Aino Minako-chan

For those who are curious, the Japanese parliament is currently starting its debate on reforms to the current organ transplant law (concerning deceased donors). The main catalysts for this change are a combination of A) problems with the current law, especially with the fact that donors must be 15+ years old, thus essentially making transplants for children illegal, and B) changes to WHO rules on transplants in foreign countries (in order to combat the concern of "transplantion tourism" as far as I can tell). I'm not an expert on transplants by any means (although I know people who are!), but it's an interesting debate in Japan, and I'll try to summarize it here.

( Cut for those who don't really care and b/c it's kinda long... )

In short, it's an interesting debate to watch. We'll see what happens.

UPDATE: Surprise! Plan A passed in the first house by a rather wide margin. We'll see how it does in the second house.

UPDATE #2: Plan A passed the second house in mid-July. Hurray! Now if we can only get families to agree to donate...

I know that it's totally not polite to laugh at people's economic woes, but this AP photo that I saw on Yahoo News today made me laugh. I have never seen a face so full of economic woe in my life. It's pretty awesome.

( Oh woe, woe is he... )

I hate to be a gawker, especially when dealing with an accident that results in a death, so I sincerely wish the best for the friends and family of the driver who was killed in the crash. But holy crapola, when I saw the video footage on the morning news, I could hardly believe it.

Apparently, early this morning, a semi misjudged the curved in a raised freeway in downtown Tokyo and flipped over the edge. However, the truck missed the street below... on account that it happened to hit a nearby support and curve around the thing.


I mean, holy crap. How are they going to get the truck down?

In an update on my last post about the natto diet craze... they lied! They apparently totally lied!! I don't really care either way, since I honestly do like natto and don't even own a scale, so it's not like I'd be able to tell whether the diet worked or not, but apparently they totally made up parts of the program. Oh well. I still had natto last night with dinner; I was just kinda hungry, that's all. I guess this probably means that the natto shortages will end. Poor natto! Gets such a hard rap...

And in another quick news post, I read this article yesterday that claims, shit you not, that the hottest new fashion item is man leggings. Oh, for the love of god, men of the world, do NOT follow this "fashion trend". You'll look like a moron! Women will avert their eyes from you!! Just... Oh just PLEASE do not listen!!!!

We're finally getting a new employee in the translation department to handle outsourcing requests, and from the sounds of it, everyone is certain... that she'll be little use at all. ;-_- It's not her fault. She has a little kid, so she can't work overtime. Which would probably be no problem if she weren't working in bloody Japan. As it is, the sectional chief is apparently all stressed because he knows that companies call us about jobs at 5 or 6 or 8 because no one seems to actually leave their offices. Gee, and Japan is wondering why the birth rate is falling and why more working women are refusing to take time off from their good jobs to raise families. I just don't get it. >_<

Speaking of births, Princess Kiko gave birth to a baby boy, and I'm somewhat disappointed( , and apparently also somewhat long-winded, so I'll cut this. )

And finally, in completely unrelated baby news, this article made me sad. Basically, a panda at a Chinese zoo gave birth to twins, and then accidentally rolled over one of them, crushing it to death. And now, understandably, the mommy panda is very sad. Awww! Poor little squished baby panda!

The DTP department just handed over two bloody new versions of the same manual in two hours. I'm using TRADOS, a translation program, to translate, so you'd think that getting handed a different version of basically the same thing wouldn't be any big deal, but TRADOS had limitations and so I always do the final check by hand. This will be my third time doing a manual check on chapter 2 today. To put it mildly, I'm getting kinda ticked.

Speaking of angry, this article kinda pissed off my inner linguist, which is surprising mainly because I didn't think I had an inner linguist. While I adored my linguistics classes, my memory is somewhat akin to a sieve and knowledge tends not to stay inside for the long haul. Anyway, the article mainly talks about a book about early childhood language development from a man called Charles Lang. Normally, I would just scratch my head and try to figure out why anyone thinks this is new, except that the article started out somthing like this:

When kids leave out the subject in the sentence "Where going?" they're thinking like a speaker of Chinese, which drops topic words in some contexts. [...] Like almost everything in linguistics, Yang's idea stems from Noam Chomsky's theory that the human capacity for language is innate.

