Wednesday Weirdness: Sportsmanship Edition

Our girls' volleyball team hosted a neighboring Japanese school. Every time the other team scored a point, this happened:



(Note for email readers: this is a video; you have to click through to the blog to view).

If you can't see the video, here's how it goes. A volleyball point is scored, and in response, the team claps and chants out an organized cheer in a weird chirpy voice while jogging in a circle and doing a fist pump. It is the single most annoying thing I've ever seen at a sporting event, and I've seen seen both the Harvard and Princeton University marching bands. Just rewatching this video has stressed me out so much I need to take a break.

What? Haven't you ever seen a baby beer before?

Now I'm more relaxed. Back to the topic.

So to emphasize, they do this every time they score a point. You play best-of-five games to 25 points each, so I was subjected to this charming chirp circle at least seventy-five times. With the pace of volleyball you can get two or three per minute. It was like watching a child cult ritual on a scratched and skipping DVD.

And it's even more aggravating when you remember that in volleyball, you score a point when you do something right, but you also score a point when the other team screws up - and they dance regardless of which process got them the point. So a girl on our team who's been practicing really hard all fall gives her best serve, but it doesn't go over. What does she have to look forward to? The opposing team doing the old clap, cheer, fist-pump-circle-dance to celebrate and call attention to her failure. This is not just annoying, it's the video that should show up in the thesaurus under "sportsmanship: antonyms." The first time you did this in the U.S., the referee would give you a warning. The second time, your whole team would probably be thrown out.

And yet I talked with one of our Japanese teachers, and she said this was "normal Japanese volleyball." It is apparently coached and expected from the players, at least for middle school girls. I can't confirm this. It didn't happen at the boys' game I went to last year, and I saw no sign of it in some Youtube videos - but those are international matches, so maybe there are specific rules on celebration.

In any case, the Japanese have a reputation for politeness and hospitality. This is the country where they bow to the referee, coaches, and opposing fans after the game. So I wonder if anybody on that team realized how unsportsmanlike this prancy routine appears to a Western audience. (Well, at least to two of us - one of my students was so aggravated by the proceedings that he actually had to leave the gym). Would they stop if they knew?

All I can tell you is if I show up at another game and this starts happening again, one baby beer won't cut it. I'm going to need a whole six pack.

Even if it does cost $6.

Castella and Higashi (?): Justin & Nana Eat Weird Stuff for Your Entertainment

A while back, Nana and I spent a fascinating weekend in Nagasaki (previous posts here, here, and here). For a long time, Nagasaki was Japan's gateway to the West. In fact, for centuries it was Japan's only source of sugar, shipped in from Portugese and later Dutch trading posts in Southeast Asia. Even today, Nagasaki is home to several popular Japanese treats that harken back to the city's cosmopolitan past.

The best known of these is probably castella, a mild sponge cake based on an old Portugese recipe named after the Spanish kingdom of Castille. 

Classic variety in the foreground, green tea variety in the back.

Though foreign in origin, the taste of modern castella is very Japanese: delicate and not very sweet, with as much emphasis on texture as on flavor.

Nana is a fan.

This second treat, purchased from the same shop, is something altogether different: a dry, pressed mixture of  sugar and rice flour, called higashi (I think).

This one was even milder in flavor and more focused on texture: once bitten, the thing would crumble into a fine powder in your mouth, then dissolve into a thin mochi-like goo. Odd, but not unpleasant.

Back in the day, both of these treats, along with any sweets not based on red bean, were extremely expensive, given the scarcity of sugar, and entirely dependent on the Dejima trade. These days, imported sugar is abundant, and while the Japanese palate tends towards less-sweet sweets as a whole, those sweets have become affordable snacks.

Today's Lesson

カステラは　好き　です。

kasutera-wa suki desu.

Castella-(subject) pleasing is.

I like Castella.

Bonus Lesson: To sound more Japanese, you barely pronounce the "u" in "su," so that "suki desu" sounds more like "ski dess."

Bonus Bonus Lesson: Note how "castella," like most loan words, is written in katakana ( カタカナ ), the more "angular" of the two Japanese phonetic scripts - not hiragana ( ひらがな ), the more flowing script used for native Japanese words.

