opinios

I love Japanese food.

So many flavours, with varying degrees of health and sustenance. Granted, I have yet to acquire a taste for natto, but the rest is pretty good - most of the stuff ending in an "ee" sound, anyway. Like sashimi, sushi, yakitori, onigiri, umeboshi, okonomiyaki, wasabi, and curry.

Yep, that's right - Japanese curry has its own distinct flavour. It's a little sweeter than regular curry but it's pretty tasty. And easy to come by.

But sometimes, you just can't beat the real thing.

Luckily, we have an authentic Indian curry house a short bike ride from home, and they do take out. Which is just as well because there are 6 seats. No, that's not a typo. A maximum of six people can sit down and dine at this place. It is ridiculously small, it is the size of the kitchen at my mum and dad's house. Before they renovated. If anyone's interested, it's on the main road about 5 mins away from Ikebukuro station, west exit. On your right. I forget the name but you can't miss it.

The good thing about it being so intimate is you can watch the chefs go to work. Flipping their nan dough like eccentric masters, throwing their tandoori chicken wings on a skewer like they are fencing in a Zorro movie before flamboyantly jamming them into the coals to roast. And jabbering away and making jokes in Hindi.

All ordering is done in Japanese of course: their English sucks, and I can't even say hello in Hindi. But the common denominator for two foreigners in Japan is the local lingo. Which is surreal. You can almost see each other's brains translating as you talk back and forth, all the while self-conscious of your mistakes in front of other Japanese people.

Jeez it's good tucker though! Happy New Year everyone!!

Our host, Digital Space, seem to be having some problems over the Christmas break. So far opinios has been immune, but poor old 35 Degrees (and my yet-to-have-anything-worthwhile-on-it magain.com) have been put through the wringer. First it was hacked, then 2 days later it was hacked again. Now the server is down.

So for all the 35 Degrees fans out there (and there seems to be a lot of them at around 300 visitors a day), you'll have to wait another day or so for Kinki's next update, as the tech support team are all on holiday!

It's tough choosing a company to host your web site with. I have always made the decision based on recommendations and have been lucky.

Up until now.

All the best wishes to everyone who reads opinios regularly, sends stuff in, leaves comments, contributes to discussions, writes to me to sympathise, empathise, encourage, belittle and correct me. You motivate me to keep posting, creating and expressing.

In a year that saw opinios get redesigned, migrated to a new host, hacked and go through an identity crisis, I am reasonably proud of the very random and eclectic collection of words and pictures on this site. A lot of them are not mine and so I extend a huge thankyou to anyone who made a submission to opinios this year; there were some really incredible photographs and prose sent in that I have been very proud to publish. I hope you felt the same element of pride when your name was in lights as I did being associated with it. These were some of the highlights.

Having said that, in its continual defiance of categorisation, opinios will be undergoing another re-organisation over the winter break, resulting in a site that will have a slightly different format and a fresher look and feel. I also plan to move over to Movable Type which should make it easier for me to update more regularly. And there are a whole bunch of cartoon ideas that I want to share with you too.

But you'll just have to wait for next year for all that.

Until then, enjoy the festive season and time with friends/family, don't drink and drive, and take some time out to think about some of the people out there who don't have a home to sleep in or food to eat on Christmas Day, let alone have access to the internet and other luxuries. You might even want to think about giving someone less fortunate than you some money to help them out with that food thing. It's Christmas, remember.

All the best.

Today's day at school with some loud and rabbity elementary school kids was my last work commitment for the year! Yaay! And it's just as well, because I will need a bit of time over the winter break to figure this one out.

The reason I haven't posted for a week relates to, yes you guessed it, my inner bulldog again (and not, contrary to popular belief, at all related to a certain end-of-year Xmas party where I supposedly drank far too much. They are all lies. All of them). I am working on a submission for the Zen Garden collection of CSS-based web designs, and am reasonably happy with how it looks so far.

In Mozilla.