( The following has been cut because it contains nothing but linguistic bitching. You have been warned. If you don't feel like clicking, I totally understand, and the oversimplified version of my complaining can be summed up as, 'Chomsky!? OMFG Chomsky!! Hiss hiss! Spit spit!! And WTF's with that statement about Chinese? Are you a moron, writer lady!?' For those who might be interested, the following will contain highly suspect information pulled from the scraps of my remaining linguistic knowledge that may or may not be interesting. )

Finally, in completely unrelated news, I've finally scratched the surface of Final Fantasy III. Keeping in my personal naming tradition, the four characters have been renamed Fred, Bobby, Roger, and Kiki. Just... because. Go get 'em, Kiki!

Not really "breaking" persay, but if you've been keeping up with science news, you've probably read articles like this, talking about the possible upcoming change to the planets in the solar system. Will poor Pluto be banned from the planetary clubhouse, reduced to skipping jacks behind Mrs. Henderson's shed with Charon, Ceres, and that new kid who people are calling Xena?

First of all, I would suggest that everyone read the article linked to above, since it's pretty funny. See, I start reading about the bitter, bloody battles between astronomers and the mocking at the hands of geologists (dude, astronomers! you're being MOCKED by GEOLOGISTS; how much further down the geek heirarchy can you fall!?), and I start imaginging all sorts of freaky scenerios for the big convention, like guys aligning themselves along Pluto loyalty lines and printing matching T-shirts and eventually getting into fisticuffs (not brawls; these are astronomers) over Schnapps after a lecture on calculating quasi-periodic oscillations in star clusters. They could play the soundtrack to "West Side Story" in the background. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, when they reported about Pluto's dangerous position on today's news, I could only think of two things: A) Wow, so that means that future generations will literally learn a completely different definition of the solar system compared to when I was a kid. That's kinda freaky, for some reason.

This was sadly followed up by thought B: OMG, poor Sailor Pluto! Who else are they going to get to help save the Moon Kingdom!?

Yes, I was concerned about major changes to the Sailor Moon universe. Yes, I'm a dork. I don't know why you're surprised.

And on a slightly related noted, I want this t-shirt. It makes me laugh.

I was actually going to write about news from the Japanese legal system, but then I read this article today, and it made me laugh. It's about a guy who aced his SAT and his ACT. Good for him, and all that jazz. The article is so-so, but the true genius lies in the photo of the kid by Bo Rader( , which I will provide under the cut. )

Ha-ha!! Told you I could do presentations if I just had time to prepare! After the previously mentioned public speaking failure, I performed the second of three presentations to the newbies today, and it went extremely smoothly. I think it also helped that this group of three newbies included Extremely Hard-working DTP Dude and Absofreaking Adorable Engineering Lad. (The third member was "Unfortunately Standing Directly Behind Me And To My Right Which Was My Exact Blind Spot Man.") No, I don't know any of their names (I know 5/10 newbies' names, and these were none of those 5), but I'm certainly trying to learn. After today, I've become an especially big fan of AAE Lad. He's like a puppy in the form of a teeny 22-year-old Japanese boy, I swear! He freaking applauded when I was done speaking, and his only comment was basically, 「大変ですね～!」 ("Taihen desu ne!"). If I'm someday arrested for kidnapping a Japanese boy, dressing him up in a fluffy bunny suit, and feeding him cotton candy, then you know why. (BTW, I logically realize he's a college graduate and therefore theoretically not much younger than me, but in my own defense, he's one of those young Japanese men who looks like your average American high school freshman boy. When I see them on the train, I just want to start cooing over them in their adorable little suits. "It's like you're a big boy now!")

