New moderator - AdminBen

Never replied to my own welcome thread... embarrassing. Anyway, thanks to all those who welcomed me (i.e. Phatboy!) I'm glad I can offer some service to the board.I expect to be both willing to listen, but also strict and harsh. I expect people to the rules and follow them. I appreciate those who take it upon themselves to govern themselves and their own posts. At the same time, I try to listen to feedback, when appropriate.You may sometimes hear me refer to myself as "the people's admin."It happens to the best of us.This message has been edited by AdminBen, Friday, 2005/05/13 06:43 PM

The REAL reason I wanted to write in this thread is to talk about my avatar. If there's one thing I'll take away from my time in Japan, it's Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli movies.

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Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki has been called the "Japanese Walt Disney." He's made some absolutely fantastic cartoon movies. He works for a company called "Studio Ghibli." Many of my favorite movies were done by Miyazaki, such as "Princess Mononoke", "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" and "My Neighbor Totoro." The movies are so popular here. Girls all have SOMETHING Totoro... but the movies are actually really cool. The man creates some compelling characters and stories.Studio Ghibli
There is a Studio Ghibli Museum here in Tokyo, and I went to visit with my girlfriend. It's a small place, mostly boring, but there were two great exhibits. The first was a room completely wallpapered with original colored cells from many of the movies, drawn and colored by Miyazaki himself. It was amazing.. The second was an actual life-sized metal cast of one of the characters in the movie "Laputa: Castle in the Sky." That's what you see here.The Avatar
This thing is called "kyoshinhei", which is the pronunciation of three Kanji (Chinese characters). The characters mean giant (kyo) person (shin) warrior (hei).In the movie, Laputa is a mythical castle in the sky. A boy's dead father claims to have seen it and even photographed it after a battle with a storm while flying. A girl has a magical levitation crystal which was passed down to her from her family. Some government men have discovered one of these kyoshinhei on the ground, and don't know where it came from. The material it's made of is foreign, they can't figure it out, and it looks broken and they can't get it to work.Not to spoil the story, but the kyoshinhei turns out to be a warrior robot from Laputa. Laputa turns out to be real, but ... well, there's a lot more to the story, but really, it's a movie worth watching. Not my favorite Miyazaki movie, but definitely has his heart, creative spirit, and style in it. I probably would have liked it more if I had seen it before "Nausicaa."P.S. I'm more than happy to answer questions about these things here. Yes, this is the one time I will be BEGGING you to take me off topic. PLEASE take advantage of it .This message has been edited by AdminBen, Friday, 2005/05/13 06:57 PM

Well...Japanese kanji are a (sometimes slightly modified) subset of Chinese characters. In all, I think there are a bit over 2000 Chinese characters in Japanese. Japanese people can often get the "gist" of written Chinese (so I am told) because of this.Korean characters are completely different. At least, to the naked eye--my girlfriend says that it's somehow derived. Case in point is that she also said Korean people used to be taught to read Chinese kanji, but that stopped, and now there's a generation that can't read at all. Or something like that. So, they started teaching it again, so younger Koreans know how to read some Chinese characters.Japanese use Kanji, however, in conjunction with characters of their own writing system (hiragana). So, if you learn these Kanji characters, you'd be able to identify individual words in a sentence, but you wouldn't be able to relate them (grammatical 'particles' are in hiragana), nor would you understand words that were formed as a combination of Kanji and hiragana.The the bad point of learning written Chinese is that set of Chinese characters is huge. However, since it's more "pure" than Japanese (i.e. no hiragana), I think I'd suggest to learn Chinese characters. Although.. the one thing that Japanese has going for it, however, is that you'd automatically have a study partner. As a note, I enjoy kanji. I really enjoy 書道 (shodou), which is Chinese (ok, Japanese) calligraphy. I mean, I suck, I practice alone (not at all recently), but I got some books, watched some free basic videos online, and it rocks. I'm a visual learner too, so I find that learning Japanese is easier with the Kanji. I mean, after I learned about 500 basic ones. After that, I can remember words much better by remembering how to read them.One last thing... Yeah, I agree. I pretty much hate Disney. I don't see how it's comparable at all (besides that they're both very rich & famous for animation). But that's what they say

I can recognize the Chinese sign at the Chinese restauraunt. My girlfriend started studying Chinese, and I recognize Japanese kanji from there.I've only been studying Japanese for a little over a year. I know the most basic 700 kanji (or so). I'm considered "low intermediate" (according to the Japanese Language Proficiency Test).Like I said, my girlfriend claims she can. And she's actually studying Chinese.AbE: Feeling naked, posting in my "stripped down" form! Oh no!This message has been edited by AdminBen, Friday, 2005/05/13 09:03 PM

She's Japanese. I guess I could have mentioned that Let me know if you want any other info (if you do try Japanese, I know quite a few good online study materials)This message has been edited by AdminBen, Friday, 2005/05/13 10:29 PM

Bump. I'd love to discuss any of this stuff, any time.By the way, those interested in my mini-photo album of my trip to the Studio Ghibli museum, my personal ranking of the movies, and some links to more info, you can access it here (links to a page in my personal website).