This is why you shouldn't be using Internet Explorer: forget the deeper issues of it being a bad implementation of web standards, about the numerous browser-specific properties it allows (and therefore encourages) or the fact that it hasn't been upgraded in over 3 years (and therefore doesn't support any aspect of CSS-2).

No, that's nothing to do with it.

You should scrap using it and download Mozilla Firebird so that I don't have to stuff around writing hacks to make it work! Go on, go have a look at how it's supposed to compared to how it does, and then think about how much work I have ahead of me trying to trick IE into doing what it should be in the first place. It looks terrible when viewed with IE - paragraphs overlap, graphics don't line up properly, coloured boxes collapse to half their specified size and some text doesn't even display at all. And all because Bill Gates and his cronies didn't do enough testing on their flagship browser before releasing it to the public.

Sheesh. Do something good for your community (and yourself) this Christmas: download what is hands-down a superior web browser, and delete Internet Explorer from your machine (note: you'll discover that the latter is actually impossible, but it can't hurt trying!)

A friend told me the other day that I should post more. You know, develop a regular reader base by keeping it fresh and making sure that there is always something new for people to read up on when they stop by. That way the traffic would increase and I could contend with the heavyweight blogs like 35 Degrees.

And of course they're right. I sometimes go for weeks without posting. And it's not because of some ideal that I have that revolves around "Unless it's quality, you shouldn't write for the sake of it". Oh no, I'm happy to crap on for the hell of it, yessiree.

It's just that when a technical problem crops up, I can't let it go, and until it is resolved other things get delayed. I don't call myself a programmer, even though if I wanted to claim being of that ilk, my pedigree would justify it.

It's just that I am a bull terrier when it comes to problem-solving. Someone like my cousin Nick is able to churn out the amazing cartoons and drawings that he does because he makes that the priority. But if there is something unresolved hanging around that needs looking at, I can't let it go. It will prevent me from sleeping.

The present distraction is the comments script that runs on Kim's web site. It is a simple Perl script that lets visitors write feedback. I can't use it on opinios because I run it under blosxom, and the script needs posts to be unique numbers (too hard). But Kim uses Blogger, and it is perfect for that. It is a straightforward process: drop the script in your cgi-bin directory, set a couple of values to tell the script where to store the comments files, and voila.

Well, apparently there is more to it as I can't get it to work.

And the frustrating thing is that it was working before. I can't pin it down precisely but somewhere between moving from my Windows box to the Unix box the script is getting screwed up and won't run. Oh, other scripts run fine. Just not this one.

And so a 5 minute process becomes an entire afternoon of pulling one's hair out and getting nowhere. Kim made me give up so we could eat dinner and watch a movie instead, but in the back of my mind I was fuming, and my mind was still ticking away at it.

This is exactly what makes computers so frustrating, and especially for "non-computer people" this is when they feel like the problem is stepping beyond what they are capable of. Out of their hands.

The reality is of course, that it's nothing to do with having a degree in IT or having cut your teeth in obscure languages like Smalltalk or Ada. It's all about problem-solving skills and patience. Take a step back, look at the big picture, systematically eliminate alternatives one by one, and eventually you'll find the source of your problem. It does take a certain personality to persist with it.

Look out, comments script, I'm coming after you. Maybe not this morning, or even today. But eventually, I will crack you.

Anyone have any frustrating computer-stories they want to relay? Leave them in the comments box. The comments here work fine.

Well then. Mark today down in my calendar as one of the weirdest I've ever experienced. Ever. Where to begin?

8.15am. Riding a packed Yamanote line from Ikebukuro station just two stops to Takadanobaba. For those who've never lived in Tokyo: yes, it is that bad. An insolent high school student had his backpack on, pushed into my face, while a boney fake-tanned doll with seven layers of make-up kept elbowing me as she reshuffled to get a good position amongst the squashed masses.

But that's not weird. That's normal.

What was weird was reaching up for the strap hanging from the ceiling and spotting a HUGE mother of a spider on my arm!!! Bigger than a daddy longlegs and beefier than Bob Sapp, my eyes widened and I had to squeeze through and apologize (Sumimasen, comin' through!) at the next stop to brush him off.

