The Gaijin Prince of Dorset

Japanese on Android again

2011-06-17T00:11:00.000+01:00

I've already discussed the superb aedict before, (twice in fact) and my frustration at its stroke-order-dependent kanji recognition. In my second post I also talked about AnkiDroid and a new Japanese/Chinese handwriting IME.

I had great hopes for that IME, but after trying out several versions of it as it is released, support for Japanese still seems weak.

In the meantime, I came across WWWJDIC and Kanji Recogniser for the Android by Nikolay Elenkov. At first I wasn't impressed, since the dictionary requires connection to the internet, unlike aedict. However, I've gotten good use out of its slightly less picky kanji recognition, and I often switch between WWWJDIC and aedict while reading through a book when I come across a particularly mysterious or easier-to-draw-than-decompose-into-radicals type of kanji.

It isn't perfect, but its another option when I come across a particularly difficult character, and I don't have to bookmark so many words to wait until I can ask my wife!

Ankidroid has come into its own too, with sync fully supported, and even the ability to add cards. I would finally consider ankidroid to be a useable app, and it was very useful today, as I was left waiting for nigh on an hour at a blood donation centre. Now I can redeem at least some of my wasted time with Japanese knowledge!

Feeding a Baby Japanese advice...

2011-04-19T13:48:00.000+01:00

Putting the events of the last month aside for the moment, I was reminded the other day of the strange discrepancies between the Japanese and English health advice.

My wife told me a story of one Japanese housewife in Italy, who had a bit of a barney with their husband over whether their child should eat pasta, but there are quite a few differences between advice between countries.

The one that strikes me most is the difference in opinion over meat in the UK versus Japan. The NHS states meat, including pork, beef and lamb as excellent sources of protein, whereas the Sakaide city office guidelines maintain you should refrain from all but chicken until ~9 months, and ham until 1 year. The NHS also recommends cow's milk as an option, whereas this is considered dubious until about 1 year in Japan*.

Of course, there are a lot of points in agreement: No honey, no nuts, etc. But I think its good to be aware of the different advice.

That said, I've not gotten into a fight over my baby's dinner yet..

*Specifically, they mention the milk should be thoroughly cooked/boiled before consumption

Sendai situation

2011-03-16T20:51:00.001Z

As you'll be aware Sendai city in Miyagi prefecture was one of the first cities to experience the tsunami. Luckily for many of the residents, the city is located several kilometres inland, and I think only about half of the city was inundated.

I mentioned one blogger in the stricken city in my post a couple of days ago. In his latest post, he gives a good sense of the situation in his area. He starts off by once again thanking those who have contacted him to check he is OK.

I think Miyagi prefecture will continue down a hard road, but however many years, however many decades are needed, it will -like a phoenix- rise again. I really feel in my heart that the whole of Japan, indeed the whole of the world is supporting us.

He goes on to say how they re-opened their shop on the 14th, and they almost instantly sold out. He's got some pictures to illustrate this too, so do check the link above. Here's an extract in English:

On the 14th, we opened up the shop for the first time since the disaster. Then, in the time it takes to say "Ah!" we sold out. We'd completely forgotten to check we had enough provisions for ourself, but we've got rice, and we'll manage somehow, so I've not felt too discouraged.

A lot of people who came for water also bought some sake to say thanks. There were others who would thank us with tears streaming down their face, and I too couldn't help letting out some tears... But we encouraged each other to stand firm... There were so many people who came to our usually quiet shop.

He also says some people also bought some candles, so presumably (and, I guess, unsurprisingly) there are still large areas of Sendai without electricity. One visitor said they were staying with friends due to damage to their apartment block. But what he says next is probably most interesting:

Then, a middle-aged couple from the Arahama town of Wakabayashi ward, and a taxi driver from Yuriage, Natori stopped by the shop, and bought some sake. "I keep recalling such terrible scenes... I hope the sake will help me forget...", he said, and laughed feebly...

...

The one's we were most worried about, our family in Yogasakihama, Miyagi district, had the tsunami roll right over them, but miraculously they all got to a shelter unharmed, it seems. Their house is completely washed away, but just that they still have their lives, we're thanking our ancestors.