Wednesday Weirdness: Otousan

Nana and I are obsessed with Otousan.

"Otousan" (お父さん) is a big white dog who serves as the mascot for Softbank, our mobile phone company and proud sponsors of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks baseball team.

Seriously, if you go to the Yahoo! Dome (the exclamation point is obligatory), from the rafters above each baseline hangs a three-story-tall portrait of Otousan in a Softbank hat.

As I'm sure you could tell from the above picture, Otousan is a freakishly cute Hokkaido dog. Otousan, it turns out, is played by a particular dog in Tokyo named Kaikun, who is a bit of a celebrity in his own right.

Now, the sharp-eyed Japanese linguists among are audience may have noticed that Otousan's name is also the Japanese word for "father." You see, Otousan is the noble father of the Softbank White Family, featured in the short clip below.




Obviously, like any self-respecting Japanese man, Otousan rules his family with an iron fist.

Notice the symbolic distance between father and son.

I should note now that, in typical Japanese fashion, this whole ludicrous situation is played out with a completely straight face. At no point is there any explanation given for:

1. Why the Softbank mascot is a cute, white dog.
2. Why the aforementioned dog can talk.
3. Why said dog has a human family.
4. Why the dog's son, um, doesn't take after his father.

(Edit by Nana: Are you suggesting that the daughter DOES take after the father?)

There is no way to play this thing out in your head that isn't supremely bizarre, even when the family is doing something completely innocuous, like cheering on the local baseball team . . .

. . . or posing for an awkward family photo.

But just when you think you've started to wrap your head around this thing, they go and do something like, I don't know, don some head-to-toe leather, get up on stage, and play Queen.

It was around the time that we saw this Nana and I decided this "Oniisan" (brother - seriously, that's the character's name) must be one of the coolest people on the face of the planet.

Yes, Otousan is done up like Paul Stanley from KISS.

Turns out Oniisan, aka Dante Carver, is actually pretty big in Japan as an actor, tarento (professional celebrity), and blogger. Mr. Carver, if you're reading, and you ever find yourself with a couple hours to kill in Fukuoka, you have two amused expats here who would love to express our appreciation with a nice, cold beer.

Today's Lesson:

お父さん

otousan

father

お母さん

okaasan

mother

お兄さん

oniisan

older brother

妹

imouto

little sister

Why Expats Need Smartphones

Until recently, the smartphone craze had largely passed us by. We were too poor for an Android in the UK and too foreign for an iPhone in Korea. (Sadly, I'm not joking on either count.) Before that, the last time we were in the US was in 2007, right around when the first iPhone came out, and we were struggling to pay our exorbitant DC rent.

To make a long story short when we got to Japan a smartphone just seemed like an unnecessary expense. Plus, we all know I can't be trusted with losable, breakable, valuable things. So without really thinking about it, we grabbed the cheapest phones we could find and got on with our lives.

Now, I don't often get to admit to being wrong, so when the rare chance comes along, I really like to savor it. So here goes: I was absolutely, categorically wrong about my ability to live without an iPhone. I can say this without any exaggeration whatsoever: having an iPhone has significantly increased our quality of life in Japan.

Here's why.

1) Maps.

Getting lost isn't a big deal when you know the language: all you need to do is ask for directions. When you don't know the language, getting lost is pretty scary - so scary that it's easy to fall into a very narrow routine just for fear of getting lost.

With a smartphone, though, you don't have to worry - as long as you have a signal, you can find your way home.

2)  Flashcards.

The hardest thing about learning a language is building vocabulary, and the hardest thing about building vocabulary is finding time to practice. Now, with all my flashcards stored on my phone (there are flashcard apps out there for just about every major language), I can use any spare minute for practicing new words.

4) Dictionaries.

For a while, when I first got to Japan, I carried a little dictionary around with me everywhere I went. I barely used it: Japanese, with its multiple scripts, conjugated everythings, and difficult-to-spot stems, is not a great fit for paper dictionaries. With a smartphone, though, I can keep multiple Japanese dictionaries with me at all times - at least one of which has a fairly idiot-proof approach to searching, which is exactly what I need.

5) Google Translate.

