Listen to the Rain

Japanese has a pair of words, 名探偵 and 迷探偵, that mean respectively "Amazing detective" and "bungling detective."

They are both pronounced meitantei.

Brütal.

A few months ago sashagee got really into Babymetal. She was playing their songs all the time in the house, having little dance parties with Laila, and then she learned that they were coming to Chicago along with Dethklok. I bought her tickets as a Mothers' Day present and last night was the concert.

The opening act was Jason Richardson, who I had never heard of before (I'm out of the loop) but is apparently a famous metal guitarist? And his guitar work was extremely good! He came out with no introduction, playing guitar over some recorded backing drums and bass, and it was fantastic--the kind of thing that once would have been a hard mode Guitar Hero track. Sparrow was sashagee's favorite song--that's Richardson in the red coat there playing guitar--and is a good summary of how his music sounded. He was wearing the same red coat on stage last night.

Unfortunately, his stage presence was terrible. At a metal concert, you expect the performers to have an attitude and get in your face (metaphorically), but Richardson was more like a new act at a comedy club. He made some self-deprecating jokes, trailed off a couple times, and then launched into more excellent guitar work. Well, there's a reason he's a guitarist and not a singer.

Also, Dethklok was there.

When Dethklok was done, the stagehands took almost thirty minutes to set up the stage, all while the temperature got warmer and warmer and the crowd got dense and denser. At the end, the logo flashed on screen, the announcer said the pitch, and Babymetal appeared:


I absolutely was not expecting a heavy metal cover of "Sōran Bushi," the traditional Japanese folk song. I even found a comment on a reddit people where people were like "Dokkoisho? What are they saying? Is that like Ganbare?" ( "Dokkoisho" means basically "heave-ho!"--"Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty).

I knew very little about Babymetal going in, other than the memes and that one picture of them with Rob Zombie. Being metal lyrics, even when sashagee played them repeatedly I couldn't understand anything they were saying. That wasn't any different this time, but a lot of the metal I listen to is symphonic metal so I was used to the lone female voice floating above a sea of electric guitars and drums. But I was not expecting all the movement--I only listened to the songs that sashagee played, I didn't look up any Youtube info, I didn't read about their performances, nothing, so I had no idea that they had routines to fit the songs.

On the Metali Youtube video, there's a comment that reads:

日本の祭りの息を揃える掛け声や踊り、独特な歌舞伎の発声、言い回しなどの日化を取り入れて、ここまでのメタルエンターテイメントに仕上げるのはBABYMETALだけであり、唯一無二のオリジナリティーだと言える。最高傑作と言っても良いのではと思う。
"Babymetal is the only one in the world of metal music who includes these expressions so characteristic of Japanese culture, the sounds of encouragement and common calls at festivals and the uniqueness of kabuki. You could definitely say that they're totally original and their work is a masterpiece."

They're right. I never would have thought "You know what heavy metal needs? Jpop dance routines!" but Babymetal did and that's why people love them so much.

They performed for about an hour and then left the stage, and there was no encore. sashagee wasn't feeling that well with the heat and the standing, so we went straight home and she went straight to bed. But she got her Babymetal t-shirt with the fox masks on it--the same masks that the guitarists and drummer were wearing--which is what she really wanted.

According to wikipedia, "Before the formation of this club, none of the three members [of Babymetal] knew what heavy metal was." Well, they figured it out.

Based on some Jewish Facebook groups I'm in, I wonder if I'm going to start hearing observant Jewish nerds say זה הדרך (zeh haderech, "This is the way") instead of "Baruch Hashem."

Laila is twenty-two months old today and sashagee is planning her birthday already. Since it's two, it's going to be very groovy ✌🏻. She's picking out flower placemats, floral decorations, etc. But, that'll come later.

Last time I updated, Laila was starting to talk. She's been expanding her vocabulary over the last few months and it currently stands at the following words:( baby words ) I'm sure I'm missing a few here and there, but those are the ones I've heard.