Some pretty moving stuff, I think. But the amazing thing is, if you look at the kinds of places he talks about, they're all right next to the sea. Places that have been totally annihilated. My wife points out that a lot of people were likely to have been at work when the tsunami hit, and thus further inland... I think a lot of lives may have been saved just by virtue of the calamity occurring on a weekday.

In any case, the picture on the ground seems to be one of calm -albeit saddened- determination to see things set right once more.

Fukushima Daiichi plant abandons use of helicopters

2011-03-15T19:40:00.004Z

According to NHK news (see this news article), plans to refill the pool of reactor 4 with helicopters have been abandoned. According to the article: "the method of using helicopters would be too difficult"

Apparently, the hole blasted by the explosion earlier was several metres away from the pool, so it wouldn't be possible to dump water through the hole into the pool. The possibility of only small quantities of water being carried was also cited as a reason for abandoning the plan.

Unbelievable Account of the Japan Earthquake

2011-03-14T15:06:00.002Z

I just found this blog post. If you skip down beyond the garish pictures you'll find an incredible, first-hand account of what happened to someone working in the Wakabayashi ward of Sendai. Perhaps more amazing is what happened to her son, who went out to sea after the earthquake, to save their boat from being smashed, evidently unaware of the scale of the unfolding disaster. I've done a tentative translation of the whole article:

11 march

I was in a meeting concerning working over the weekend in the afternoon, on the 3rd floor of my workplace in Sendai city’s Wakabayashi-ward. There was a loose rocking, and just as I say “Oh, an earthquake...?” the shaking became very violent. My superiors shouted out “Everyone sit down! Keep your heads down!”. Amongst the screams, I tightly grasped the hand of one of the girls I get on with, and we crouched down.

Our superiors held us too, shielding our shoulders, as around us the shaking failed to die down. Machines fell over, glass smashed, and a flatcar rampaged on its casters. Then the power went out. As things quietened down, we dashed out to take refuge in the parking area, and there were many aftershocks.

Once, I tried to get to the locker room, but the lockers were a complete wreck. I got into my car to drive home, but the traffic was completely jammed. My phone wouldn’t connect. Even in my car there were numerous aftershocks. The traffic lights were all out, so I forced the car through the traffic to get home. On the way, I got a mail from my oldest son, who lives in Soma, Fukushima:

“House in Soma a mess. I’m going to put the boat out to see now. Anyway, I’ve no injuries. Chiiko and Shoko are taking refuge. Taka is also fine, it seems. That’s all for now.”

For the time being, I was relieved.

First I went to the nursery to pick up my daughter, then leaving my car at home, I went to the school on foot to pick up my second son. Both of them had not even a slight injury, and were fine... But I couldn’t get through to my husband. We waited in the car in the parking space by our house for him to come back, and just as it looked like night was coming, he arrived. Everyone in the family was safe.

But then the news came in: The beach area of Soma had been completely destroyed in the tsunami.

I’d heard Chiiko and Shoko had fled, but my eldest was putting the boat out to sea to protect it with his uncle. After that I couldn’t get through to them. I could let out nothing but tears. I was so worried. I thought that to have your own son die before you was the worst thing a parent could allow to happen, and so I couldn’t stop crying.

And then, I was able to get through. He told me they’d returned safely, and I cried again in relief.

He and his uncle headed out to the tsunami, and as they approached the summit of the wave, their engine cut out. On passing over the wave, it started again and they came down from the top of the wave... Apparently, this happened many times.

Once the tsunami passed, they returned to the beach...

They say that it was a mountain of rubble and bodies. They had to walk over all this to get to the shelter... My husband’s mum and grandmother where swallowed by the wave, but somehow were rescued. My parents, sister, nephews and nieces are all alive.

At this time, so many people have contacted, worrying about me. I don’t have all your real names, but there is a staggering number.

Here is a list of my internet acquaintance’s:

[list of names of people who have contacted]

If these people are able to see my situation in this article, then I’m truly happy. My husband’s family home has disappeared without a trace.

The fight starts from here. I’ll do whatever I can! And at the end, a new wind is revolving. I’m thankful to the courage that got me in touch.

From Mizuho

It seems totally unbelievable. I can't imagine what it must have been like to try and approach that tsunami head on.

