I Confess I Had Lived My Master Years

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I think I don’t need to tell you that if you’re enjoying something, the time will flash by like the wind. Well, it’s true. It feels like just yesterday that I attending the entrance ceremony for my masters course, taking pictures in front of fountain in sakura namiki (the fountain had already gone now), and being anxious about what lies ahead in two-year time; and suddenly, graduation day had passed.

Well, I won’t write much here, and if I’m to sum up all the things that happened these past two years, the words is fun, and a lot more fun. Of course some troubles also got in the way, but with those around me who have special knack to lift me up when I’m feeling down, and also those who’re far but keep on sending me their prayers, there’s only fine memories that come up anytime I recall those days.

I’m glad that God had let me live my master years to the fullest, even beyond what I had expected before; and now as I enter a new chapter of my life, I hope there’re still plenty of blesses that I would find along my endeavor...

Because Gossip Travels Twice the Speed of Light...

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I was so busy in these past few weeks to prepare my master defense that I didn’t contact my friends from Hippo at all (the last time I met some of them was when I had new year party at my home-stay family’s place). Finally most of the works were done, and I casually sent mail to Akki (one of Hippo members) to say hi and tell her that I’ve done with my presentation. The mail developed into short chat (she wondered whether I was fine after hiking at mount Ooyama in January because the other members of hiking caught cold after returning) when she asked whether I fancied to have dinner at her place the following Sunday. Akki is a good chef and she likes experimenting with new dishes, so I didn’t waste much time to say yes, and my schedule for that day was fixed.

I was planning to call Pecolin (my home-stay mother) to tell her about the news too, but it seemed that I didn’t need to worry because she soon had heard about it.

“Congratulation!”, she said on the phone, and I quickly guessed that it was about my master defense. I was thinking that I needed to thank Akki for spreading the news (thus I didn’t need to bother to let everybody knew one by one and consequently saved my telephone bill :-) ), when Pecolin continued, “I’m glad that you will continue your doctoral course here.”

Doctoral course? Wait a sec, it seemed that something’s misplaced here. I quickly recalled whether I ever mentioned about doctoral course to Akki, and I’m sure I didn’t: so either my ear played trick on me, or the news that I told Akki was a little bit ‘modified’ :-) (By who, I didn’t know).

I quickly explained to Pecolin that I had passed my master thesis defense, but still didn’t know whether I will continue my doctoral course here or not (I even had not taken the entrance examination that time!). And even though I didn’t mind at all about the ‘customized’ news, I get a bit curious on who’s the one that ‘translated’ my news incorrectly. I was thinking to start the ‘investigation’ by calling Akki, but then I thought asking her at the dinner would be better (and would save my telephone bill again :-) ).

So, Sunday night came, and another surprise was waiting for me. When I get to Akki place, it was not only her, but Tomo-chan also there to help her prepared the dishes. Akki said that there would be some more to come, and therefore I asked whether there’s a special occasion that a lot of people would come to celebrate. And she playfully replied: “Well, I forgot to mention that tonight we will have a little party to celebrate your finishing of master’s defense!”

Well, I’m fine with that little secret, however, it reminded me about the gossip that had already spread so I asked Akki what did she told the others. What she said was a carbon copy of what I had told her (without the doctoral course part) so I thought the problem should be on the other ‘chain of communication’. And while waiting for the next ‘suspects’ to come, I helped them preparing the dishes.

Not long Yoshimi-san came with flower for me and congratulated me for finishing my master (well, she’s got it right, so she’s also free from all charges :-) ). Then along came Fujiko-san, who without much ado quickly congratulated me for finishing the test for doctoral course (well, now we know where the news changed... :-) ).

Anyway, like I had mentioned before, I didn’t mind at all about the ‘misinterpretation’. Fujiko-san didn’t mean to change the news, and by thinking that I had already passed my doctoral course test, it meant that she was wishing that I pass the test (and of course I’m glad to know that).