This is the biggest game changer: with a smartphone, whenever in the course of a transaction my meager Japanese runs out (usually within the first thirty or forty seconds), I can turn to Google to do the talking for me. On the one hand, this removes a strong incentive to learn how to say stuff before leaving the house. On the other hand, now I can go placed and do things without hours of prior study.

So for all these reasons, I stand humbly corrected: the iPhone is a great machine, and a near-necessity for anyone trying to make it in a foreign tongue.

Friday Photos: Tera-Machi, Nagasaki

A little while back, Nana and I went to Nagasaki, which prompted this gargantuan post on the Dutch trading post at Dejima.

The Dutch weren't the only foreigners in Nagasaki, though: the city has long had a substantial Chinese population. Nowhere is this more apparent than Tera-Machi, or "Temple Row," a stretch of hillside temples on Nagasaki's southern flank. The temples represent a mixture of Buddhism and traditional Chinese polytheism, with most of the temples serving as a resting place for the portable shrines carried in Chinese ships.

I won't go into too much detail about the temples, largely because there wasn't a lot of information available in English. (What we do know, we picked up from the excellent audio guide at the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture.)

Instead, I'll try to let the pictures speak for themselves.

Very Japanese, to begin with.

Nana makes a new friend. We see a lot of stubby-tailed cats here in Japan.

A Buddhist-style hillside graveyard.

You can really see the Chinese influence in the red and gold,
as opposed to the usual Japanese white and brown.

One of two wooden fish drums representing desire.
This is the male fish, with his mouth open.

The female fish has her mouth closed,
supposedly because she has less desire.

We never did figure out what this thing was.

I'm really glad that, of all the signs around this place,
this was the one they decided to put in English.

A dragonfly on a wilted lotus.
I'm actually a little ashamed for having just typed that. 

This lotus blossom hasn't flowered yet.

The frog is fake.
If I were a frog, though, that's exactly where I'd be.

Today's Language Lesson:

寺町は　きれいですね。

Tera-machi-wa kire-i desu ne.

Temple-town-(subject) pretty is no?

Temple Row is pretty, isn't it?

Typing in Japanese!

こんばんは！

(If my hearty "good evening" above just looks like a bunch of rectangles or question marks, then you need some help installing Japanese character sets.)

Nana and I finally caved in and got iPhones last week. Language learning was a huge part of the decision: there's no real substitute for carrying a huge dictionary, a big stack of customizable flashcards, and pretty much the whole Internet on a device that fits in your pocket. Plus, typing in Japanese on the thing is totally cool. You can even draw in kanji - provided you know the stroke order, and you don't have stupid fat fingers like mine.

Anyway, after futzing around with the Japanese on my iPhone for a while, I realized that there had to be some way to do the same thing with my laptop. Luckily, it turns out that adding input languages is a lot easier now than it was back in my days of trying to get Korean in Windows XP.

I won't go into detail - YesJapan has an excellent guide. All in all, it took less than ten minutes, and now I can write in Japanese!

Today's Japanese Lesson:

こんばんは

kon ban wa

"This evening [topic]"

Good evening!

Nagasaki Electric Tramway

Streetcars used to be pretty popular in Japan: with its high population density, Japan has a massive appetite for public transportation, and trams are a lot cheaper than subway lines. But trams also take up precious street space, and they're a lot less flexible than buses.

They're a great fit for a town like Nagasaki, though: too small for a full-blown subway, a bit too big and hilly for walking, and with a geography that severely limits the number of major road routes.

Hence the Nagasaki Electric Tramway, which is something of a tourist attraction in its own right.

The tram system has been running since 1914 and prides itself on never having lost any of its original lines. It's still the cheapest, fastest way around the city, and some of the older vehicles have a lot of charm. They don't seem to run on any discernible schedule (unusual for Japan), but we never waited more than a couple minutes before another car came rattling in.

Plus, if you ride out to the end of the line, you get little treats like this.

By the way, this isn't the first time Nana and I have blogged about riding public transit in style: check out our old post at The Educated Burgher on the stunning public buses of Malta.

Today's Japanese Lesson (offered at the request of a loyal reader):

Nagasaki-eki-ni ikimasu ka?

"Nagasaki-station-to go [question]?"

(Does this tram/train/bus/dirigible) go to Nagasaki Station?