What the Japanese think of the Earthquake

2011-03-13T22:33:00.000Z

The BBC, like all good media, is prone to a bit of fear-mongering, and it struck me a lot watching the news of how the people of Japan are alternatively portrayed as "in fear of what is to come" and "dealing with the situation calmly". It seemed a bit strange to me, so I thought I'd see what the Japanese are actually thinking right now..

Firstly, of course I asked my wife (she's far quicker than my little netbook, shame she doesn't fit in my rucksack), and she said her family weren't particularly worried about the situation, least of all her father, whom I suspect is annoyed by the lack of any of his favourite TV dramas...

After a brief* look at blogs.yahoo.co.jp paints a pretty good picture. Starting with Tokyo-based blogs there are so many blogs giving out advice to fellow countrymen, or just encouragement. There is also a lot of blogs mirroring what I've been hearing on the TV: stores in Tokyo are being completely cleared out by anxious shoppers making sure they are prepared. In some places it appears people are even having trouble getting hold of toilet paper, let alone rice. That said, there are some blogs which have just carried on as though nothing happened, more troubled about their relationships than the fate of the nuclear reactors just a few prefectures away. But, such is the human condition, I guess.

Focusing in on blogs closer to where most of the damage was done in Miyagi prefecture inevitably paints a darker picture. Though many blogs in this area have only just restarted as power finally comes back online. There are many which are just short posts (along this lines of "don't worry, I'm alive"), but a fair few with stories to tell.

One blogger tells of the situation in his town in Miyagi. Like many I've found, though somewhat surreal, he starts off by apologising for worrying everyone. He continues to describe how he has adapted:

The water is back on, but the gas is still down. I've phoned all my relatives in the prefecture but I can't get through to about 90% of them. The quake was days ago, but the city is completely paralysed. The electricity was out, but we have a charcoal kotatsu so we had heating. We also used charcoal to help cook dinner. We've not done this since the 7.9 quake, 33 years ago. We're taking in many shivering people to warm them up -we've all got to rely on each other after all- it doesn't matter if we know their name or not, anyone is fine. We've already had over 100 people come to fill their polythene water tanks.

They also uploaded some pictures showing the damage near their home.

Another blogger, from Sendai shows the queue of people, perhaps 1.5km long, all in need of water. Apparently they set out at 8:30am, and didn't get their water until 12:40pm.

Other blogs ask visitors for any information they have for their area, others provide help on which radio stations are best for getting information, many tell stories of trying to get home after the quake, or on how they tried to find out what was going on. One blogger laments:

Are you OK? ... Are you alive? ... Now I have no way of contacting you.

Searching blogs for Fukushima unsurprisingly will net you a lot of anxious discussion on the nuclear situation, including advice on what to do if a radioactive cloud passes through your neighbourhood, though I don't know where that blog actually originates. One blog I did find from Fukushima so far paints a similar picture as before, with shops running out of pretty much everything, but also offers advice for people living nearby. For another, it appears like business as usual, despite sharing the prefecture with a variously: no-problem-here, just-seconds-from-meltdown, where's-all-this-hydrogen-coming-from nuclear plant**. Indeed, I can find very few blogs from Fukushima expressing much in the way of concern over how things will turn out, but with so many still without power, its difficult to tell what is going on behind the news. Nonetheless, most of those blogs I've found from the area, while mostly filled with some degree of shock, also tend to retain an air of grin-and-bear-it.

I guess I can't really say whether or not the news is really fear-mongering. Those worst effected are unlikely to be blogging, in any case. That aside, what I've found has shown that generally these people seem to be doing their best to help their neighbours. It doesn't paint a pretty picture, but its somehow reassuring. If nothing else, there are these people determined to carry on, no matter what.

*I say brief, but with the amount of information out there already, you could spend weeks and only scratch the surface
**The true state of the plant is anyone's guess, and until people have the time to observe it properly, it probably exists in all these states at once. If you believe in Schrödinger's cat, anyway.

Brighter side of Japan

2011-03-13T12:57:00.000Z

The news lately has been appalling, and I can only be thankful that no one I know is caught up in the unfolding tragedy.

But rather than instilling a mortal fear of returning to Japan, the constant coverage from Japan has reminded me how much I would rather be out there.

