and into a funhouse mirror at the same time...while also on acid. Just for fun, and to remind myself why I still have a job as a human translator, I plugged the Dutch article into three different online translation websites. The worst by far was freedictionary.com, which, as it turns out, is free for a reason.In the following passage I am talking to the reporter about being a sober drunk as we walk around Ginza, all of which is lost in this translation:

....One and a half year Jacobs ago got a kick has avoided off of the drink and since then they Ginza. Until tonight. They self looks surprised off. ‘Ik see fit lifted actual what there now all on street. When I yet as a hostess I was worked so self-obsessed! I was drank began always already before I, because I felt me then better. Bear confidence, I named dat.’

No no, it was BEER confidence, dat`s what i named dat!  Wait, did i even coin that phrase?  Likely not.  And I certainly make no claims it...

And wait...what?

......Het best with difficulty here again is to be walked. What I it mostly wrong, I realize myself now, is the excitement and make it yourself well every evening. I was infinitely busy with make-up, nagellak, sexy dresses and high hook shoes. That must also for that was my werk.

Also, I`m not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean, but it just makes me feel dirty:

....Young, attractive women lubricate strip the guests round the mouth and stick full devotion cigarettes at and serve urges in. 

......Western men are not the target group. Jacobson: ‘Want that go it sleepiness from out that it wél surreptitious in the rear rooms for sex are. Or they ask self off about which you this work do and have at the same time a judgement ready. They do not understand the draft. In the western society, everything plays self off at the oppervlakte. In the Japanese society, everything lifted that just neat onder.’

The translation service provided by Yahoo.com is a step up, by which I mean that I can almost tell what the article is trying to say.  Yet its insistence that my book was, in fact, the story of my sordid past as a flight attendant, did start waring on me. (I would have been an awful flight attendant. Yes, I`m still scared of airplanes.)

In a flight attendant club....Young, attractive women palm off the guests stroop the mouth and twinges full devotion cigarettes and pour drinks. They hold animated or sensitive conversations at the same time and seduce them their customers to ordering expensive bottles spirits, because they get a percentage of the turnover. , Cost respectively champagne and tequila around three hundred and honderdtachtig the euro by bottle.

....Does she have ever regrets has of its flight attendant past? `It not the best experience has perhaps been from my life but I needed it adult become. Still I miss agitation and all attention. But I am now at last able build something. No, I am possible never more to that world.

Yes!  I am possible never more to that world!  Of course that`s not what I really said, but I think I am going to start saying that!!!

The best- and I use that term lightly- machine translation software, is that provided by google.  It even allows me to discuss the intricacies of married life in Japan as follows:

"The marriage in Japan often degenerates into a kind of business agreement...On monogamy is not heavy lift...That does not mean that Japanese men do not take their wives...Pride told me they see photos of their families. But when I challenged them and asked them why not more often with their own wife slept, was often the answer: 'Because she's always too busy with the kids. "

And also, my highly fuckedup relationship with the customer called Douhanman:

It is a regular customer due - dohanman because of the many events that he paid with her - that Jacobson still has hold as long as moth. In exchange for her friendship, she even went along to family celebrations, he's always saved from the fire as she was again bankrupt or out of her house was. "With dohanman I even went shopping, which he paid...We had a close friendship. There was just no physical attraction. I often felt guilty because I keep him there again verleidde to me so much money to spend. But then I thought you have the rules made me not take the blame when you lose!  

I do believe my exact words for that last line, and I only know this because I am partially ripping them off from a Bikini Kill song, were: "You made the rules, so don`t blame me when you lose."  Yahoo considers this to mean: "You have not made the rules, take it me then evil if you lose!"  Freedictionary.com, on the other hand, insists that "You made the rules, take loses the me then not nasty as you!"  

Regardless of who is the nasty one, I think I am done playing at machine translations for a while.  It suddenly seems much easier to just try my luck at "acceptance and letting go."  Besides, I`m too old to drop acid anymore.

Faith on a Rope

So last weekend, for the latest in my series of undrunken adventures that no longer involve jumping into oncoming traffic just to see if it will stop for me, I went rock climbing over in Ogawayama, Nagano.  Yes, real-ass rock climbing. 

It was almost the first time I climbed on rocks.  