We had a good party that night, and Yoshimi-san even said that they will throw another party if I already settle with my doctoral course. When I asked what will happen in case I won’t continue my doctoral course here, she simply said: “We still can have a farewell party for you”.

Cool. Whatever waits ahead, there will still be a party to look forward to... :-)

Bizarre Love Triangle, Oops Rectangle

(Picture from: http://drawings.love.ecards.free.fr/)
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Everything started one week ago. Carmela wanted to buy a digital camera so she asked me to show her the way around in Akihabara (electronic centre in Tokyo). Because two other friends of mine also wanted to go there for computer shopping, we then went in group.

On the way, we talk about all kind of things. I forget how did the conversation flowed, but finally Carmela asked me whether Makii (one of my lab members) has already had boyfriend or not. She was asking that because she wanted to do a matchmaking of her with one of her friends. And my reply at that time was more or less sounded like this: “You shouldn’t matchmake her with anyone because I like her too” :-).
(That was intended to be a joke. Makii is cute and funny, and I think I like her, but Yanagita once told me that she has already had boyfriend so the option is off).

I thought that the conversation would soon pass and would cause no problem at all, but I was wrong. The problem occurred on the following Thursday, the day of the thesis defense for bachelor students. Tan-san, who actually wanted badly to go back to China (he was going to get married soon), postponed his departure because our professor asked him to help Makii preparing her presentation (they have similar research theme). And after her presentation, to express her gratitude, Makii walked Tan-san to the building door (Tan-san went directly to the airport after the presentation). Carmela saw them going, and she asked Yanagita where they went.

“Tan-san is going back to China to get married”

And Carmela reaction was: “They are going to get married in China? Won’t Awan get upset about that?”

And, as predicted, the rumor spread widely even beyond my lab (so far I know that Saito and Konishi had heard that too, and even my professor knows, too). And because Carmela also moved her desk away from my side to a quite far place (she did this because in the new place she can watch movie in her computer with less disturbance :-) ), additional rumor said that she moved her place because she was angry to hear I like Makii :-).

Anyway, since all members of my lab seem not to take this rumor seriously (even Makii laughed when I told her about it), I think I don’t need to worry too much (honestly, I’m easily get worried about something like this). But at least if one day you ever hear about all of this, you know how this all started up...

(Perhaps I’m not recalling some of the details described above correctly, but more or less that’s how the story was flowing...)

To Educatedly Say “Your Eyes are Beautiful” to Japanese Girl

I was planning to use Mouri Ran (毛利蘭) picture from Detective Conan (名探偵コナン), however it is hard to find her picture from net. Thus, I used Kamiya Kaoru (神谷かおる) from Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに検心) here...
(Picture from: http://sobakasu.free.fr/)

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If you’re not a native English speaker, I think you’ve ever been in a point on your English learning when you find that definite and indefinite articles (‘the’ and ‘a’) are extremely hard to comprehend, that it makes you think that unless you were reborn as a native, you will never understand them (honestly, sometimes I still feel so :-) ). Or, if you ever happen to learn German, you’ll know that its definite articles not only change according to gender, but also to the noun role in a sentence (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), and that they could fill up your nightmares, specially before your German test :-). Well, every language has their difficult part, and when I was happy to find that there is no such articles in Japanese when I started to learn it, I should’ve known that the ‘phantasm’ that would haunt me through the rest of my life like the crawling creature in “The Ring” had yet to come (Okay, I’m exaggerating here... :-) ).

Well, those ‘horrors’ finally came to me, and they are called particles. They are short, most of them are only expressed by a single kana, but they play an important role in Japanese. Using the wrong particle in a particular sentence doesn’t make the sentences wrong sometimes; but worse, it makes the sentence convey a message totally different from what you intent to say. I give the example below. (I got this from Makii. We keep a shared diary where I write in Japanese and she write in English, and then we check each other’s entries and write our correction there. I made so many mistakes related to the particles that now the diary is full of particles usage explanations from Makii. The good point is, I think our diary is qualified enough now to be used as a Japanese Particles Guidebook :-) )

Here's the example:

Let’s say that you met a Japanese girl with shining eyes, and you’d go to the center of the universe just to say that out loud (世界の中心で、「your eyes are beautiful!｣を叫ぶ <-- if you know the movie you’ll understand this :-) ). Anyway, you want to look cool while doing it, and you think by saying it in Japanese will do the trick. So you type the sentence in your favorite automatic English-Japanese translator and whisper the sentence that the translator gives you to the girl...