She enjoys drawing! sashagee bought her a bunch of egg-shaped crayons and she didn't really take to them, but sashagee read something somewhere about how triangular markers were better because they were easy to grasp and they encouraged proper grip. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but Laila has really taken to them. In addition to her daily Sesame Street time in the morning, she now has drawing time in the evening. She's still at the "make lines" stage, but she'll sometimes carefully pick out colors and often try to match the colors of whatever pictures we've drawn. And you can't just sit with her and watch her draw, oh no--you have to participate too. It's no fun if she's just making a design if she doesn't have any additional assistance. Even Michelangelo had help when he painted the Sistine Chapel.

Now that my father has retired, he and my mother come to our house every single week to see Laila. They'll often take her out on trips so they get some time together and sashagee has a chance to clean the house. Lately, they've been taking her to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, which has a bunch of butterflies and a nice children's section. They've told us that she's gradually gotten more and more adventurous while she's been there. There's a tent set up inside and originally Laila did not want to go near it. Then she'd go up to the door but wouldn't go inside. Now she'll go inside for a bit and then come back out. As she learns that things are safe, she's willing to take more risks, and my parents get more time with their granddaughter. It's win-win!

Laila's favorite thing in the world, though, is looking at pictures of herself:


That was when I just stuck up the camera in selfie mode and she was so happy to see her face she immediately started smiling. This happens every time she sees herself, to the point where she'll often steal one of our phones and turn on the selfie camera so she can look at herself. If she sees the door to our room is open, she'll go back there and close the door so she can look at herself in the full-length mirror on the back (and sometimes get scared about being alone and then start crying). So far it's cute, and it's an easy way to keep her happy with just a mirror.

In sad news, though, the downside of Laila being a normal almost-two-year-told is that the tantrums and the boundary-pushing have begun. Today she threw all her food around during lunch, in a way she used to never do--throwing food is wasting it, wasting food means you can't eat it--and a few days ago she wanted an apple, sashagee picked out an apple and turned towards the sink to go wash and then cut it and Laila collapsed on the floor in tears because she was denied the apple, completely ignoring sashagee's protestations that she would get it soon. I know it's a sign of her emotional development, but a part of me misses our always-happy, smiley baby. Still, no one can remain in the nest forever.

To end on a happy note, though, I'll tell you the absolute cutest thing she does--when she thinks she's done a good job at something, she claps for herself.

What other ways will she grow and change?

So sashagee has pulled me back into Genshin Impact more because she needs help beating bosses, and I've moved on to Liyue, the China-themed region of the world. I'm playing with English text and Japanese speech, and one thing I immediately noticed was that all the names were different--the English text uses pinyin to render the Chinese names, but the Japanese speech doesn't--it transliterates them by character, not by sound, so many of the names sound very different.

Some examples:

• 北斗, Ch: Beidou, Jp: Hokuto, "Big Dipper."


• 甘雨, Ch: Ganyu, Jp: Kan'u, "Sweet Rain."


• 刻晴, Ch: Keqing, Jp: Kokusei, "Clear sky carver(?)"


• 凝光, Ch: Ningguang, Jp: Gyōkō, "Concentrated light" (though 凝 shikori in modern Japanese means "lump" or "muscle stiffness")


• 七七, Ch: Qiqi, Jp: Nana, "Seven-Seven"


• 云堇, Ch: Yun Jin, Jp: Unkin, "Violet [flower] Clouds"


• 行秋, Ch: Xingqiu, Jp: Yukuaki, "Into Autumn."


• 烟绯, Ch: Yanfei, Jp: Enhi, "Scarlet Smoke."


• 申鹤, Ch: Shenhe, Jp: Shinkaku, probably "Divine Crane" based on 申 being a homonym for 神.

I should have known this would be how it works, since I'm familiar with the Chinese classics and the same thing happens there--the monkey king is "Sun Wukong" in Chinese and "Son Gokū" in Japanese, Water Margin is "Shui Hu Zhuan" in Chinese, and "Suikoden" in Japanese (hence the games)--but for some reason I didn't expect to see it happen in recent titles!

