Japan

Only few days more to the end of year 2008! While feeling exciting to welcome the brand new year, why don’t we take a look at what expressions had been voted the buzzwords of the year 2008 in Japan. Recently U-CAN conducted a yearly “new phrase/trendy words” nominations and voted that “Arafo” and “Guu!” are the buzzwords of 2008.

“Arafo,” a Japanese word that stands for “women aged around 40 years”. according to Mainichi news, tv drama “Around Forty” which acted by Yuki Amami, contributed to the popularization of the word “arafo,” received the prize at a ceremony held in Tokyo on Monday.

While “Guu!”, a comedian’s hit line meaning “Good,” is a signature gag of female comedian Harumi Edo, who rocketed to fame this year for the word, which she shouts while making a thumbs-up pose. You can read more about it at the Mainichi news link provided above, while the original news that was written in Japanese can be found here.

I think buzzwords really can reflect what was popular throughout one particular year. I heard about “Around 40” this drama but I never had a chance to watch it. But I will pick it up somewhere in near future. While I think “Guu!” is a cute expressions, perhaps I should learn to say this together with the thumbs up like picture above.

Well, if you interested, this is the link to Japanese 2007 buzzwords and 2005-2006 buzzwords.

What’s the connection between Sasaki Nozomi (佐々木希) and Dekotora? Well this is because she appears in the photos that has dekotora. Pretty straight forward right 😛 ? Well recently I found these interesting photos of Japan popular model Sasaki Nozomi posing in front of Japanese unique decoration truck, so I decided to post it up and share it with you all.

I had been fascinating about Dekotora for some time. It is huge, bling bling and cool (kakkoi!). According to Wikipedia, The Dekotora or Decotora (デコトラ), an abbreviation for “Decoration Truck”, is a kind of loudly decorated truck most commonly found in Japan. Dekotora commonly have neon or ultraviolet lights, extravagant paints, and shiny stainless or golden exterior parts. I’m for sure the truck will get a lot of attention when it was full lit and cruising the street at night.

There are some sites that talks about Dekotora too, more over there is a photographer call Masaru Tatsuki which released a photo book all about the beauty of Dekotora. You can read more about Dekotora at PingMag and Pink Tentacle.

Enough talking. Please enjoy the visual excitement of Dekotora paired with beauty Sasaki Nozomi! 😀

Note: Picture posted are just samples. For introduction purposes only.

One important expect in learning Japanese language is to master the Japanese Kanji. Learning Kanji might be a tough and painful process, but once you learnt it, it can become very useful. To learn Kanji effectively, you have to learn to memorize the character and better if you can learn to write it as well. In the Japanese Level Proficiency Test (JLPT for short), each level has to learn a certain amount of Kanji, the higher the level, the larger the quantity and more difficult too. Well, with the sites and tools that I introduce today, you can learn and test your Kanji level for free.

Renshuu is one recommended Japanese language learning site. Not just Kanji, you can also test your vocabulary as well as grammar. We will focusing on Kanji this time. You can choose either to learn or running through the quizzes. Lessons are separated into different levels and you can choose how you want to learn too. Pretty great site.

Besides that, there are many sites that offer free Kanji learning service too. But among of them, I recommend The Kanji Site, because of its clear and easy to use interface. It’s a good site to learn and exercise your Kanji proficiency at fast speed.

Not only sites, I also found some Kanji PDF resources on Scribd too. Just search JLPT Kanji List, you will have several documents talking about Kanji, for example Kanji list for Level 4, Level 3 and Level 2. You can download the PDF, print it and read it while off the computer. Pretty handy.

Another effective way to learn new words including Kanji is to have a dictionary in hand. However a good dictionary might be costly and it can be heavy and hard to carry around too. So “Kotoba!” will come for the rescue! It actually is a Japanese language dictionary for your iTouch and iPhone. It’s free to download and I downloaded it too. The words database is huge and I think it’s very useful. If you have iTouch or iPhone, I would really recommend to download this app.

Above are the sites and tools to learn and test your Kanji effectively. If you have any other nice suggestions, please drop me a comment and tell me and other readers about it. The JLPT test is just weeks away and I’m becoming nervous! Hope I can handle the paper! 😀

Yesterday I came across this interesting website, introducing the 51 types of characters that you can find in Japanese. The characters is cute and each of them having very distinctive and unique characteristics. I think it’s a very good site to learn Japanese culture through the characters. Characters are available as postcards as well as upcoming posters. Buy them if you like it.

I really like Japan – the food, the urban environment, technologies, conveniency, the designs… everything is designed and created to cater for all needs. In my country here, there are a lot of things are influenced or derived from Japan, but there is top three priority that I really wish to have: Hitokara, Japanese flip phone, and Uniqlo.

Hitokara

Hitokara is derived from the word “Hitori Karaoke”, which means karaoke for one person, or go to karaoke box alone. Sings in a group of friends is fun, but it is much more interesting to sing by myself without anyone. I can sing the song I want to sing without waiting and release my stress and have fun in this little room. I really love this hitokara idea.

Japanese flip phone

Japanese style flip phone is so nice! I really like the rectangular-ish and slim flip phone because it looks stylish and classy. While in Malaysia, I can’t really spot anything like this.

Uniqlo

UNIQLO is Japan’s leading clothing retail chain, and I hope to see them opening a branch in Malaysia! I know I can buy on the net but seriously I hope to see them physically in my country. Uniqlo design rocks.