Do spiders signify death? I think it was a sign.

In the last year or so I have had to come to terms with the death of my grandfather and my dear little fox terrier Toby, while being completely detached geographically. It is weird when there is nothing you can do to make that seem real by being on the other side of the world. You can't go around to his shitty little apartment and see his absence, or throw the ball and call out his name to hear the silence and let it sink in.

But today the reaper seemed to be in my face, in all sorts of subliminal ways.

Tonight on the way out to my evening business class in Saitama, our train hit and (assumedly) killed someone. I was napping quite pleasantly (the Red Arrow Limited Express is much like a shinkansen, with its comfortable, reclining seats and ample foot room) when I was woken with a jolt. We had hit something and pulled into a station that isn't on the list of stops for the express.

The Japanese word for someone committing suicide by jumping on the tracks is jin-shin jiko, which literally translates as "person-body accident". The announcement came over and we were delayed for over 20 minutes.

I've been delayed by jin-shin jiko's before, but it was never actually the train I was on that was involved in the collision. It seemed more real and disturbing knowing that I was seated on the vehicle responsible for ending someone's life.

I was suddenly quite awake. The driver and other station staff were frantically running back and forth on their CB radios, probably trying to get hold of someone who knew what the process was for these kinds of incidents (one couldn't expect them to make any decisions on their own!). But chances are they have encountered this before - it happens all the frickin' time.

Some say it is the fact that there are less guns in Japan, that trains are an easy alternative to ending one's life. Others talk about Japan being a melancholy nation because of its Buddhist take on life and reincarnation. There are arguments for honour and pride (especially among CEOs whose companies are failing), while others think it is due to the Japanese losing faith in where their society is headed. Plenty of people blame the economy being in a slump for the cause of it all. And then others think the prevalence of porn, prostitution and an increasing lack of morals or wholesome role models is the root of it all.

Perhaps it is a combination of all of these. But there is no question that it is a daily occurrence in Japan. An epidemic perhaps? The family of these disillusioned souls is left with the price tag for the clean-up - it is different depending on which line you choose to jump on to - and it includes counselling those workers who have to physically deal with the mess. I don't know how much the Seibu-Ikebukuro line charges but there was another invoice written out this afternoon to someone.

I managed to put Jiro the Jumper out of my head for the duration of my class, but the book I began reading on the way home put him right back in there. No Reason For Murder, by Ayako Sono, is full of lost souls, set on snowballing paths of self-destruction, fuelled by a complete lack of any shred of moral fibre. During my train ride home after the lesson, one of the main characters strangled a high school girl after having sex with her in a dodgy "theme" love hotel because she was trying to extort money from him due to her being under the age of consent.

The author really gets into these people's heads and it is turning into one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. I am beginning to wonder whether my choice of novels for venturing back into the world of literature after toning down my Japanese study was a wise one. A tear trickled down my cheek when every character I had encountered reached a real low but deceived themself into thinking life was grand. When I closed my eyes images from Requiem for a Dream floated into my consciousness. And I am only up to Chapter 4.

And of course to top things off, sprawled out on the staircase in the middle of a rush of commuters at 9.30 at night at Ikebukuro station was a salary man who looked like he had been walking along and suddenly had the life sucked out of him. There was something about his still form that was different from the sleeping drunks that choose to curl up to the side of the mass of people making their way home. He looked lifeless and a large circle of people had gathered to inspect the situation: some concerned, others curious. I stopped and winced. I spotted someone make a phone call. Pretty soon a policeman appeared.

There was nothing else to be done but continue home. Was he alive? Dead? I have no idea. Someone was taking care of it.

I turned and headed for home.

Well, I'm glad that's over, but the question of whether I passed the level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test this year is one that will be harder to pick than a broken nose. I wore myself out last week studying for the damn thing, and then had to get straight back into the swing of a regular work routine, hence this delayed report...

