When I first purchased an imported music CD, a security sticker affixed to the CD case annoyed me a lot. It was firmly stuck to the case with such ridiculously strong adhesive that a part of it didn't come off. I had never seen the bullshit until then.
In Japan, record stores didn't adopt such a security measure. Instead, only some gigantic ones, such as Tower Records and HMV, put in each CD in a hard plastic case with a sort of microchip built in to it. No stickers.
But, even with the unremovable substance, imported discs were fascinating. Because they were about 1,000 yen cheaper than their domestic counterparts.
Whenever a music CD of a foreign artist was released in Japan, it would usually come with at least one bonus track, translated lyrics, and a biography written in Japanese. To me, however, they didn't make up the 1,000 yen. That was because what I would expect from western songs was not their lyrics, but mostly, their melodies and styles. Also, most bonus tracks were shitty. They were ones which their creators had decided not to record on albums. The biography was not worth 1,000 yen either.
Just a few days ago, I started reading a Japanese detective comic series named Case Closed, originally titled 名探偵コナン (Mei-Tantei Konan), or Great Detective Conan. It is an extremely long-running manga series which has staggering 98 volumes as of June, 2020. I remember its first episode was released on a Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine about 25 years ago when I was a junior high-school student. Its TV series started 2 years later and has been still going on too.
The main protagonist is a high-school student who is obsessed with mystery novels and deduction. He himself is a renowned private detective who cracks tough cases in cooperation with a local police department. One day, he gets caught witnessing a crime scene and is knocked cold by a member of a crime syndicate who proceeds to administer a strange medicine to him. As he wakes up, the bad guys are gone, but he finds himself shrunken to a little kid. After the incident, his neighbor, a self-proclaimed inventor, advises him to stay at his classmate's home, whose father is also a private detective, because he may stumble upon members of the syndicate as he helps the father's work.
When I was reading the first volume of the series, I noticed that some character names had been westernized through translation. For example, The main protagonist, Shinichi Kudo, is named Jimmy Kudo in the English version. His classmate Ran Mohri and her father, Kogoro Mohri, are Rachel Moore and Richard Moore respectively.
This alteration of names has generated some contradictions in the comic's story. There's a scene where Jimmy's neighbor Dr. Agasa tells him not to reveal his true identity to anyone because if he did, the crime organization would send agents to search for him and people around him could be in great danger. Shortly after that, Rachel shows up and ask Jimmy's name. He gets stuck for an answer for a moment but manages to come up with a made-up name "Conan Edogawa". Hearing that, Rachel says, "Conan? What a strange name..."
For sure, it sounds strange for a Japanese name... But So does yours (originally Ran Mohri, but Rachel Moore in the English version)!
And then Dr. Agasa takes him one side and whispers to Jimmy, "What kind of a name is Conan!? You're not some foreigner..."
OK... Now that you mention it, Jimmy sounds very Japanese...
Not sure if there is demand for this tidbit, but I think Sega's bran-new promotional character セガハタンシロー (Segahatanshiro) was named after a Japanese phrase "セガ破綻しろ", which means "Sega, go bankrupt."
破綻する (hatansuru) is a Japanese verb meaning "to go bankrupt", and its imperative is 破綻しろ (hatanshiro). Imperative is a form of verbs used when you express an order. So 破綻しろ means "Go bankrupt."
Also, Seghatanshiro's role in Sega's recent commercial is a sort of villain. So it's little wonder that his name sounds hostile against the video game company.
Here in this video, he shouts "セガハタンシロー！" over and over again.
A few days ago, during my live stream, I obtained a two-hand sword named Vorpal Sword in the Steam version of Romancing SaGa 2, a remake of JRPG. My first meeting with the weapon was about 25 years ago when I was playing its Super Famicom version. Until this day, however, I'd never wondered what the adjective "vorpal" means. So, for the first time in my SaGa history, I looked up the word in dictionaries.
Unfortunately, none of them gave me an answer. Then one of my viewers told me that the first appearance of the word was in a novel called Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.
He took his vorpal sword in hand,
longtime the manxsome foe he sought
So rested he by the Tum-Tum Tree
And stood awhile in thought.
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
The viewer also said the sword appears in Dungeons and Dragons as a weapon with a chance to decapitate an enemy.
Actually, Vorpal Sword in Romancing SaGa 2 has a unique sword technique which always critically hits against humans and sometimes kill them instantly.
I guess Akitoshi Kawazu, the producer of the SaGa series, got inspiration for the weapon from D&D. It is well-known among SaGa fans that he would import American board games and play them with his friends in his formative years.
Later, I learned that there were swords with the same name in some Final Fantasy games. I also found out that the swords are called シャープソード (Sharp Sword) in their Japanese version. What a shitty generic name!
Do you know royal milk tea? It's a type of milk tea popular in Japan. You first infuse 3 teaspoonful of tea leaves with a cup of hot water in a milk pan, second add a cup of milk to the infusion, and finally heat them together until they nearly boil. I always use Earl Grey for milk tea but the choice of tea leaves depends on your taste. Because the ratio for milk is relatively higher than typical milk tea, it has a rich creamy taste, and that's why I love the tea.
I always thought the cooking method had been invented by somebody working in the kitchen of Buckingham Palace. Because why else would the name include the word "royal"? And I knew British people loved tea.
But I was totally wrong. I found out yesterday that the name was coined by Lipton, a Japanese tea company when they released a product called Royal Milk Tea under their brand of "Royal" in 1960s. Later the term became a synonym of milk tea made with the method mentioned above. I have no clue why they used the adjective for their brand name, but at least, now I've learned royal milk tea is a Japanese-English term and it has nothing to do with the British royal family.
My father fell ill and got hospitalized in November. He returned home the other day, but since then, he has been bedridden and becoming less and less responsive. Sometimes I even wonder if he can recognize me. Our doctor told us on the day of discharge he would not be as healthy as before. But my mother and I couldn't give up hope for his recovery.
On 20 December, he became ill again. He survived. But our visiting nurse hinted that he would not last long. This time my mother and I decided that we would not ask for active treatments anymore. We believed it would be a torture for him to be forced to stay alive.
It was frightening to imagine that somebody else would make a decision on my life while I was not even aware of that.
That was the toughest decision I'd ever made in my life.