Well, at this point, I could only hope that either the girl realizes that you’re not native Japanese, or she has a good sense of humor to think that you were just joking when saying it. Most of automatic translators would translate the sentence into ｢あなたの目は美しいです｣ (Anata no me wa utsukushii desu), or if you want it in a more colloquial way: ｢目は可愛いです｣ (Me wa kawaii desu) --> your eyes are cute. (In fact, I tried 3 translators and all of them gave me the same results). The sentences are grammatically correct, but the girl will reckon you saying that only her eyes are beautiful (and other parts are not). The grammatically and ‘spiritually’ correct translation would be ｢あなたの目が美しいです｣ (Anata no me ga utsukushii desu) or ｢目が可愛いです｣ (Me ga kawaii desu). You can see that the differences are only in wa (は) and ga (が), and these are the horrors, oops, the particles that I mean.

The problem will also arise if you want to say “You look great today!”. You shouldn’t say ｢今日君は素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!), but ｢今日君が素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!). Actually, there’s another particle for this that will give a better effect on what you intent to say: mo (も). If you say ｢今日君も素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!), it would translate as “You also look great today! (as great as usual)”.

To sum up, here’s the list of “you look great today!” translation:
｢今日君も素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!) (highly recommended!)
｢今日君が素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!) (okay)
｢今日君は素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!) (never ever say this unless you really really know what you're saying).

Well, either way, I hope the girl understood what you really wanted to say... (even if what you actually want to say was "you (only) look great today!" :-) )

The Second Sheet

I tried to find a picture of kabuki, but unfortunately I don't have it. This is the closest thing to kabuki that I ever took picture of, therefore I use this instead...
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Last week there was a thesis defense for doctor candidates in my department and, as usual, it was followed by party in the evening. I won’t tell how it all began (since it’ll claim too much space here), but after some chat, Carmela, UNESCO fellow who currently stay in our lab, said to Saito (Saito belongs to another lab) that she was lucky to had landed in a lab with handsome members like ours (ahem... :-) ). This reminded me to one of my earliest question for Japanese (and I almost always forget to ask about it): Why there’s no native word for handsome in Japanese (they use ハンサム, hansamu, which was adapted from English word handsome), while there’s a native word for beautiful (綺麗, kirei). And as you might well guess it, I wasted no time to ask about it.

To my surprise, all Japanese that surrounded me that night said that there’s indeed a native word for handsome. The problem is that just I never heard about it before. The word with the closest meaning to handsome that I often hear is 格好いい(kakkou ii), which more or less means cool (I hear this word a lot because a lot of people say that I’m kakkou ii :-). And before you send me any objection mail, there’re indeed some people who say that I’m kakkou ii, and most of them are kids :-). Anyway, you know that kids are still pure and won’t tell a lie... :-). Well, to this point I think I have made most of you throw up so I better carry on with the story...). Back to the main topic, the word that they meant was nimaime (二枚目). I rushed for my dictionary after I hear the word, since I get an impression that my ears played trick on me. Nimaime literally means ‘the second sheet’, and even with my absurdly entangled way of thinking I couldn’t see any connection between handsomeness and sheet. Konishi and Makii was about to tell me why, when Kim-san came and they let him explained.

Well, the word originated from practice in kabuki (歌舞伎: Japanese traditional theatrical drama). In the poster for the show, the first picture of the players would display the face of the leading role. For the second picture - I think it was in order to attract some visitors who would come for pretty faces - the picture of the most handsome player in the group will be displayed (here where the term nimaime come from). And if we go to the next picture, we’ll find the most entertaining player in the group.