It's not that I did badly. There is a small chance I might have passed. I was pretty pleased with the Kanji and Listening sections, and had to guess less questions than I expected to in the Grammar section. But it was the 7 pages of newspaper and magazine articles with comprehension questions in the Reading section that killed me. And I kinda knew it would, but never really believed that I would simply run out of time.

That's what shat me about the test. I mean, if you want to make a test really difficult, then fine. Throw in some obscure vocabulary, some slang and some difficult characters. Sort out the men (and women) from the mice with some hardcore confusing grammar patterns, like those ones that use double-negatives or combinations of the causative-passive voice, so that you get it all twisted in your head and don't know if the article is saying "the man took the picture of his friend", or that "his friend took the picture of the man", or that "they both had someone else take a picture of them" just because there is an extra conjugation of the verb form at the end... Like I was saying, if they want to put that shit in there then fine, go right ahead. It makes my head spin and I'll have to take a wild guess, but at level 2 you should be able to sort it out as it is how the language works, and I'm happy to acknowledge that I don't know something.

But why is it so unrealistically long, given the allotted time??? I consider myself a pretty quick worker, I have sat a lot of exams over the years (some of those engineering exams at Adelaide Uni were killers). And despite having to deal with distractions (like mobile phones going off and CD players left playing in people's bags, audible enough to piss me off but out of ear reach for the patrolling invigilators, can you believe it?) I have managed to get my reading speed up to a level that I am pretty proud of. And yet I still didn't get through half of the reading!

At the "there are 5 minutes remaining" announcement I began to despair as there were still 5 pages that I hadn't read through, and desparately tried to inhale all of this information in record time before jumping to the questions.

I mean, why not have a separate test for "Speed Reading", and let those who want to prove their Japanese comprehension ability do it in a reasonable time frame?

It was useless. I realised this at the 4 minute mark. I then chose to resort to some advice given to a friend that was relayed to me in the morning...

When in doubt, choose number "4" !

And filled in about 12 questions with the answer "4" without even reading the question. Still, if my kanji and listening scores manage to bring me up to the 60% mark overall, then I will be one delighted man. It won't be an earth-shattering score, it will be dead-on 60 and not a point higher. But that's enough for me. The results come out around mid-February next year, so it could be a pleasant birthday present.

And if I don't get over the line, well.

You know...

*shrug*

They can all go and get fucked!!

:-)

Anyway I think that Kim might have gone better in her first attempt at sitting level 4. She was thrown by the listening as it is not much slower than level 2, just using a smaller vocabulary. But it sounds like she aced the kanji and reading/grammar sections so fingers crossed.

Oh my god I can't believe how much friggin' study I have done this week. Honestly, I think the local Jonathon's family restaurant staff were getting ready to set up a bed in the corner of the room to call my own. Today I put in a very studious 10 hours - from around 10am to about 6pm solid (with Kim joining me for lunch and some question-answer time), and then I went back again in the evening for another couple of hours.

I'm almost excited about this stupid exam tomorrow. Excited about the fact that it will be over, regardless of how I go. Excited about the prospect of doing something in my spare time that doesn't involve committing strange characters and stranger grammar patterns to memory. Playing my bass, reading books (so much to catch up on!), doing some drawing, redesigning opinios, going for a swim! All of these things have suffered in my dedication to passing this damn thing. And for what really? A while back I was thinking of maybe teaching Japanese in Australia, but my heart is basically set on the graphic design/web design stuff, so if I do pass then it won't really mean anything career-wise.

But it will for me. I've basically been working all year for this thing, so fingers crossed. Yes I will be a bit disappointed if I don't get over the line. But I'm also realistic that I will be very close to that line, dangerously close. If I don't pass then the thought that I have learned all this useful Japanese will not really be enough to console me. But the fact that I will know that I couldn't have done any more will. I took this whole week off work and immersed myself in Japanese. I'm as well prepared as I'll ever be.

