Posted in diary on 2010-08-29 02:53 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
- 15:00. Arrive in Osaka. Adventure with the little old man on the stairs helping me carry my Mac.
- Take the last plane to Oita on standby and the bus to Beppu Eki. Take a taxi to the apartment. Plug in the Mac and it works. Best of all, I made it home without telling anyone, all on my own.
Notes from 2010
My “portable” computer was a Mac 512K with external floppy drive (bought separately). Our current server is tiny in physical size compared to that old Mac. I bought a special carrying case for it. It was too large to fit in the overhead bin on a domestic US flight. I could barely lift the bag and lug the Mac around.
At the Osaka airport I was standing at the bottom of a long flight of stairs, regaining my breath to drag it up along with my suitcases. A small elderly man offered to help. He grabbed the Mac and took off up the stairs. Even in Japan, I was alarmed–although part of me hoped for the best. When I arrived at the top of the stairs with my suitcases, the man and my Mac were both there. I think him profusely and he went on his way.
I was very smug about being able to manage to get back to my apartment without consulting anyone at my school or asking for their help.
Posted in dailysentence on 2010-01-18 10:01 am by M Sinclair Stevens
“We want our money back.” In English the sentence is so simple but what a lot of trouble I had translating it into Japanese, even though I knew every vocabulary word.
There is a subtle difference between “We want our money.” and “We want our money back.” The former implies we want something that is due to us (such as wages or a payment). The latter that we want something that was borrowed returned to us. It’s really shorthand for “We want our money given back.” “We want our money returned.”
However, in Japanese there is no verb for “to want”. Desire is expressed in two ways. If you want to do something, conjugate the verb as follows. V + tai n desu ga. If you want to have something, state the object of desire and use the adjective “is desirable”.
I want a new car. = As for me, new car is desirable.
But how do you say that you want someone else to do something without turning it into a command. “We want our money [given] back.” has a different sense than a request “Please return our money.” or an order, “Give us the money!” By dropping the verb “given”, the sentence expresses a change of state without focusing on the cause of that change. “We want the money back.” implies an actor and an action offstage. We want to have the money. Someone will have to give it to us but the who and how are not explicitly stated in this sentence; they are understood from context.
I took a wrong turn in the grammar and tried to nominalize “the money returned by the bankers” and came up with 「銀行家にお金を返すのが欲しいです。」Kiyo provided the correction: 「銀行家にお金を返して欲しいです。」My problem was that I didn’t read far enough in “A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar”. The next entry explains that if you want someone to do something you use the construction:
| Experiencer + wa |
indirect object + ni |
Vte |
hoshii desu |
| 私達は |
銀行家に |
お金を返して |
欲しいです. |
| watashitachi wa |
ginkouka ni |
o-kane kaeshite |
hoshii desu. |
| As for us [the American people] |
by the bankers |
money being returned |
is desirable. |
I think the Japanese sentence lacks the simple directness of the English sentence–at least when it is translated back literally into English. Maybe in Japanese to a Japanese person it sounds direct. In English it is quite common for a dissatisfied customer in a store, restaurant or movie theater to say, “I want my money back!” No wonder Americans sound demanding. It’s built into our language.
Posted in diary on 2009-10-21 07:36 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
Accounts
| ¥3285 |
groceries |
| ¥300 |
2 pieces of cake |
| ¥6500 |
cylindrical lacquer vase |
| ¥2500 |
small square lacquer tray |
| ¥3000 |
2-tiered lacquer box |
| ¥1800 |
men’s zori (sandals) |
| ¥2000 |
bar and disco |
| ¥520 |
consumption tax |
| ¥19905 |
Total |
Notes from 2009: Hita Lacquerware
I buy the lacquerware vase I saw at the train station shop the first time I was in Hita and two other pieces besides. I love lacquerware. Just as Westerners call porcelain “china” because China is so well known for it, we used to refer to lacquerware as “japanware” or say that a laquered item was “japanned”.
The vase is made of a hollow section of bamboo.
My Japanese coworkers warned that lacquerware often did not survive in the US because it prefers a constant, high humidity. Certainly in a dry climate like California they would suffer. Or in an overly heated or air-conditioned American house. But I’ve never had any problems except in this one piec that was cracked when I shipped all my goods back to Austin. It cracked vertically.
Posted in diary on 2009-10-10 08:56 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
1989-10-10. Usuki Sekibutsu. Dainichi Nyorai head.
Accounts
| ¥300 |
Usuki sembe |
| ¥500 |
Usuki poster |
| ¥800 |
admission to cave |
| ¥140 |
groceries: bread |
| ¥4 |
consumption tax |
| ¥3156 |
Total |
Notes from 2009
I listen attentively to Tonai-sensei’s explanation. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes.