I think I can be forgiven for briefly putting the more serious issues aside for a moment (there are literally thousands of sites you can read for that, why duplicate them?*), and reminisce on the brighter side of Japan.

The first thing springs to mind is bicycles. I miss riding into work, and god save me if I attempt it here. In Okayama, I could cycle into work, not be run over, and be fairly confident that I would be dry when I got there. Also, you can leave your bicycle damn-near anywhere and it'd still be there when you got back (though sometimes tangled with several other -the so called "bicycle dominoes" effect-). Indeed, a bicycle becomes something of a necessity in the hotter months, when it is far more refreshing to glide through town on a bicycle than to slog it out on foot.

That brings us to the weather. Lots of Japanese seem surprised when I assure them Britain has four seasons, but then if you spend a whole year in Japan, it kind of makes sense. You get the same seasons, but much more intense. Winter is cold, Okayama wasn't as cold as England perhaps, but when you're in a country without much in the way of central heating, you'll quickly find yourself rushing for a kotatsu, and variously downing meals of nabe, Japanese curry or ramen. Then, just as we turn on the defrost in England, Japan's oven turns on full blast, and you've got about a month or two to enjoy the spectacularly colourful spring before she gets up to temperature. And spring is truly amazing, especially if you like walking around Japanese gardens: it is one explosion of flowers after another, sparked off by the magnificent cherry blossoms. Before long, this leaves you roasting in the Japanese summer. But even in this furnace there is a lot to enjoy, including the annual fireworks festivals, and the occasional thunderstorms which not only cool things down, but are orders of magnitude more impressive than the wimpy English variety. Finally Autumn arrives, which unlike its English counterpart (which seems to exist purely to separate summer and winter, like a rather passive bouncer) is another explosion of colour, this time red (perhaps to warn us of the upcoming winter), and another month or two of mild** weather to enjoy it with.

The nature in Japan is also a big eye-opener for me. Of course, my first impression of Japan was that there wasn't any, because you quickly find out that urbanisation of Japan has been so prolific that most towns and cities have merged into a contiguous network of concrete. Nonetheless, it doesn't take long, especially in more "rural"*** areas to escape to somewhere surrounded by either mountains or fields. And being a country-bumpkin one of the first things I noticed was the different fauna and flora. Bamboo growing wild, spindly spiders that could outstretch my hand, and tree sparrows everywhere. It is a very rich environment to walk through.

The other thing I miss is the hospitality and Japanese way of thinking. Even it if it is superficial, there is nothing like walking into a shop and being hailed by the contagious call of "irashaimase!". While I wouldn't describe the average man-in-the-street as jovial, the Japanese somehow excel at projecting an image of happiness and order when such an image is called for. Its difficult to describe, but a very prominent feature of Japan as I've known it.

I'll just wrap up to say that despite my naive writing here, my thoughts are often with those who haven't been so lucky, and will be long after the news has lost interest.

*that said, there are a few things I'd like to investigate in Japanese myself, since the BBC have said a couple of (minor) things that raised my eyebrow

** not the English mild, which generally seems to mean "hypothermia unlikely". Japanese mild is more like the English summer, climate-wise.

*** again, rural in Japan is completely different from over here. I had the city of Okayama described to me as rural. Being from the green places of Dorset, the idea of a city being in any way rural was completely alien to me

Sony Handycam easy on Ubuntu Linux

2011-01-15T10:47:00.000Z

When I was lucky enough to have my Father-in-law buy me a Sony Handycam, the guy at the shop told us

"Ah, you'll need a Japanese version of Windows on your computer if you want to turn your videos into DVDs"

Having previously owned a Sony mp3 walkman, I'm well aware of Sony's tendency to release propriety software with their gadgets, but being an Ubuntu fan, I also found a nice little java program that bypasses that necessity (called symphonic), and so I figured that the Japanese Handycam's requirement for a Japanese OS could also be bypassed fairly easily.

... In any case, there is always my wife's Japanese VAIO...

As expected, it was fairly straightforward. Indeed, I didn't even need any dedicated software to get everything working. I just used VLC to view the videos (although they run mighty choppy on my poor ickle netbook) and Kino video editor.

In fact, I get the feeling that it would have been more difficult to get the camera going in Windows.