I think it's 70% of Japan that is "uninhabitable" mountains. That's the beautiful landscapes. There's lots of old temples to visit, preserved by the money of those who come to worship (that's the architecture).However, the parts of Japan that ARE inhabitable are generally crowded. There's definitely a fair share of countryside, but the cities are REALLY busy. Tokyo in particular is PACKED with people. Well, as for my pictures, ... I just don't like the crowds. My girlfriend and I travel about 2 times a month away from Tokyo, in order to do some hiking or sight-seeing. It's great. It's a nice relief for me. Wherever I go in Tokyo, I'm always looking for somewhere quiet, where I can rest and relax for a bit. It's hard to find such a place. Lots of beautiful things... cherry blossoms, architecture, ... materialistic culture of the big city, so many tanned young people, big lights, constant cell phone usage... trains and buses everywhere, easy access... contemplative mountains and a real big divide between the city and the countryside.To me it really is as if there's two "Japans," that of the quiet countryside and that of the materialistic, absorbative big city. But that may just be because of me, because my own view divides them. Back of man! Haha, no, I don't know how somebody can be offended by something like that. Thanks, I'll let her know you said so. She'll blush. More story than one post can do justice. I'm not too private a person (I post a lot of personal content on my website), so I don't mind too much talking about it. But it's a long story...But speaking generally, we met on the internet at a chat website. When it came time to plan my yearly vacation, Japan seemed to be an interesting place to go, and she was willing to take time to show me around (I had previously gone to Italy on a group bus tour; visiting foreign countries is hard, at least for me). So, I met her there. Fell hard for her quickly.Because I was actually already planning on leaving my job and going back to school, I figured it's not too much of a change to move to Japan to study. Since I'm interested in the cognitive aspects of language, I thought learning a second language might give me insight into how things work. Plus I had some money saved up from working. So, I gave it a shot.Things didn't work out the first time, so I went back to the states for about a year. During that time we decided to try again, and this time things are working well. But my visa's expiring, and I haven't been able to enter graduate school. So I'll return to the States for a while. It's scary to separate, but I have some things to take care of there anyway. So we'll see.Hard to leave a good thing, especially after you've worked so hard to establish it. Overcoming cultural differences, together with mistakes we've made... that was hard work!Feel free to ask whatever you want. You'll be hard pressed to offend me, and I don't mind saying "no" when there's something I don't want to discuss.

From my perspective, the beauty in the cities are the "roped-off areas", such as shrines / temples, historical buildings, or parks. For example, Asakusa shrine, Osaka Castle, and the Imperial Palace park. Generally I haven't seen great architecture... and since I know you're originally from Chicago, and I've heard (but not seen) just a bit about the architecture there, I'm SURE it doesn't compare at all. It's really drab. Not really rainy, but the smoggy atmosphere really extends all around the area. It makes it REALLY hard to get a good view of Mt. Fuji, even on beautiful days. I mean, we travel 2 hours by train and hike up mountains, and we can barely see the surrounding neighboring mountains. Disappointing. Weird. I just meant personality differences and differences in expectations within a relationship between me and my girlfriend. Japanese society... it's hard to tell. There's been such a language barrier, and I'm quite shy. Everybody at my Japanese school was really nice. Some shop-keepers are nice and helpful, and the doctors too. Sometimes they're less willing to help. But in general, people who speak English are automatically found "interesting", so I don't think it could be too bad. But I really don't have much experience in the matter. Man, I feel so silly, I can't answer any of your questions. I spent 2 weeks in Italy, travelling all across the country on a bus tour, hitting a bunch of tourist sites. Don't get me wrong, it was great--but I got so little feel for the lifestyle.The one strong impression that I did get from Italy is that it's old, and not too crowded (except for Rome). Houses on the countryside tend to be clumped together here, rather than spread out. But really, I have no interesting insights at the moment. Sorry One thing I should mention is that I think Japan is a pretty diverse country, despite being so small, because there are so many natural borders. Plus, because it's much longer than it is wide, I think the weather across the regions is quite different. I've only experienced the Kanto (Tokyo) and Kansai (Osaka) areas, I haven't ventured to other areas (northern cold island of Hokkaido, Southwest islands of kyuushuu, etc) to say much about them. But it sounds like, for such a small country, Japan has "naturally diverse" lifestyles.Hope that helps a bit... if I'm in Shinjuku in the next couple of days (especially after work) maybe I can try and get a photo at Shinjuku station. It's really hard to get good perspective for photos on crowds though... although that's probably due to my photography skills more than anything else.This message has been edited by AdminBen, Wednesday, 2005/05/18 11:03 AM

Plan? Design? I'm jealous. When I first came to Tokyo, I read about how the main streets generally form a circle pattern with respect to the the Imperial Palace... by accident. There's no grid pattern here.From the style of driving, to the sizes, shapes, and orientations of buildings, to the distribution of little shops, to the street planning... Tokyo defines ad-hoc.But my GOD the trains and subways are clean. This message has been edited by AdminBen, Thursday, 2005/05/19 03:35 PM