Also because of this, none of those characters names sound like names to me. Maybe the posthumous Buddhist names of monks.

The funny part is that while looking these, up, I checked into a character I know exists but haven't met yet, 胡桃. This is "Hu Tao" in Chinese and the two characters taken together is a real modern Japanese word--it means walnut and is pronounced "Kurumi," which is also a real modern Japanese name. And maybe because of that, apparently in the Japanese dialogue it's pronounced "Fū Tao."

Because 14 + 8 is 22, see?

I haven't gotten super far in FFVIII because I've been playing FFXIV--I'm just after Edea shows up and takes Seifer away--but some people mentioned being curious about further differences between the Japanese and English and there were some points that stood out with me. I'm pleased to report that both Rinoa's introduction and Selphie's train song are the same in both languages:

リノア「君が一番カッコいいね。ね、踊ってくれない？もしかして、好きな子としか踊らないってやつ？ふ～ん……私のことが……好きにな～る、好きにな～る。ダメ？」
スコール「……踊れないんだ」
リノア「だいじょうぶ、だいじょうぶ。知り合いを探してるの。１人じゃダンスの輪に入れないからね」
Rinoa: "Oh, you're the best-looking one here. Won't you dance with me? Or maybe, you only dance with girls that you like? Well... you're...going to like me... you're...going to like me... No good?"
Squall: "...I can't dance."
Rinoa: "It's fine, it's fine! There's someone I'm looking for and I can't go dancing alone."

-------------------------
セルフィ「あたし、乗り物好きなんだ～。きしゃ～♪きしゃ～♪はっし～れ～♪ぼっくらをのせて～♪とおっくへ～♪ぼっくらをつれて～♪みら～いへ～♪　気持ちいいよね～。あ、先に部屋はいってて。あたし、もうちょっとここにいるから」
Selphie: "I love trains. Traaain, traaain, go go, take us away, to a far away place, carry us to the future. Isn't it wonderful? Oh, go on ahead, I'll be here for a bit longer."

I really expected more from the Rinoa scene but the original translation was spot on.

In about ten hours of play (ignoring the three hours or so I spent grinding fish on the beach to get No Encounter and various Refines), I've only seen a single instance of Squall actually saying "...whatever." It's on the train to Timber just before the first Laguna temporal flashback, when Zell is getting hyped about the train room and Timber and asks Squall if he knows about the history of Timber. The two choices are どうでもいい and いや、別にいいよ, both of which could be translated as "...whatever" or "I don't care," though the first is more dismissive than the second.

Squall is still a huge jerk, though. He blows off Quistis when she's trying to confide in him:

キスティス「何か言ってもらおうなんて思ってないわ。話を聞いてくれるだけでいいのよ」
スコール「だったら壁にでも話してろよ」
Quistis: "I didn't want you to say anything! Just listening to me would be enough."
Squall: "Then go talk to a wall."

and he tells Rinoa after the failure of her capture President-for-life Deling mission that it's better not to care about anything because then you'll never be disappointed. He's still unlikeable and I'm curious to see at what point the redemption occurs.

More news as I discover it.

---

In Final Fantasy XIV, I beat the Stormblood main scenario through 4.0 three weeks ago--it's not as good as Heavensward because the split between the Othard storyline and the Ala Mhigo storyline harmed the narrative, I think, and the main villain was far less compelling--but I've just been leveling jobs and doing side content since then. I did the Return to Ivalice raids together with sashagee, and by our powers combined we understood all the references--she's played FFXII but not FFT, I've played FFT but not FFXII--and just last weekend we finished the Omega raids. I've unlocked all the non-Shadowbringers jobs and delved into Eureka, the Stormblood area that's designed to replicate the experience of older grind-heavy MMOs. And I did grind--I fought a bunch of monsters, I opened a ton of lockboxes, and just last night I pulled out this sleek boi:


Now I can move on from Eureka Anemos to Eureka Pagos, which is apparently much more annoying (though far less now that it's been nerfed into the ground as old content!). I guess I'll find out.