Just to make sure, we (we?), search the dictionary for the first sheet (一枚目, ichimaime) and the third sheet (三枚目, sanmaime) terms. There was no word for ichimaime, but the entry for sanmaime tells that it stand for the word comedian or clown in English, which fits with the explanation of the word origin above.

By the way, quiz time: if you happen to be in the kabuki group, would you prefer to have your face in the first, second, or third sheet?

The Sloppiest Year of My Life

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I broke my glasses while I was in Vietnam. Actually it got slammed when I was trying to close taxi door, but so far almost nobody could believe it. Yanagita and Makii even accused that it was because I looked so much at Vietnamese girls that the strength of my sight crumped my poor glasses :-) (They said this because Yoshizawa-san, who was in Vietnam with me, said that I was taking some girls into my hotel room. Two girls indeed visited me, but they were my friend’s sister and her friend, and we did nothing fishy, unless they teaching me how to say ‘I love you’ in Viet could be categorized into one :-) ). Anyway, despite all ‘allegations’, without being asked Yanagita escorted me to an optic so I could make a new pair.

But back to the broken glasses, after giving a second thought, it might hard to believe that someone could be so careless to get his glasses slammed by a taxi door. However, I’d been careless in lots of occasions last year and looking back to all that had happened makes crushing my pity little glasses won’t look even close to an accident at all.

Well, my friends who know me well must’ve learned that I’m reckless by nature, but particularly for important thing, few would see me as a careless person. Even some of my friends feel save when they have me in the room while doing experiment, because sometimes I warn them if there’re something misplaced that could lead to danger (I don’t know whether they will still feel safe if they know how I had been last year :-) ). I should still be grateful that none of my recklessness led to any catastrophe; I was still able to deliver report on time and my research went close to as planned. However, I did most of the works on the last hours of deadline, which was not a good practice at all. And what happened last year was not just that.

To add up to the list: I showed up late in several party where I’ve been invited; rose late at the day of mount Fuji hiking (glad I was still able to catch the train); and forgot that I had already promised to see Star Wars 3 with Yanagita (we finally moved it to another day). Well, if I sometimes put off my works ‘till the last moment, it’s not big issue. Procrastination is nothing new for me; I sometimes exhibit that kind of habit when I get bored, and the things that I need to do is just getting new air and everything will come back normal soon. But if I forget to watch Star Wars, and that didn't happen only for once or twice, there must be a problem.

Anyway, it all had passed, and I won’t blame anything or anybody for what happened last year; it was all from me and it is me who has to do something about it (I even need to say thanks to those around me who supporting me the whole year thru’). I think it’ll be a good resolution for this new year: ‘To make last year the sloppiest year of my life’ (i.e. ‘To make the years to come far better than last year...’). All I need to do now is to find a way to make it come true, and I hope I’ll find it.

By the way, happy new year, and I hope your year will last as you wish it to be, just like I wish mine will too.

What You Can See When You Sit on Water Closet

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I was invited to the year end party at Ali and Kiki’s, and not long after arriving, Tita, who was also invited, told me that Kiki using her picture to decorate the toilet (?). I went there instantly, and found the wall inside being covered with lots of pictures (I also found my picture there). While Tita protesting to Kiki (not because her picture was there, but because “it won’t come out” for she’s too busy to look at all the picture while she’s inside :-) ), I think I could understand why Kiki doing that.

Even though I do “the thing that we do in toilet” fairly fast (I will call it “you know what” in the rest of this writing :-) ), my sister takes time to do it. That’s why she often brings book(s) with her inside the toilet, to kill time. Similar with my sister, Kiki decorated her toiler to help her spending the time required to do “you know what” (I also found some books there to support this 'hypothesis'). Since it seems that Tita used to do “you know what” fast, the picture seems to distract her ‘concentration’.

By the way, just curious: do you also decorate your toilet like the way Kiki did? :-)