Making the world in 7 days?: An experience with JOGL

2011-01-06T23:26:00.000Z

Last year I started learning Java, and had a lot of fun using its 2D graphics to procedurally generate a cartoon seal. Eventually I came across JOGL, a wrapper for OpenGL in Java. Its been a while since I did any serious 3D graphics programming, so I thought I'd see how easy it would be to program a 3D game in Java, and how well java would cope.

I started out making a grid comprised of regions, each subdivided into areas, further subdivided into terrain squares. I then made (a very inefficient) world generation class to iterate through all these terrain squares and assign them a different height (basically, I shove a load of sine waves onto the landscape with varying amplitudes, it looks very silly until the sine waves start overlapping, then the interactions between the sine waves start to produce something approaching believable.

Next came lighting, and I remembered (horror of horrors) that you need to specify normals at each vertex of the terrain, which is done by averaging the surface normals of all the quads surrounding a terrain vertex. Nonetheless, by the end of day one, I had a lit, hilly landscape. Albeit a blue one.

Most of day 2 was spent trying to find a simple way of adding terrain textures, it turns out that there is a very simple way, and I'm glad I took the time out to find it:

Texture tex ;

tex = TextureIO.newTexture(new File("Ground.png"), true);

tex.enable();

tex.bind();

Of course, I'm going to have to move this out of the init() function when I want to use more than one texture... But in any case it works. Finally, I added culling so any regions outside of the viewport aren't drawn, cutting down on rendering times. By the end of the second day, then, it was looking like this:

Remember I'm using a subdivided system of regions, areas and the rendered terrain squares. To further optimise, I added an algorithm to give the corner of each area its own vertex, and I moved the height of these vertices to match the height of the nearest terrain vertex. In effect I had created a low detail version of the rendered terrain. Then all that was required was to render the more detailed terrain closer to the camera, and render the less detailed areas further from the camera, reducing the number of triangles rendered overall. This effectively allowed me to greatly expand the size of the terrain, and still have it render at reasonable speed. Finally I added fog, which didn't take me too long at all, to get something looking a little more atmospheric:

Well... When I say atmospheric, perhaps depressing is a better word... To inject some new life into the world, I spent the 4th day adding the skybox (actually I spent most of the day adding model support). This is basically a textured sphere that I flattened into a pancake (not the most efficient method, but very quick), this way the fog doesn't obscure the sky above, but fades seamlessly into the sky. I also added a blue tint to the fog so it looks more like haze on a cloudless day than miserable English fog..

You might notice the sky has pixelation on a geographic scale, this is due to the fact I still haven't actually added support for multiple textures.. Yes, that's right, its the ground texture coloured blue!

So... 4 days into the creation, and just about everything is in place. Now I've hacked out the majority of the model loading code, vibrant tree'd (even inhabited) landscapes can't be far away...

To conclude... I've basically done this before in DirectX many years ago, but I'm quite impressed with how JOGL handles everything. Its a little more difficult for me to get my head around managing resources like models and images (something that DirectX manages quite well on its own), but performance wise its working like a charm, and creating it on my netbook has been very pleasing. Its the added portability of Java is the icing on the cake for me though, and I had my fledgling program running on linux with no troubles at all.

Android and Japanese, half a year on

2010-07-03T09:19:00.001+01:00

So its been almost half a year since I purchased my HTC Tattoo (you'll remember thats an Android phone, I'm no ink-junkie!), and I've been getting a good amount of use out of it.

I often translate my way through a good(?) book on the way to work, on train journeys etc. This usually means I'm crammed into one seat, with very little room to move. Previously I used my "Papyrus" denshi-jisho, which being the size of a medium size book itself left me with even less room. I'd be constantly switching between resting the novel on my lap to look up a word, to resting the Papyrus on my lap to continue reading. Being only on my second Japanese book, you can imagine how I have to look up about 10 words on some pages, meaning a lot of switching, and a fair amount of irritation.

The Tattoo, on the other hand is spectacularly dinky, so I can rest the Tattoo with Aedict on one page while I read the opposite page! Very handy.