The cicadas are out, the trees are screaming. Summer has arrived.

Slowly working my way through Chrono Trigger. I've played it over a dozen times, so I know it like the back of my hand, but playing it in Japanese means that it's a new experience. I have to stop and work through what people are saying, and I make sure to take to every townsperson because for the first time in twenty years, it's a new experience for me. Chrono Trigger is one of the games I really wish I could go through and play with fresh eyes, and while that's not possible, this comes close. There are old quotes that have new meanings in the original language that really can't be translated without a lot of difficulty. My favorite example in what I've played so far is talking to Spekkio, the Master of War, when he described the Kingdom of Zeal with the words:

おめーらの生まれるずっと昔……魔法でさかえた王国、あった。その世界、みんな魔法使った。けどその王国、魔力におぼれほろびた……。それから人は魔法を使えなくなった。魔族以外はな。
"Long before you were born, there was a kingdom that flourished through sorcery. There, everyone could use magic. But that kingdom grew proud and magic was its ruin... Since then, no one has been able to use magic. Except the Fiends, anyway."

The word I translated as "grew proud and [...] ruin" is おぼれほろびた, from two verbs. The second is 滅びる (horobiru, "To be destroyed, to come to ruin, to fall"), but the first is interesting. It's 溺れる (oboreru), which can mean both "to grow proud, to indulge in, to go wild over" or also..."to drown, to sink beneath the waves."

"Gone is the magical kingdom of Zeal, and all the dreams and ambitions of its people."

This morning was a department meeting that I was told I'd have to speak briefly for, on the adjustment process for working from home, and I mentioned the biggest challenge for me had been ergonomics. My home is designed for a floor-based lifestyle, to the point that I'll sometimes just sit on the floor with my back against the couch if I'm watching something, and I have my mouse arm and mouse propped up on some pillows as I sit on the couch with my laptop on my lap (despite the name, this is actually inadvisable). When I said that, I got messages from two senior managers offering to get me a lap desk. My setup now works for me, but I certainly won't complain about a lap desk.

( Farmer's Market Dinner )

At meditation tonight, the new rabbi brought up Tisha B'Av, occurring next week, and the weird liminal space we're all in now. One of the people brought up how strange it is to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem when it's the current capital of Israel, and the rabbi mentioned how when she was a chaplain, one of her patients with dementia barely spoke at all except the occasional seemingly-nonsensical statement or fragment of memory, but once the rabbi started actually listening and engaging with her, she started talking more and more, eventually revealing some coherent memories of her past, and the rabbi tied it in to how it's important to acknowledge and remember the past even if your current circumstances are very different now. As someone whose current circumstances are very different than in the past, well. I can understand that. And this year isn't going to be anything like last year's Tisha B'Av event was. But this year, I feel that it's a lot easier to mourn.

It's okay to be sad.

In any year but the Plague Year, I'd be waking up at ACEN right now. It's the first ACEN I've missed (so to speak) since 2013. The mixer that Anime Chicago usually would have held at Red Bar at the Hyatt Rosemont was instead held online, so I sat down at 7 p.m. tea in hand and chatted with people for a couple hours until I had to leave to go fiddle with my wifi again. spacedragon set it up so that we were randomly shuffled into rooms with a few other people, rotating every twenty minutes, so it simulated the way that a large group breaks into smaller conversations over the course of a gathering. It wasn't the same--it couldn't be--but it was still lovely. Video chatting with 3-5 people is much better than the same thing with a dozen.

Also I got my money back, so hooray!

The latest coronavirus local news is that Chicago qualifies to move into Phase 3 on June 1st, which is the latest the current stay home order extends to. I'm glad, because while I love working from home, and I like staying in and cooking, and I'm okay with going back to playing video games and watching anime as my primary way of passing time, I really miss having people over for dinner or to watch something together. That's the part of life I most want to come back. I won't have a Shavuot party this year, but maybe I can have one person over for cheesecake a couple days after.

