December 3, 2014

Planet of the Apes Hachimaki

I and my girlfriend laughed a lot at this episode of MST3K, which I remember watching as a teen, but the funniest part for us was seeing a monkey boy running around town with a hachimaki. Hachimakis are what the working class used to wear as sweatbands. I'm not sure I've ever seen one in the wild, outside of a festival.



You can watch it yourself:

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November 4, 2014

Who drew Howard and Nester? Shuji Imai did.



If you're a child of the Nintendo Power generation and a manga aficionado to boot, you might have occasionally wondered who drew Howard and Nester (the good ones, before a new artist took over).

Recently Howard ebayed off an unpublished comic from the series, as well as the first ever episode's proof. I scoured it for the Japanese information. Does that say Tamura? I thought to myself. Tamura searches were just bringing me a baseball star. But someone on Tumblr said Shuji Imai, and the wikipedia for 今井修司 seems to check out. Unfortunately, he doesn't draw in his classic style anymore.

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October 28, 2014

Karate will see you through this disaster

Sign says:
女性 women
中高生 middle and highschoolers
病弱者 weak and sickly dudes
かんげい welcome
gloss: We welcome, women, children, and the infirm!

大地震 big quakes
大津波 massive tsunamis
大不況 great depressions
にまけるな!don't lose to 'em!
gloss: Overcome all the hardships that nature and the economy can throw at you!

カラテ教室 Karate class
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If you are having problems getting that precious byoujyaku karate teacher sympathy, here is a makeup guide.

Japanese Study Links

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Karaoke | J Commercials | Let's Yoji! | Kanji

October 23, 2014

Anyways, Just Try It Once

Thought this an interesting way of using 兎に角 (tonikaku, anyway) that we probably wouldn't do in an English ad. It translates pretty much as per this post's title. It seems like the nuance of the Japanese "anyway" is slightly different.
You might note that sometimes I write anyway with an s. It's not really fixed in my idiolect.

February 19, 2014

MOTHER OF MERCY I DON'T SPEAK JAPANESE! Japanese Game Show (SNL)

I remember watching this one as a kid. I had no idea they were trying to speak actual Japanese. They fall far from the mark on pronunciation, but good effort. If I remember correctly, SNL has a Japanese cameraman or producer that helps out with this kind of stuff and occasionally appeared on camera (as fat Sulu, once, for instance). This was fun to confuse the girlfriend with.


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