In my last blog post about Aedict I was a bit critical of the kanjipad, which requires you to write using the correct stroke order. Certainly, I would love a Tegaki style input that fits closer to my very messy way of writing kanji. However there is a nice feature of Aedict that I didn't discover until they released the new version: When looking up a kanji you can now view its stroke order. Of course, you need to first find the kanji, but as I said previously, the skip lookup and radical lookup will help you here. So, I am starting to learn the stroke order of some of the radicals, which is a great help!

I also criticized the sorting of results.. But after using Aedict for a few months, it turns out that this is not really much of an obstacle to looking up words.

Aedict's new layout is very nice too, showing you the most recently viewed results, which is pretty useful. Aedict has also been able to deinflect verbs for a while now, which has on occasion saved me a fair amount of confusion.

More than anything Aedict's lookup speed is its greatest strength. When emailing my wife and need to use a technical word (lately a lot of words about pregnancy!) its actually quicker for me to whip out my phone and search using Aedict, than it is to open a new tab, load up wwwjdic and look up a word online! Its that which impresses me the most about Aedict.

I still find looking up kanji a bit of a hassle, and that is the thing that takes the most time (I can still only translate maybe 2 pages of my book per bus ride, the same as with my Papyrus). I attribute this mainly to the kanjipad (and I guess, my slow pace at learning the stroke orders)

As well as Aedict, I've sampled a few Japanese IMEs. I have to say, none of them are perfect. Simeji tended to mistake where I was pressing (possibly due to the Tattoo's smaller screen resolution, but they should support it since it is in the market, so your guess is as good as mine), and OpenWnn Plus (which I recommended last time) had a tendency to crash. I now use OpenWnn/Flick support, which is basically the same as OpenWnn, but it doesn't crash on my Tattoo! However, when typing English, I still prefer the HTC's default input method, since you can generally just bash the keypad in the general region of the letter you're aiming for and carry on. No way can I type even half as quickly in English using any of the Japanese input methods.

I've seen some Japanese/Chinese handwriting development occuring, which I'm very excited about. Perhaps that will be useful in looking up kanji in the future? I hope it works with the HTC Tattoo!

I will also give a special mention to AnkiDroid, a simple flashcard program for Android. It works using the same deck specs as Anki. This is great for me, since I already used Anki on my desktop, and now I can sync my anki deck to my phone from the internet, allowing me to memorize such words as 破水 in preperation for heading out to Japan for my the birth of my first child! I'm using a beta at the moment to get hold of the sync feature, but I've read that synchronisation is soon to come out into the stable releases (that said, I have never had any bugs or errors of any kind while using this beta, and I have a lot of confidence in their dev team who are very responsive).

Overall, the HTC Tattoo is a great device for Japanese, I'm spectacularly pleased with it.

HTC tattoo and Japanese

2010-02-15T20:55:00.003Z

I know its been a while, but I think this warrants a blogpost:

I've been dragging around a battered old Nokia for the last 5 or 6 years, and decided it was time to change. However, being the "I just want a phone to do what a phone needs to do" kind of person, I looked for a new phone with 3 things in mind. 1) I want a phone to make phone calls (duh) 2) I may as well replace my walkman with a phone, and save pocket-space 3) Perhaps I can get a phone that will replace my denshi-jisho (electronic dictionary).
Long story short, I bought the HTC tattoo. After a bit of research, I found this blog-post: Paddosan.com. He introduced Aedict, which uses the almighty edict by Jim Breen, which is a brilliant dictionary.

I was a bit concerned, however, about some issues I'd heard about the tattoo's small screen resolution. Would it be enough for reading the Japanese fonts? Would it be enough for inputting Japanese fonts?

Well, I've well and truly laid those anxieties to rest. The tattoo works superbly with Aedict.

Here is my review of Aedict:

Aedict's kanjipad allows for writing in a character by hand (using your finger as a pen) which is very nice for complicated kanji. However - this will require you to know the stroke order of the kanji. Now, I was taught the stroke order at school, but I was never tested on it, and thus never learned it. I'm guessing most Japanese courses are the same in this respect, so perhaps the kanjipad is going to be of only relatively limited use for most users of Aedict.

Considering my last point, the presence of a radical lookup system is a life-saver, and Aedict really excels here. The tattoo's touch screen makes scrolling through the radical list quick and easy. As with linux's gjiten, you can tell Aedict how many strokes there are in the character you want to look up, and you can also specify how much error (i.e. how many strokes more or less than your guess, useful if your not exactly sure).