Yesterday, smtemp put out a call on Facebook for anyone who might be able to translate the Animal Crossing Wooden Plank signs, which you can see collected here. I recognized it as seal script (篆書 tensho), which meant that I had very little chance of puzzling it out...but then meowtima chimed in and said that the character on the left in the red-and-gold first sign was 新 and posted a picture of a hanzi dictionary with the progression through the ages. I commented, we worked together combining Chinese and Japanese, and we eventually deciphered it--温故智新 (onkochishin, "Learning new things by studying old things"), written right-to-left on the sign in the traditional manner. Modern Japanese uses 知 instead of 智, but it's still a current yojijukugo. That means that the other ones also probably mean something...maybe I'll take some time this weekend and try to puzzle them out. The third and fourth one in that collection look like kana rather than kanji. I wonder.

Edit: Thanks to marjonesing's mother, the second one is the Chinese phrase 参观药局, which is 参観薬局 (sankan yakkyoku, "Visiting the pharmacy") in modern Japanese!

I'm sitting in my sun nook and the birds are singing and a diffuse light is coming through the clouds. There was a strong thunderstorm last night that really helped lull me to sleep, and this morning the ground is wet and the earth smells of petrichor. It's a lovely way to go into the weekend.

It's been a while because I've been so busy out living life and because this trailer is much longer than the others that were released, but I finally got to the latest Final Fantasy VII Remake trailer! Here's the Japanese version:

Watch on YouTube

There's a lot more here, but as I went through all the dialogue, I actually think this is the closest of the three trailers so far (Trailer 1, Trailer 2)

Also, I should say that unlike previous trailers, where I was able to find the dialogue transcribed by a native Japanese-speaker and fall back on that if I was confused, this time I had to transcribe the Japanese myself. So I'm not 100% confident in some of the lines I have below--I've indicated the lines where I'm unsure with question marks.

( Table within )

You can see that everything here is pretty close. There's some stylistic differences in the lines--the English is usually more flowery than the Japanese, which is pretty consistent with video game translations--but the meaning is generally the same. The places with the most differences tend to be where it doesn't matter as much, like combat barks. Though weirdly, they left the warning klaxon out of the English version, which is just odd to me.

I did like how Palmer uses lard in the Japanese and butter in the English.

Otherwise, there's some bits that only make sense because of the way language words, like how "You're so cute" is a single word in Japanese, so the exchange between Aerith and Cloud when Cloud is in the dress is based on that. About the only thing I can say for this version is that I still think the Japanese voice acting is miles better than the English voice acting.

I'll get to this game eventually, when I can!

I was looking for the Myst intro to rewatch it this morning, and since my phone's system language is Japanese, the first result was indeed the Myst intro...in Japanese:

Watch on YouTube

I hadn't even realized that Myst had a Japanese translation, it makes perfect sense. Such a popular game, that singlehanded did so much to popularize the CD-ROM format and sold tens of thousands of CD drives to gamers, of course it's going to get a Japanese translation since there's barely any text or voice in the game so the cost of translation is minimal. So as I do with these things, I listened to the intro, transcribed it, and translated it:

この本は、私が計画したとおり、誰にも永遠に破壊することはできないだろう。それは星を散りばめたような空間を、さらに落ちて行った。結局どこに落ちたのか、もうそんな推測も無駄に思えてきた。

ただ、私の中に解決されないひとつの疑問が残る。それはいったい誰の手に「ミストの本」渡るのかということだ。この疑問に、終わりはないだろう。

だからエンディングは　書かずじまいで終わることになるかもしれない。

And here's my admittedly-clunky translation:

"The book, just as I had planned, could not be destroyed by anyone. It kept falling into that star-filled void, and to what ultimate destination it would fall would be pointless to guess.

"However, there was one unresolved question remaining to me. That was, into whose hands would the 'Myst Book' ultimately pass? That question still had no answer.