Picture credit: Kanshin | NTT Docomo | TokyoFashion’s Flickr

Normally I will surf Japanese sites to get information. But I have a problem here: those sites contains a lot of words that I can’t figure it out what it means (thanks to my low level of Japanese language knowledge). But with the help of Polarcloud’s Rikaichan, I am now able to learn new words and understand what the word means! 😀

Rikaichan is a great Firefox extension that can help users to learn new Japanese words. Just click on this link or this to download the extension. Then you have to download one of the Japanese dictionary shown in picture below. Download them and restart browser to activate them.

Well now in your browser’s Tools menu, it should have “Rikaichan” and “Rikaichan Lookupbar” there. Well there is a quick “Rikaichan” link at right click menu too. To use it, just simply activate it by selecting “Rikaichan” and then rollover on the Japanese words. A popup explanation appears below the word you rollover. The closest meaning will normally appears at the top position. To deactivate Rikaichan, just select Rikaichan again at the Tools menu or right click menu.

For more detail explanation, you can use Rikaichan Lookupbar. When pasting text into the toolbar, it will popup the word’s explanation as well as individual kanji (Chinese character) break down, like in picture below. I think it’s a great way to learn kanji. Plus, you can also refer this page to learn how to use Rikaichan.

Overall, I think Rikaichan is a great tool to learn new Japanese words, and I’m really recommend this tool to all Japanese learners.

It’s been a while a movie that can make me become so excited. Last week, I watched a Japan 2007 hit movie called “Crows ZERO“. Crows ZERO is a film based on the comic book Crows by Hiroshi Takahashi, and was directed by Takashi Miike. The story involves around a bunch of bad students in a graffiti-scribbled bad high school. This movie was dominated by the high school bad boy image and there are many fight scenes too. I watched many bad high school student related shows but I never see to a such extreme. It’s a cool movie!

The story is about the Genji Takaya, a character played by Oguri Shun, who transferred to Suzuran High School who aims to conquer Suzuran in order to takeover his father who is a leader of a big Yakuza group. But to be rule in Suzuran is no easy job. He has to face the biggest rival, Serizawa Tamao who acted by Yamada Takayuki. The climax of the movie is the final war between Genji and Serizawa, in order to determine who is the top of Suzuran.

Actually huge group fighting is no fresh stuff in movie as you can see many movie have huge fighting scene too. But in this movie, the fight is between bad high school students and the fighting scene was chaotic! However it was really fun to watch the fighting because they are using raw punches and kicks, and kind of last man standing style of fighting. The fighting scenes were well choreographed in my opinion.

Another interesting point of this movie is their wearing style. Basically it’s all black high school uniforms or gakuran. i always thought that jap hish school uniforms are cool so everyone is just looks cool with gakuran in there, plus with nicely combed hair style. It has similar feeling to The Matrix where everyone was dressed nicely and has a pair of cool looking sunglasses. Well recently I sense that the high school bad boy image is in trend? Because not only this movie, a recent drama ROOKIES also having the bad boys as well. Actually some actors in Crows ZERO also stars in ROOKIES too.

This movie was dominated by males, and actresses lead by Kuroki Meisa are having very less exposure in the movie! However the pretty and sweet Kuroki Meisa somehow adds up the flavor to the movie.

Overall the movie was fun, enjoyable and great! Definitely worth to watch, and Oguri Shun was just looks good! So kakkoi! This movie was grossed about 2.5 billion yen and a sequel will be make. Expect the coolness to be continue heating!

It’s been a while again, Hirano Aya is back with the latest sets of pictures! I really love these sets of pictures because she looks cute and pretty as always. Just find the link below and grab the download! 😀

Hirano Aya is a popular seiyuu (voice actress) in Japan, many popular anime characters was getting voice alive by her for example Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Konata Izumi of Lucky Star and many more! Although I’m not into anime world, but I get to know her because of her popularity and influence from friends.

Besides voice acting, Hirano Aya was also an artist and release some singles and albums under her name and anime character name. Besides, she also released some photobooks too. Well, I spotted one of them at a local book store in Kuala Lumpur and almost bought it.

Ok, enough with the story, below is the download link. Enjoy!

Download Bomb.tv – Hirano Aya pictures

Last Saturday, the long awaited annual Bon Odori festival was finally arrived! I’m very excited about this event because it was fun! Bon Odori in Malaysia was celebrated in less associated with Buddhism and more with Japanese culture. This year’s edition was a little different because I was one of the volunteer staff there to distribute fans. I’m so happy that I can contribute my little part to the great event. 😀

The event is so alive and many people attended this event. Everyone is enjoying the event, dancing, eating and getting with friends. I can see many Japanese dressing in traditional wearings and the little kids are cute! Well many Malaysian also wear Yukata too. Well, while duty I also not forgetting bringing my humble camera and shoot some pictures. Overall it is a fun and tired day. What a wonderful experience, and I will have the same passion for next year’s too. Saikou na Ichinichi! 最高な一日!

Tabemono! Many varieties to choose from! But many are quite expensive!

People are getting more! With a mixtures of traditional and modern costumes.

You want a free fan?

Arigatou papa!

Welcome, welcome! We have tasty food serving here!

A pair of kawaii little girls in Yukata.

The event is about to begin! As the performer going up to the center stage.

Crowds of people following how the dancers dancing…

…while other just spectating the center stage. Dancers and drummers are working hard, because it is quite hot that day!

Nante nigiyaka! How lively!