{Update – In response to Steven, Author eats them head first. The reason is, they are not symmetric: tail has more dough, head has more filling. Tail has a better balance, and Author saves the better part for the end.}

Joe snapped a picture of the ritual bow. I think I never saw hands behind back before.

Some of adherents of this sillinesscustom say that the name is just a tag in its entirety, and thus we should not monkey with it. After all, with some cultures (such as Viet) it simply is impossible to split family from given and perform the normalization. So, the logic goes, to be consistent to the worst common denominator, we should refuse to do that for those cultures where it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, for the sake of “consistency”.

The reason the “consistency” does not work is because it’s impossible. Cultures exist which prefer their mapping to be done, for example Russians. They have given names, family names, and father’s names, with the latter often mapped to “middle name” in English. Thus, Петр Феоктистович Романов is going get angry every time he sees his Driver’s License which says “Petr Feoktistovich Romanov”. It’s not that it’s wrong, but over time it’s getting annoying. The use of middle name has certain connotations for him.

But even if English speakers tried to preserve the names outside of their cultural context by their complete sound, they could not. For example, a common Russian name “Зайцев” (e.g. the character in a movie about WWII snipers) has a sound ‘ц’, which is absent from English. When a clerk in Safeway is struggling to read the name on the receipt and Mr. Zaitsew is in a hurry, he is going to get pissed more than Mr. Romanov in the above example. The plight of Mrs. Nguyen Thu Huong is even more horrible: ‘t’ and ‘h’ are separate sounds. Not only they can’t pronounce it right, they can’t spell it using English rules, period. The Anglicized name is just a new badge invented for a person, face it.

Finally, from what I gather, Japanese are perfectly happy to have their names normalized for use in English, and perhaps even prefer it. So, as far as I am concerned, fans of consistency can stuff it.

There may be other arguments, although I don’t see them articulated.

Update: Jeff sent an e-mail to remind that he also belongs to the other side. Uh-oh. I completely missed that. If I understood him right, he explains that he has to -san people a lot at work, and that is, of course, impossible with the First-Last order.

Update: Steven asks what I would feel if I saw “Zedung Mao” in a news or historical article. Honestly, I have no idea. Obviously, I didn’t make enough disclaimers about the name morphing being culture-specific (although doings so would make the article unweildy). I have no preference about the way Chairman Mao should be identified in English; I am not Chinese; I don’t watch Chinese movies.

I once saw a vending machine in Japan with a 200ml Coca-Cola, a 300ml
Coca-Cola, a 500ml Coca-Cola and a 800ml Coca-Cola. Each one cost ¥120.

I was perplexed. I couldn’t imagine paying ¥120 for 200ml of something when they could get more (four times more!) of the same stuff for the same price from the same place.

Just then, I looked over at Mika at the next vending machine. She was buying a 200ml Coke.

"Why are you buying the 200ml one‽" I inquired, shocked. "You could have 800ml for the same price!"

Mika thought for a second and replied, "I only want 200ml of Coke."

People do the same in America too. Many get a box of 10 cream puffs in Trader Joe for the same $10 which buy a box of 90 cream puffs in Costco. It’s just not quite as obvious.

In anime, it’s quite common to see a boombox at a student’s table. Then, we have Lucky Star where Akira and Shiraishi plug the radio show. In Xenoglossia, there’s the Yayoi Broadcast. This seems to suggest a different listening pattern, where listeners are stationary.

By the way, I heard from the owner of Japan-a-radio that 60% of their listeners connect from Japan. Again, looks like lots of people are bound to their computers all day long. The intriguing question is, are they a part of “long tail”, or do they crop out of a general pattern?

BTW, Space Launch Report is based at Geocities, of all things. In the same time, it provides more complete coverage than Spaceflight Now, which started to flag recently. For instance, the launch of Shalit in June was not mentioned on Spaceflight Now at all, even thought it’s a significant event in some sense (Hello Iran! Can you do that?).

Anyway, GX is interesting. I used to dismiss it due to the retarded management seen driven by national pride more than good sense. As the sad story of the multi-lobed composite hydrogen tank of X.33 teaches us, an attempt to bite more than you can chew is likely to end badly. But with Japanese you never know, they might just make it work. They made H-IIA fly, after all, and that was a veritable turkey. So, in some ways I root for them. Now they only need to build a pad at Solomon islands.