"And that is why the ending may not yet be written."

Most of it is pretty much the same, but that first line?! In the English version, Atrus expects the book to be destroyed until he's in the middle of enacting his plan, but in the Japanese version, the book was indestructible from the start. I'm not sure it actually changes the plot at all--I haven't played any of the games past Myst, so I don't know if this is a vital plot point--but I wonder why the change was made?

Also, I really like one of the comments on that video:

数十年前のwindows95のデスクトップpcを捨てずに取っといてある理由がこれがプレイできるからである
"I've kept my decades-old Windows 95 PC so I can keep playing this game."

I plan to replay Myst this year and finally beat it, since it's one of the few non-WWII-based games my father has beaten that I have not.

Yesterday, I was reading this post about making wafū spaghetti on シカゴの夏は短かすぎ when I came across the following line:

そのままだと若干甘くて、みりんのようなアルコールっぽい匂いが少しするんです。なので、私は茹でたてパスタにバター、フィッシュロウ、ねこぶ出汁、お醤油をグルッと。ねこぶ出汁は里帰りの度、日本にいる姉が持たせてくれるのです。

"As it is, it's a little bit sweet and has a bit of an alcohol-like mirin smell. So, I put butter, fish roe, nekobudashi, and soy sauce around the boiling pasta. The nekobudashi is from my elder sister, who keeps some for me and gives it to me whenever I go back to my hometown."

"The what?" I said to myself. "I've never heard of that."

Turns out I'm not the only one. There's literally nothing about it on the internet in English, and when I searched for it in Japanese, it took me to this page where under the definition section it reads:

ねこぶだしとは、北海道日高産の根昆布を使用した、昆布エキスと鰹節エキスをブレンドした万能だしです。液体タイプなので、料理の際もお湯を沸かして出汁の素を入れてという手間はなく簡単に使うことができます。レシピの一例としては、お鍋、浅漬、卵かけご飯といった和食、塩ラーメン、エビマヨなどの中華、クリームシチュー、ジャーマンポテトなどの洋食、和洋中と様々な料理に使うことができる万能だしです。

"Nekobudashi is an all-purpose dashi blend made from konbu and katsuobushi extracts, with konbu roots from Hidaka in Hokkaidō. Because it's a liquid dashi, you can easily use it by adding it to boiling water without any extra time or effort. It can be used in Japanese hot pot, for making pickles or tamago kake gohan; in shio ramen, mayo shrimp or other Chinese dishes; and cream stew, German potato or other Western dishes--it has a myriad of uses in all kinds of Eastern and Western cooking."

That sounds pretty amazing! I had no idea why I had never heard of it, so I asked my Japanese tutor and she had never heard of it either. She asked me if it had anything to do with cats (猫 neko, hence the pun in the title) and I said it was konbu roots (昆布の根, konbu no ne). I explained it and she had no idea, but she was born in Tōkyō, so obviously it's a regional delicacy.

I checked Rakuten and there's a product page, rated 4.68/5 with thousands of reviews. But shipping liquid internationally would be incredibly expensive, and it's already ¥4,180 for three liters. I tried registering on Rakuten to see exactly how much it would be, but weirdly it wouldn't tell me and I can't believe they'd offer free international shipping. So I left the order sitting uncompleted. Maybe I'll try later, but I suspect I'll have to find another way to get a hold of nekobudashi.

I really want to try it now, though.

So, a new trailer for the FFVII Remake dropped:

Watch on YouTube

It does look pretty nice, but I'm a little...four years of work and here you are? I look forward to playing this after I retire.

But, this post is about how I also looked up the Japanese trailer and the dialogue is very different! So here's a side-by-side comparison:

( Table within )

There's a lot of differences there. I wonder if they're carrying that through the entire script?

Fortunately, by the time this game actually comes out years from now, I'll be fluent in Japanese, so I can play the Japanese version.

Also, they're really laying the moe on thick in Aerith's Japanese performance.