Searching in English is very easy, as you'd expect. However, the quality of the results is not spectacular. As with the online edict, you get a lot of slightly odd expressions appear, and it is difficult to find the most appropriate word. That said, the "Priority" words (those words among the most common 20000 or so) do appear at the top of the list.

Searching in Japanese is also easy. You can type in romaji, but I used openwnn because it is a little more intuitive for me (if you've ever used a Japanese mobile phone, you'll probably find the same). Again, you can get a large volume of results for some searches, which can be a pain.

Still, despite the large volumes of results that Aedict produces, it presents them all on one page, so scrolling through dozens of results isn't as difficult on the tattoo as on edict.

You can also get a kana table.. which looks pretty but has pretty much no function. I think this would have been better used as an input method for those people who dont want to install an IME like openwnn. However, since I do use openwnn I'll leave it at that.

One thing I was fairly impressed with was the "skip lookup" which I overlooked at first because I assumed it was a setting, not a lookup method (whooops). Basically, you answer 1 or 2 simple questions about the character, and it brings up a list of most likely candidates... I was highly sceptical at first, but it turned out to be a real time saver for some very complicated characters.

Overall, I'm very pleased with Aedict. It has allowed me to dispense with my chunky "Papyrus" dictionary, making translating on the bus much easier, and while each lookup method has its own failings, my complaints with one method are usually covered by another. Nonetheless, a more gaijin-friendly handwriting recognition (I'm thinking tegaki-python here) and better sorting of relevant results would be grand.

Getting married in Japan

2009-05-03T23:54:00.002+01:00

Wedding ceremonies. White dresses, gold rings, lots of flowers and church bells! Sounds great doesn't it? That's why I was so set on having one, even more so than my fiancée, in fact.

However, even before proposing to my bride-to-be it soon became apparent that getting married was going to be a bigger challenge than I ever expected. I mean, sure the ceremony itself is going to be expensive, and require a bit of effort from my end. However, in comparison to the bureaucracy that the marriage incurs, the ceremony itself is going to be a walk in the park.

Usually people in Japan just get married, and update their family registers. If you're a foreigner, however things are different. And hell, you'd expect them to be, what's worse is being British. (For once) I've no problem with the bureaucracy on the Japanese side, it's my own country that's giving me frustration now.

If you want to get married in Japan you've got to go through the following procedures (Courtesy of the UK in Japan website):

"Japanese law requires that all marriages here must take place at a local Ward or City office. The couple must submit a notice of "Intention to Marry" or "kon-in-todoke" to the Ward/City office, the Marriage officer will then issue a "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage" or "kon-in-todoke-juri-shomeisho" and the couple will be married."

OK, sounds oh-so-simple. However...

"When the marriage involves a non-Japanese national, the Marriage officer must be shown a "Certificate of No Impediment" (CNI or in Japanese "yoken gubi shomeisho") by the non-Japanese party."

Fair enough, you wouldn't want married people coming from abroad and picking up extra wives, I guess..

Now, you can get a CNI in Japan (see this link), or you can get one in England by giving notice to marry at the local registrar office. This then needs to be taken to the consular office, that will have the Japanese equivilent drawn up for you (which will set you back about £63, for Her Majesty's Government's coffers).

Well done, you're now married...

This is the best bit though, if you want to settle in the UK with your newfound wife check out these fees (here) 87,750 yen thats over £500 pounds! I mean hell, that's a little steep, don't you think? It can't possibly cost £500 worth of man-hours to process one application, I think we can all rest assured that Her Majesty's government will be enjoying a tidy little bonus on all these VISA applications.

Its not like this is to put people off sham marriages either, they've plenty of checks for this kind of thing (although I do wonder about the "are you a terrorist" bit)

The whole VISA thing is completely farcicle. I probably wouldn't be complaining if I had a decent job, but getting to Japan and back, plus the wedding costs is going to make this a very expensive year as it is.

The worst part is the procedures, though. For Maachan to get herself a VISA there is a pile of supporting documents and whatnot that she'll need. I'm sure the Japanese information is out there, but it seems like its not so easy to find. Whatsmore she doesn't seem to be getting much cooperation from the local authorities in getting hold of the information. Once my exams are over, it'll be my task to go over each chapter of the VISA legislation and figure out exactly what is needed, because the VISA application form notes are simply terrible.