1: A good exmaple would be Ares-I, pushing 238 seconds of specific impulse at sea level. Such performance makes a lunar trip less than an entirely ridiculous idea, you’ll only need a ridiculous staging scheme. It is unclear what the performance of Edo-period powders might be. Estimations which I found were about one third of aluminum perchlorate, so I suppose we are talking about 115 seconds or so. At that point it became clear to me that discussing Edo Rocket in the same mode as Rocket Girls was ludicrous in itself, so I shelved that approach.

The second part of the Obon observance is the cultural festival to be held from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on July 28 and 29. It will feature performances throughout the day by community groups, including drumming by Stockton Bukkyo Taiko as well as dance and martial arts demonstrations. This takes place in the Social Hall along with a variety of Japanese crafts, displays and food.

Located in People’s Republic of California, fireworks are prohibited (on the grounds of greater public good, naturally — it’s a fire hazard). The government prohibits them at The 4th as well, but faces massive civil disobedience at that date.

It can be seen plainly (with the help of slow-motion) that after the arrow is released, the string continues to move, circles around the left hand and comes to rest on the outside of the left wrist of the shooter. I can only presume that the bow turns almost a full turn in the grip. Not being an archer myself, I have no idea what purpose this technique serves, but since it’s painstakingly reproduced in anime I have to assume that it’s real.

UPDATE: Reader Refugee wrote to inform that the technique is called “yugaeri” (弓返り — literally “bow return”) and provided a link.

In the shooting form, the yugaeri allows the archer to return to correct toriyumi no shisei (bow holding posture). This is the beginning and ending shooting posture where the bow and arrows are held at one’s side. If the yugaeri is incomplete the bow must be readjusted after shooting in order to return to the correct posture, and that action takes away the fluidity of the shooting procedure.

Refugee also asked, “Why do Edo-era and older farm buildings have large rocks on their roofs? Lack of nails?” I automatically assumed that to be the case, although I do not know.

However, Renegade’s lede for the article was: “Honestly, I think this is one of the boldest and most important moves they’ve made in years.” Is it really? This is what WSJ says:

Tokyo anticipates spending at least 20 million yen ($175,000) a year on this new “manga diplomacy campaign.”

No, seriously. I have to wonder if the WSJ author confused millions, billions and trillions. The sum is too triffle.

In passing, Renegade makes a semi-related argument which I could not let by. It is a tired and weary cliche:

Finally, the article makes one point in the end which really bothers me. It states that a group of young men say “We love Japan!” Then it goes on to ask “But will their parents?” Every half-witted moron out there who worries about what our parents think is too far off the track to matter in this day and age. The youth vote is the vote. If you’ve got people under 35 or 30 on your side, you have the parts of the country that matter. Sure, it doesn’t look that good on paper, and it won’t always win elections, but the older parts of the country are increasingly out of touch. Plus, in a few years, people of our generation will be parents, and we’ll be the majority of the country, able to make decisions on behalf of others.

It is undoubtedly important to corrupt them young. However, the effect is mitigated by human capability to learn from their experiences. There’s even a proverb: “That who weren’t a communist at 20 has no heart. That who is a communist at 40 has no brain.” I see anime bloggers burning out of it every day. Some are declared like Karoshi, some undeclared like Astro and Pilgrimage (both continue to blog elsewhere, football and movies respectively). A few attempt a comeback, like Sama Zama, but not all succeed. It is natural for people to move on. The mistake here is to assume that they move on between 20 and 40, but do not move on between 40 and 60.

In regards to anime, we can also point at dubious relation between anime and age, and that the link between anime and general attitudes is unproven. In fact, trying to get it proven can harm fans by association (the WSJ article makes that point). But this is besides the point. All I am saying is, perhaps I am “increasingly out of touch”, but it seems to me that this argument is not as powerful as Renegade thinks.

UPDATE: This sounds conceited, but it looks like I awoke both Astro and Alexander. Both were watching something but not blogging.

The orbiter was nicknamed Kaguya after thousands of suggestions were submitted to JAXA by members of the public. The probe was named after a character in a popular ancient Japanese folktale.

They are talking about this:

I’m afraid I’ll have to research that girl. She’s probably acting in Oh Edo Rocket as well.