Once upon a time during my first year in Japan, I visited my old housemate from college who was living and working in Takamatsu.  I will call her "Hope," because her real name also starts with an H.  Hope deserves a medal for living with me during college, but we won`t get into that.  Anyway, we were feeling pissed off about the pathway to a castle being closed off, when Hope had the idea to climb about ten meters up the stone barrier instead.  "We can pretend we didn`t know we weren`t supposed to do this," one of us said.  

Then, after we somehow got to the top, we realized that the path up was not in fact closed off, but actually started at the other side of the castle.  As it turned out, we were too busy playing `manic ninja girls`to even look around us.  So much was not only a cause for unstoppable giggling, but also saved us for potentially serious injury on the way down.  So in the end, luckily for us, we were not hurt or arrested.

Funny, a lot of my old stories conclude with that same line.

But not so much anymore.  I went climbing this time with a relatively new friend.  I will call her "Faith," because of her keen appreciation for ironic nicknames.  Faith is a hardcore adrenolin junkie, and I absolutely adore her.

Not only were we using ropes this time, but we`d actually practiced the technique at a wall-climbing gym in Edogawabashi, before embarking. Wall climbing is fun, but it feels a bit anticlimactic when you reach the summit. Being an expert wall-climber is a lot like being best friends with your therapist.  It`s a relationship that supposed to prepare you for the real thing, yet as an end in itself it feels pretty lame. 

Real mountains, a lot like real friends, bear no comparison.  Here I am now, giving Faith a few golden opportunities to take pictures of my ass, as seen from the bottom of a steep cliff:

And there she is, looking conveniently anonymous and small, against the enormity of the mountains and the sky:

There are two different categories of adventure: the kinds with ropes and nets and the kinds without.  Now, I believe I am supposed to say something about how real-life adventures are much cooler than getting inebriated and risking my life. And yet, there is still something special about oncoming traffic that will always appeal to me. 

But at the same time, ropes aren`t nearly as boring as your average manic girl will have you believe.  Adrenalin is slow to understand when a rope is involved, because nothing is ever perfectly safe.  And the other neat thing about responsible climbing, is the belief in others you need to muster in order to trust that your friend will not lose her grip on your rope, that she will not leave you hanging or let you fall.  Your trust in others and in yourself grows stronger as a result, filling the gaps left by flashy stories about death-defyingly retarded encounters.

In the end, it`s not a bad trade-off.

Manaa, Interrupted

The Tokyo Metro Authority`s manner campaign, which puts out a new poster each month advising commuters not to engage in unsuitable activities on the trains (such as eating, drinking, applying mascara etc.) has been much blogged about in recent months.  

Not wanting to be left out, I thought of some new poster ideas for this campaign while taking the metro to work this morning. Here they are below!

 

DO IT AT THE ADULT MOVIE SHOP:

DO IT WITH YOUR WIFE:

DO IT IN THE STRIP BAR:

DO IT IN REMEDIAL ENGLISH CLASS:  

DO IT ANYWHERE ELSE BUT RIGHT THE FUCK IN FRONT OF ME:

So now, does anyone know who I can send all my ideas to?? I`d really like to start seeing them up on the station walls.  On second thought though, I may have better luck with a printer and some duct tape...

Bar Flower Sandwich

You know, I`ve always dreamed that one day I might be fortunate enough to be the filling in an Alan Greenspan/Lance Armstrong sandwich.  And now, for this ever brief hour on the English memoirs rankings at Amazon.co.jp, I can finally feel the love.  Just wow.

洋書のベストセラー

指定なし > 洋書 > Biographies & Memoirs > Memoirs

Memoirsの中で最も人気がある商品です。情報は1時間ごとに更新されます。

1.		The Age of Turbulence  Alan Greenspan (著) 在庫あり 参考価格： ￥ 1,920 価格： ￥ 1,876 OFF： ￥ 44 (2%) 13点の新品／中古商品を見る: ￥ 1,505より
2.		Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights As a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess  Lea Jacobson (著) 通常9~13日以内に発送 価格： ￥ 2,852 12点の新品／中古商品を見る: ￥ 2,687より
3.		It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life  Lance Armstrong (著), Sally Jenkins (著)   (51件のカスタマーレビュー)  通常9~13日以内に発送 価格： ￥ 2,852 13点の新品／中古商品を見る: ￥ 591より

For all you kids out there who have always wondered what Shibuya crossing looks like through the lens of a kaleidoscope...