Nabe

2009-03-21T21:49:00.003Z

So, I managed to find some udon noodles in the university's shop (I love that place, so much oriental food!). I also happened to have my special nabe saucepan, so I thought I'll make nabe!

To my amazement, I also managed to find a large, white radish, which is usually used in nabe. It was under the name of "mooli" in Tesco, but I know it as daikon. Nevertheless, that meant I'd be able to make a pretty convincing nabe, at least by my estimation.

Here's what I ended up using:

-1/4 of a mooli
-1/4 of a romaine lettuce
-handful of beansprouts
-2 carrots
-4 slices of bacon
-1 pack of udon
-a small pack of tofu

I figure thats about enough for 2 people, but I didn't have lunch, so I was particularly hungry. Although, you might want to consider adding a pack of udon.

So, here's pretty much how it went:

-I peeled the mooli and cut a few slices about 3/4 of a cm thick, and I peeled and cut 2 carrots, not into slices, but into wedges, because I like it to be thick, but find wedges easier to pick up*. Once cut, these all went into half a pan of water and put on full heat while I prepared everything else (I find it best to put these in first because they take a long while to cook).

-next, I chucked a few slices of bacon in (I should point out that proper pork is a better meat to use if you can cut it thin enough, but I'm too lazy for that, especially since I'm just cooking for myself)

-while all of that bubbled away, I cut some tofu into 8, approximately 1cm, blocks and chucked it into the pot along with some beansprouts

-at this point, I cut up some mushrooms. You can cut them up quite thick and chuck them in straight away, or cut them thin and add them a few minutes before serving *2.

-it was going to be a little while until the mooli were soft enough, so I used this time to make the sauce. I pretty much improvised here, as I don't know the actual recipe, but for a refreshingly sour sauce I added soy sauce, vinegar and lemon juice together.The main constituant was soy sauce, and there was probably about equal amounts of vinegar and lemon juice. The sauce shouldn't taste overly lemony, vinegary or too much of soy sauce. The best thing to do is just make it and see how it tastes. It will be pretty strong, and might even necessitate diluting somewhat, depending on how you like it.

-OK, with the sauce done and the mooli now soft enough to skewer with a chopstick with little resistance, I chopped some romain lettuce into quarters. I took just one of these quarters and cut it in half lengthwise before dumping it together with the udon noodles in the pan. You can add a tablespoonful or so of the sauce to the pan too.

-from putting in the udon and lettuce, I waited about 3-4 minutes before taking the pan off the heat.

-So far as serving up goes, I just placed the pan on a heat-resistant placemat. Then, with sauce in a seperate bowl, transfered food from the pan into the bowl, and ate from that.

Mmmm. Lovely. Another note, when you have eaten everything, and only water remains in the pan, you can add that water to the sauce-filled bowl you've just eaten from and then drink it. Dunno if that's everyone's cup of tea, but I think its a great way to finish off the meal, as well as making sure you don't waste a scrap.

*Back when I was in Japan, my fiancée somehow managed to cut a piece of carrot so it ended up almost perfectly round. Don't ask how the hell she did it, but it was a real b***h to pick up with chopsticks

*2) My fiancée told me afterwards that it was a little strange to use mushrooms at all, but I think they taste good, and there are a number of versions of nabe that use mushrooms

Travel Journal

2009-03-17T23:29:00.000Z

So, here is my travel journal, it's a bit of a read, but there's plenty of nuggets of Japanese culture in there.

Enjoy!

Travel Journal - My year in Japan

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First post

2009-03-17T23:15:00.001Z

I've long kept a blog in Japanese (here: ブログ) but I've not had much reason to blog in English of late.

I expect to use this blog mostly to discuss Japanese language and culture, and my other passions, science and photography. The latter of those three being the only thing I really talk about in my Japanese blog.

I'll also throw in information that I've found useful from time to time, but for the most part, I'll keep to the above themes.

To start off, I've got a Travel Journal from my time in Japan which I want to share, because it's a shame to have it lay around unread, so I'll spend the next 30 mins (hopefully) posting that here.