It’s a national holiday, Sports Day (体育の日 Taiiku no Hi.) Tonai-sensei and his wife take me on another on a drive tour around Oita-ken. This time JQS begs off and stays home alone. This concerns the Tonais and, I believe, they were doing these tours mostly for his benefit. I don’t remember that they take me on any more after this. We visit a cavern and the Usuki Seki Butsu (Usuki Stone Buddhas).
Usuki Stone Buddhas
Furuzono Buddha. Head of Dainichi Nyorai 大日如来の仏頭
The Usuki Stone Buddhas are one of the National Treasures of Japan. I have some information in my scrapbook cut out of a brochure in Japanese that I can’t read. Wikipedia says that it is estimated that they were carved in the 12th century.
From what I can glean from a Google translated Usuki Sekibutsu homepage, this large head in the Furuzono 30 Group, also known as the Mt. Dainichi Group, collapsed and was restored on August 25, 1993. So my photos shows it on the ground in front of its body (I think), before it was restored. Here’s a better explanation in both English and Japanese with more photos.
Posted in diary on 2009-09-03 07:44 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
Accounts
| ¥920 |
train: 1.5
Kamegawa-Oita-Kamegawa |
| ¥350 |
10 B5 notebooks 240-pg |
| ¥800 |
book: Read Japanese Today |
| ¥2500 |
book: A Guide to Remembering Kanji |
| ¥1657 |
groceries |
| ¥200 |
deli: chicken |
| ¥250 |
shampoo |
| ¥1395 |
body care |
| ¥580 |
Vape (30 pack) |
| ¥310 |
beer |
| ¥200 |
present: cake for Abe-sensei |
| ¥100 |
machine drinks |
| ¥236 |
consumption tax |
| ¥9498 |
Total |
Postmark: Beppu September 3, 1989
We went shopping in Oita again this weekend. The basement floors of the big department stores always are supermarkets. We discovered one [probably Tokiwa] that had a large western liquor section. And they had Johnny Walker black label, the same size I bought that last night [in Austin] for only ¥3600 ($25.00). So I’m very relieved and happy to know I have a resource for my New Year’s presents. Plus, if I get desperate and dip into the scotch I brought, I’ll be able to replace it. But I haven’t been driven to drinking alone yet, except for the occasional liter of beer from the vending machine down the street. And that’s only if I’ve bought sushi for dinner. Of course, we practically live on sushi. An old woman keeps a take-out shop down the street and I can get six pieces of nigiri-sushi and one tuna roll for ¥400 ($3.00). That’s about the same as one piece of sushi in Austin.
Notes from 2009
Stationery
I found the notebooks on sale on the top floor of Parco. They were really cheap. Maybe it was a back-to-school sale. They were fairly plain notebooks by the standards of Japanese stationery. They came with aqua or pink covers which said.
Seduce Notebook: This notebook is well bound with automatic excellent machine by Bun’undo that is traditional since 1909.
Vape
Our un-air conditioned apartment was very open to the outdoors. We slept with the sliding glass doors to the balcony open and the screens did little to keep the mosquitoes out. Our dorm mother had brought over the modern equivalent of the mosquito coil, an electric diffuser for Vape mats. Each little mat had some sort of insect repellant. It smelled pretty bad and I wondered if they were carcinogenic so I was reluctant to use them. I couldn’t read the information on the Japanese packaging. But the mosquitoes were numerous, so I solved the immediate problem and tried to put my fears about long-term consequences out of my mind. Twenty years later, this is what I discovered about Vape, on the Internet.
Posted in diary on 2009-09-01 05:32 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
Notes from 2009
Loaf of Bread
Even loaves of bread were different in Japan. Loaves of sliced white bread came wrapped in plastic bags, like in America. But the loaves, all the same size, could be bought in varying widths determined by the number of slices in the loaf; the more slices, the thinner the slice. I suppose the concept is comparable to “thin-sliced” or “sandwich slice” or “Texas toast” sliced bread. The loaves were smaller but they did not include any end pieces. End pieces were bagged separately for stuffing. I thought this was a marvelous innovation. No one was stuck with the crusty end piece.
Our usual breakfast was toast and coffee. We liked the 5-sliced loaves because it made toast which was deeply golden on the outside and slightly soft on the inside. Hmmm. I guess that would be Texas toast.
First Day of School
Although all sorts of classes and meetings had been going on at the school throughout August, this was the official first day of the second term of school. Summer vacation interrupts the Japanese school year which starts on April 1st. So classes and routines were already settled. The half days at work I’d been attending helped me (and everyone who had to interact with me) make a smoother transition into school life. I was the first JET participant to come to Beppu Joshi and so no one on either side really knew what to expect or what to do. I was really glad to “belong” to a school. I think I would have felt very disoriented and lonely if I had worked at the prefectural official and had been assigned only to school visits, as many JET participants were.