There is not much difference after all.

I th... th... think I... I... might maybe STRANGLE YOU NOW!

Lately, I`ve been feeling the categorically insatiable urge to strangle the female heroine of the girlie anime series I`ve been translating.  

Despite having reached the ripe old age of 17, she has not yet learned how to talk. Our heroine doesn`t have a speech impediment, per se, but instead she becomes curiously unable to express herself whenever the boy she likes enters a room, whenever she receives a compliment, and whenever she has to express an opinion or is otherwise expected to think. One becomes particularly aware of this fact when having to translate then transcribe her c... c... constant stu... stu... stuttering. 

I have to admit that she is a highly likable character.  And yet, this only makes her refusal to get a grip all the more irritating here.  Despite all her best efforts, she is irreparably clumsy and stupid.  But to make matters more interesting, she is unyielding in her love for Japan`s number-one-top-ranked-genius-cuteboy. Cuteboy, as it happens, detests stupid girls.

As a cultural outsider who had always assumed that feminine beauty was synonymous with retardation within Japanese society, that last bit came as a real shock to me.  I mean, why should cutegirl even have to try to be smart in order to impress cuteboy? Especially when she is so obviously incapable?  And why isn`t her stupidity as endearing to him as it is to the audience??

After discussing her dilemma with Japanese friends over the past few months, I may have finally discovered something interesting from all this.  That is to say, I no longer believe that the "ideal" japanese woman need be dumb and submissive.  No, no, it`s more difficult than that.  Instead, she has to be naturally capable of great things, yet filial enough to sacrifice every ounce of her potential for the sake of her husband and family.  For more proof of this, just look at Japan`s crown princess Masako.

おすすめ: for those who prefer the uninterrupted

In the event that my lack of posts lately or my inability to respond to comments (like I ever did that anyway) hasn`t made this painfully clear, I am currently suffering from an acute case of blogger burnout.  In the event that you miss me, I`d like to direct you to two foreign chicks in Tokyo whom I recently discovered: Green Eyed Geisha and Tokyo Cowgirl.  There you will find informative, edgy, thoughtful, amusing and regularly updated blogs about life in Japan. In terms of awesomeness, these two blogs are currently kicking my ass quite brutally. So....I strongly recommend you go play over there instead, for the time being.  I will meanwhile be keeping up my sporadic half-existence, and maybe one day I`ll find a cure for sucking.

The Super-Soaker-Festival! (or, as others call it, Fukagawa Hachiman...)

I hadn`t exactly planned on attending a matsuri this weekend. I`ve been bitterly busy over most of the o-bon holidays, translating cartoons about awkward teenage love, which can never be requited lest the entire story falls apart. That`s why it was so nice last weekend when the festival came to me instead. I took these pictures on Sunday morning, whilst on a natto and coffee run to the neighborhood convenience store.

What really distinguishes the Fukagawa Hachiman festival from the others, as you will see, is the degree to which you get to throw water at your friends.  Yes, even when it`s raining outside. Brilliant!

Pokemon Purgatory

I`ve speculated about this issue before, but I think that I may have finally found the real root cause of Japan`s declining birthrate.

Yes ... It is the GREAT POKEMON ADVENTURE JAPAN RAILWAYS STAMP RALLY (or however you want to translate it) that takes place every summer here.

August in Tokyo is best described as unbearable, a time when outdoor activity should be avoided at all costs.  There is only one thing worse than venturing outside in August here, and that is having to board a crowded train in this heat. Sadly for the already overworked Japanese parent, the GREAT POKEMON ADVENTURE JAPAN RAILWAYS STAMP RALLY manages to combine both circles of hell.

So this time of year, the trains are swarming with little adventurers in Pikachu visors, riding from station to station for no purpose other than to collect stamps for their booklet, which they`ll then send away for the equivalent of a cereal box toy.  The little Pokemons are most often shadowed by a less enthusiastic parent who looks as if she may collapse from heat exhaustion at any moment.

The sight is enough to make any onlooker seriously think twice about procreation.