On a side note, I always scan the online news sites for interesting articles during lunch. (Who are these #%&$ing people on "American Idol"!? Why is it always the top news story!?) Anyway, one series of travel articles in "Newsweek" was interesting. It talked about the world's most endangered cultural/tourist destinations, such as Babylon, Machu Picchu, or the Great Wall of China. Some of the destinations are being destroyed due to environmental changes (Mt. Kilimanjaro is melting! Venice is sinking! The Maldives are sinking!), but many others are simply being destroyed by over-tourism. The main article was fairly interesting, but the title of the piece killed me: Vanishing Acts: The world's treasures are under siege as never before. So get out and see as many as possible—before they disappear.

Oh my god. You're prefacing an article about how cultural heritage sites around the world are being destroyed, many due to over-tourism, and your big message is "stampede over there and snatch a piece away before someone else destroys it first"!? Can you hear my eyes rolling from where you are? How about I just pay someone to dump Coke bottles and Snickers wrappers all over the place and save everyone the trouble? Maybe you could just let a herd of angry elephants live there. At least THEY wouldn't leave graffitti. The article(s) are slightly more balanced than the title implies, but it still made me shake my head.

Also, this is old news, so I'm sure many of you have already heard about China's Trojan panda attack on Taiwan, but if you haven't you really need to read about it. It's part absurd, part funny, part devious. No matter what you feel about China or Taiwan or politics or pandas, you've gotta admit, China's goood. "Look, we're totally not threatening to bomb you any more! We just want to give you a pretty pretty panda!!! [giant puppy eyes]" Genius!

Thought I'd write a little note about my reaction to two news pieces, found both in Japan and abroad.

The first is the news of Japanese researchers who have discovered that monkeys have dialects. As a linguistics major and lover of fun language news, I look at this article with big eyes and say... Duh. I mean, they say that the discovery is "the first of its kind", but they must mean that it's the first discovery of monkey dialects, or perhaps even Japanese monkey dialects. After all, there's already some famous research that shows honeybees have dialects related to their honey dance. If bees have dialects in their unspoken communication, I'm sure as hell that other animals have dialects, too.

The second is about "Memoirs of a Geisha", otherwise known as "Sayuri" in Japan. Apparently, the film has "sparked anger" across both Japan and China. [looking around Tokyo while watching the daily entertainment news following the "Sayuri" premiere] Really? Where? The article doesn't really provide any clear sources of this "anger", outside of unnamed bloggers and an old Japanese man who found it somewhat odd that none of the Japanese characters spoke Japanese.

Now, it could be that there is lots of seething anger over this movie that I just haven't noticed. But in my opinion, everyone is clearly aware that this is an American movie, made by Americans, based on a book written by an American. Japanese moviegoers to "Sayuri" probably aren't expecting an "authentic" Japanese experience. They have their own movies for that. They're expecting a Hollywood Japanese experience, the same one that made "The Last Samurai" a big hit. Although, having said that, I seriously doubt that the average Japanese person has any clue what the hell real geisha are like, anyway. Last time I was in Kyoto, a passing group of three geisha caused a huge stir as Japanese tourists sprinted away from Kiyomizu Temple to take pictures of the geisha instead.

Not only that, but movies with "pan-Asian" casts have really increased in number in recent years. Ziyi Zhang is huge here, as well; she stars in a series of shampoo commercials where the plays the "ultimate" Asian beauty. My opinion: "Sayuri" (aka "Memoirs of a Geisha") will be a huge hit in Japan, and no one will give a crap that the lead is a Chinese girl speaking English in a glittering, Vegas-esque Japan.

On a side note, the morning entertainment section of the news showed the world premiere red carpet, and I decided that I really like Japanese actress Kaori Momoi. She was poured into this solid black dress that had lots of tube-like things gathered around the top. One long tube hung off the side like a tassle. When asked about her dress, she explained that her theme was "mistress" or "madame" or something similar. Then she gave a coy little smile and pulled the one long tube off of her shoulder. "But of course," she said, twirling the tube dangerously, "you can't be a madame if you don't have a whip." Ah, so not a tassle. Her dress came with its own built-in whip! I do respect a woman who comes prepared...