Subscription and Contact Function Up at Gaijinhan.com

I’ve managed to set up subscription and contact pages at my new domain. To my 138 followers, if you’d still like to follow me, please proceed to gaijinhan.com to subscribe. To my non-followers, please subscribe too.

 

PLEASE FOLLOW ME!

PLEASE!

Gaijinhan Goes Independent!

I’ve moved to gaijinhan.com!

As that is a self-hosted site, I’m still figuring out some of the features so you won’t be able to subscribe to the new address nor use the contact form for the time being. But the good news is, I’ll try to post something everyday so you can just start checking the site on a daily basis without waiting for the feed. As for the contact form, you can temporarily use this site if required or simply post a comment in the new one.

And to get things going, a new post is already up on the new blog address!

See you there!

Death Note Drama – An Update

After 9 episodes of NTV’s version of one of the best manga stories ever, I can only say, the drama sucks big time.

First, I was wrong about the casting. L wasn’t as bad as I had thought he was when I eventually got used to it but Kubota as Light was a bad choice. He looks awkward when he does the evil laughter. Instead of a genius going up intellectually against L, he looks like a man you usually see in straight jackets.

But the main problem lies in the story.

Light being Misa Misa’s fan aside, in the latest episode, L confronted Light without solid evidence. He called Light out one night and tried to make him confess by pretending to attempt to kill him with the fake Death Note that he got Watari to create. Light got desperate and fought L. With his un-L-like stupid choice of streaming their initial exchange live to the secret headquarters, Mikami, who happened to be raiding the quarters saw L’s name with his traded grim reaper eyes and texted Light L’s name. This is the only version of the series where L’s name is revealed in the middle of the show. In the original, L’s name was never mentioned. The only way to find out his name was if you read the additional volume 13. So Light tries to kill L and upon writing L’s real name in the fake Death Note, Light confesses that he is Kira, but 40 seconds later, L remains alive. When the rest of the crew arrive, L is about to tell them Light is Kira when he actually dies because Mikami decided to write L’s name as well just in case. So no, L was not killed by Rem in this version of the story and Rem didn’t perish.

Next, Mello doesn’t actually exist in this series as a person. What does that mean? In the drama, Mello is the split personality of Near who carries a doll of the original Mello. OMFG! Which idiot came up with that?

If you’re curious about the story, go ahead and watch it. If you’re looking for a good story, I suggest you watch me brush my teeth.

My remaining consolation is Near looks beautiful.

Search Yuki Mio if you’re interested.

Here’s her blog.

To G

Hi,

I’m a 24 year old Singaporean. I came across your blog whilst Googling on ‘working in Japan for a Singaporean’. May I know, why Japan for you, and how is it like for a Singaporean like yourself when you first went to Japan for work? Like how did you settle in etc. Thank you.

Regards,
G

Hi G,
Pardon my compulsion to enumerate things, but that’s how I help myself sort things out and remember things more easily, so I shall respond to your questions accordingly.

1) Why Japan for you?
– I first came into contact with Japan in 1998 when I was 15. At that time, when I met a group of girls from Fukuoka Girls Commercial High and visited them at 20, I fell for Fukuoka and decided I want to live in Japan someday. Five years later, I still haven’t lived in Fukuoka =( To be frank, I’ve considered moving to Spain and Korea as well but we shall see how things go. My reasons for moving to a country has so far been largely motivated by language, although if I were to pick up Thai language again, I probably wouldn’t want to live there. I’ve spent five weeks living in Bangkok some six years ago and decided it’s not a place I want to live in.

2) How is it like for a Singaporean like yourself when you first went to Japan for work? Like how did you settle in etc.
– I started off studying at a language school and only decided to try get work at the very end. After graduating, I requested to put up at a friend’s place while I look for work (and of course paid my share of the rent). At that time, he just moved in to the new place, so there wasn’t Internet connection and I had to go to the nearby comics cafe to use the Internet to send my resume and check emails everyday. When I finally landed myself work after around a month, I got my work visa and started looking for an apartment from a nearby property agent, found the place, moved by myself, got my Internet, electricity, gas, and water set up, and registered my address with the ward office. Work-wise, it doesn’t offer much value to talk about my workplace since it can be very different from place to place. I’m not sure what else you are looking for with “etc.” but if you’ve got more specific questions, go ahead and shoot me another mail.

A Simple History behind Japan-Korea Relations

With 2015 being the 70th year since WWII, there has been a lot of programs talking about the war, and especially since the war has been the reason behind Japan’s strained relations with its neighbors. And when it comes to news, history, economics, and stuff, I always choose to watch Ikegami Akira. He’s like the Noam Chomsky of Japan, except he probably isn’t as well-versed in linguistics.

I had been wondering why Korea has been constantly bugging Japan about the comfort women problem and Japan appears to be unwilling to deal with the issue. It became apparent that 50 years ago, in 1965, Japan and Korea had already signed a pact to settle their dispute from WWII, which made their current relations even more a mystery. But let’s go further back in time for a bit.

Tracing back to the motivation behind Korea’s intention to be friendly with Japan, it appears that was the best option at that time since it was surrounded by communist countries China, North Korea, Mongolia, and USSR. As for Japan, it received pressure from the USA to work with Korea to fight communism.