But I still have that clock to beat in the reading/grammar section. A friend Mark suggested that I tackle the grammar questions at the back of this section first as they are easier. But unfortunately as of last year the format has changed and the reading comprehension questions are worth more. I just have to plough through as fast as I can. I'll tackle it as it comes.

The listening in past exams was easier than I thought. I suppose it's obvious but I guess my ear for understanding spoken Japanese really has improved. It's weird when something like that takes a jump but you don't really notice it. And I did another last minute cram of the kanji that is on the list that I know I have problems with. I don't know where I would be without that Heisig kanji book that I mentioned a while back. Once this is over I have grand plans for a kanji resource web site based on the stories I came up with for the book. I am aware it is nerdy but I can't wait to get that all up and running, will be a good chance to teach myself how to interface PHP to a MySQL database.

Fingers crossed. Good luck everyone else out there sitting the Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken tomorrow!!! Gambarimashou!!!

Kim has put together her submission of photographs for the 26 Things photographic project. It is a very diverse collection and you should have a look through them! I think it captures a lot of Japan well, and also has an "on the sly" feel about many of them that captures the way she had to take some of the shots.

Great stuff Kimbo!

Well I have been studying like a mother f*cker for this Japanese exam, and we are getting very close. Naturally I am possessed by mixed feelings of elation at the prospect of getting it out the way, and deathly fear at how difficult it might be. Nevertheless, if things go badly I know that I will have given it my best shot. I have done nothing in the past three days but eat, sleep and study.

Oh, and write this blog. Hey, we all need time out.

Everyone says that the grammar section is always the hardest, so I have been ploughing my way through a few books to get my head around the different forms that you need to know.

I definitely recommend the Kanzen Master Series (1,200 yen) for its excellent example sentences and easy-to-understand explanations of each of the grammar constructs. I have also been steadily working through Grammar for the Japanese Proficiency Exam (1,460 yen) as it has lots of exercises, although there is no furigana for the kanji, so it's tough going and requires frequent visits to the kanji dictionary.

Of course both these books are all in Japanese and not a single book explaining grammar for the exam exists in English.

But it's the reading section that has me worried. Yesterday I sat down and did a past exam for the first time, including the listening section on the CD. Overall my score was about 65% (the pass mark is 60%). So there is some hope. Here's the problem though:

I took twice as long as the allowed 70 minutes to do the reading/grammar section.

I don't think the examiners will listen to me if say "Hang on a minute, I just want to read that paragraph one more time..."

Fingers crossed.

I saw on NHK news tonight that Tetsu and Tomo, those two rambling fools (a kind of Japanese version of the Scared Weird Little Guys, without the songwriting ability or any of the wit) who are responsible for the ridiculously overplayed Nan de darou? song, won a special award for the friggin' thing. No, not the song. Just the phrase.

That's right folks. The Japanese have a massive awards ceremony at the end of every year to recognize the most popular new phrases for the year. The ryuukou-go (fashionable words) are chosen by Jiyu Kokumin Sha, a publishing company, and for some reason this makes headline news.

Quite often they are political or social terms that have been coined. Past winners have included Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's seiki naki kaikaku (nothing is exempt from reform) and the phrase commonly adopted to mean 'mad cow disease', kyou-gyuu-byou.

WHAT THE FUCK?

There are people being blown up in Iraq (seriously people, the war finished ages ago) and this is what makes the news? I mean, honestly, can you imagine this happening in Australia? Taking the Japanese approach, the news item would be something like this:

And making headlines this evening, Prime Minister John Howard has been presented with a major award in this year's Most Popular Phrases awards ceremony. He is credited with inventing the phrase un-Australian, which was widely adopted in the mainstream media. This phrase was selected as the winner overall because it was seen to be applicable to a wide range of viewpoints, from being anti-war to pro-immigration to not really getting into the cricket.

Other winners included Pauline Hanson's Please explain!, Kylie Mole's She goes... she goes... she just goes! and Telstra Corporation, for their catchy phrase Not happy Jan! taken from a popular television commercial...