lingqi's Journal: August 27th, 2003

August 27th, 2003 (5:02pm)

The weather is mean and cruel. It is teasing my heart on purpose, I swear it.

Anyway - I really want to go and do some stargazing tonight, but it was forecasted to be cloudy today.

However, this huge patch of clouds have been lingering over Korea for the past few hours, and if it keeps lingering at about the same speed (or, slow down just a bit), I can catch about an hour of time with relatively clear skies.

But then, I can't be sure at all...

It's times like this that I want to get on a glider and look at the stars (and mars, probably) above the darn clouds...

I done some cloth shopping the past weekend and noticed that it is absolutely impossible to find japanese clothing with japanese characters on them. Almost everything you find in the department stores are "taste of american style," or "apperals from no-name calorado" or something along that lines.

Worse yet, it is all, I mean ALL, english that is sooooo dumb when you read it.

There was a shirt that I considered buying (long-sleeve T-shirt on sale for 580 yen) that has prints that was talking about "... purveors of fine furniture, please explore our website to see what fine taste in furniture we offer ..." and the like. I dropped it like a plague.

The one I am currently wearing says "Welcome to the interview section of World Wide Punk! Here you will find interviews and pictures of punk bands, record labels for [fake ink blot] and other important people ..."

Actually, it looks like they grabbed the text off some website from internet equivalent of Twin Cities, Dakotas (i.e. middle of nowhere) and made shirts out of them.

I guess I shouldn't complain so much, maybe - shirts with japanese characters seem to be gaining popularity in the states, and I can only imagine the silly stuff they say...

Ok, gotta run to catch a date with mars.

p.s. have been deathly busy; so updates are not as frequent... This will soon change, hopefully.

Takeo Kikuchi

[FluxCapacitator]

Why not pop down to a store that sells Takeo Kikuchi casual Ts? Japanese characters and traditional japanese imagery seems to the in thing at that clothing company for the summer, well the last time I checked anyway. But prices can be a bit on the high side :(

Sometimes I really wonder if the Japanese actually realise what the english words on their T-shirts really mean. I saw this one girl with the phrase: "Fresh Pussy". Of course, maybe she knew exactly what it meant!

Re:Takeo Kikuchi

[lingqi]

because... I am pretty cheap when it comes to clothing. I bet Takeo Kikuchi does not sell shirts for 580 yen. =). It most definitely places restraint on one's available selection of shops from which to buy clothes.

at least you can buy clothes in japan.

[molo]

At least you can buy clothes in Japan. When I went to japan, they didn't have anything in my size. Shirts? Nope. Pants? too short. Shoes? no way.

Its likewise for my wife's cousins from Japan though. They have to find the smallest sizes when they come here and want to look at clothes.

The funny part was that my wife went nuts buying clothes and shoes in Japan.. everything actually fit her. We came back with 2x as many clothes for her as we went with.

-molo

Re:at least you can buy clothes in japan.

[FluxCapacitator]

But you know, no matter where in the world a woman shops she will always find something to buy :) and unfortunately probably at our wallet's expense!

Re:at least you can buy clothes in japan.

[FluxCapacitator]

Yes, you can buy Aubade here.

Stupid English / Stupid Japanese

[Caoch93]

While I can't say I know what all the Japanese going around on American t-shirts, especially ones from skate products companies, mean, I have had some of them translated for me, and they're pretty dumb.

Worse, though, are the tattoos. People will get kanji inked on them without any understanding of what something might conotatively think just because of the translation in the tattoo artist's book. I once was told a story of a young woman who had some kanji (I think it was kanji) put on her neck. It was

Bad kanji tattoos

[KNicolson]

I can't find it again, but there was a web site I was a couple of years back with a huge gallery of kanji (and hanzai, or whatever you call Chinese equivalent) that was about 80% disasters.

I remember ones like a four-line text in standard MS Sans Serif, mostly katakana, covering most of the back of the shoulders of the poor victim.

Most of the rest looked like someone saw a few kanji, copied them badly freehand to paper, then handed the paper to the artist - wobbly strokes, imbalanced radicals, missing par

Re:Bad kanji tattoos

[FluxCapacitator]

Of course there is this article [sheik.co.uk]. Be sure to get a third-party translation of what that guy is tattoing on you before hand!

Re:Bad kanji tattoos

[EggDye]

There was an article on Penny Arcade a few weeks ago where one of the cartoonist's girlfriend got a pair of Kanji tattoos.

She had two, one on each leg. One meant music and the other meant affection. I'm not sure if they were meant to mean something together (I feel favorable towards music?).

Unfortunately, they got one of the Kanji wrong. Lucky for them, it is just a missing stroke and not an extra one.

Kind of makes me wonder what people are thinking when they get Kanji tattoos. I personally think that yo