While Korea has sought compensation from Japan on the war in the past, Japan has refused to do so since they “only colonized them but never actually fought Korea.” However, many people in Japan felt sorry for the sufferings that Korea had to endure, and so Japan offered them USD300 million to aid Korea in their economic growth, another USD200 million loan at low interest, and an additional USD300 million worth of economic support by means of sharing Japan’s technical know-how, etc. It is worthy to note that Japan’s GDP at that time was a mere USD350 million, which means that Japan has offered Korea an amount beyond their GDP. It was an amount Korea had required because when Korea broke up, North Korea was mostly industrialized while South Korea consisted mainly of farms. So with Japan’s financial support, South Korea’s economy soared past that of its counterpart.

Back to the agreement signed in 1965, it appears that the document explicitly states that the signing of the agreement marks the end of the dispute and neither party is to raise issues about the war again.

Now you’re confused too, eh?

It appears that the comfort women issue only came to light after the agreement was signed, which means that the agreement did not include the comfort women problem. However, to both governments, the issue has been resolved and never to be brought up again. Fortunately or unfortunately, South Korea is one of the nations to have a constitutional court where its citizens can sue the government for any disputes against the constitution, so the former comfort women sued the constitution for violation of human rights in 2006 resulting in the Korean government having to bug Japan for an apology starting 2011 when the case was finalized.

Then-Korean President Lee Myung-bak then raised the issue with then-Japan PM Noda Yoshihiko. But Japan declined to deal with the matter anymore because of the agreement signed in 1965. Being unable to have the issue settled, Lee lost face and decided to take a trip to Liancourt Rocks (Takeshima in Japanese; Dokdo in Korean) in 2012, and the comfort women issue became a territorial issue.

With the comfort women issue remaining unsettled, current Korean President Park Geun-hye has to deal with it. But all is fine for the Korean government because as long as they continue bugging Japan to show that they are “doing something about it,” they will not be charged for violating human rights. They can simply say, Japan refuses to do their part.

Meanwhile, back in 2002, the Japanese people who felt sorry for the former comfort women decided to use the Asian Women’s Fund, which was a fund from the general public to compensate the Korean women who suffered. Each of the former comfort woman was compensated approximately USD20,000 accompanied with a letter of apology from then-PM Koizumi Junichiro in 2002. The comfort women turned the money down, and Japan decided to raise the amount to USD30,000. While some of the comfort women then accepted the money, several others refused to accept it claiming that the money isn’t from the government and that the apology is not official.

These issues continue to this day, but as two of the bigger players of Asia’s economy, we sure hope that they can be resolved peacefully someday soon.

Secrets to the Punctual Japanese Buses

Have you ever wondered how and why the buses in Japan are more often than not, unfathomably punctual? If you think about it, it makes very little sense for a bus system to be so strict about time to be punctual. I know that seems to be a semantically null sentence, but hear me out.

Japanese buses are so strict about time, that even if they arrive at a bus stop early, they will not leave until the scheduled time; even if there were no one at the bus stop, just so people who planned to take the bus at that time don’t miss it. And if you never leave a stop early, the likelihood of you constantly arriving at every bus stop on time decreases, right?

Never mind if that didn’t make sense.

If you’ve taken enough Japanese buses along busy roads, you may have noticed that these buses seem to be really lucky to hardly be caught by the red light. This is because, there are sensors at the front of buses and infrared beacons near traffic junctions where congestion is likely to happen such that whenever a bus nears a traffic light, signals are sent to a control center to prioritize traffic flow in the direction the bus is traveling by shortening red light time and/or extending green light time. This way, it gives people more reason take public transport since it supposedly has a smoother traffic flow although fewer than 10 percent of the population actually knew about this.

Device that sends bus’ location information to control center

Bus’ location information is sent to infrared beacon

Infrared beacon sends data to control center

Control center extends green light time/reduces red light time

So, technically speaking, while most people dislike driving behind buses (or large vehicles in general), it makes more sense to drive behind them knowing that they get priority green light. Needless to say (and I’m saying it anyway), do not drive behind them during restricted hours. If you do, they also have a sensor that detects your vehicle which will then display a warning sign on the panel at the back of the bus.

Amazing technology, eh?

Maybe Singapore can implement this to promote public transport usage.

4D Pornography – Attack on Tit

Sounds like it’s gonna be a bouncy and milky experience.

Do You Cook?

A Spaniard, Tao, who has been living in Tokyo for 10 years now contacted me recently about an open teaching position for a cooking class.

Tao organizes cooking lessons by foreigners living in Tokyo. Each teacher teaches their country’s cuisine to Japanese people and it seems that some students have requested a Singaporean cooking class, which is why Tao is now looking for a Singaporean who loves cooking and would like to teach it in a casual setting.

According to Tao, the classes are paid pretty well and classes are fun, so for someone who loves cooking, it’s a great place to share your passion. If you’re interested, just leave your comments in this post, and hopefully Tao returns and sees them. Or if I suddenly feel angelic enough, I might take the time to respond to Tao’s mail about your interest.

Although it’s not explicitly stated, I believe you must be good at cooking as well. Please don’t turn up at the class saying “I love cooking!” and burn an egg.

I’m in Tokyo, UAE

It’s actually cooling to have my air-conditioner set at this temperature.

Death Note Drama

Death Note’s drama version started airing a couple of weeks ago, and as you can see, this is the best casting of Yagami Light so far. As for L, it’s a little 微妙 acting skills wise. Matsuyama Kenichi did a better job, I feel. Casting for Light’s father is shit. He looks nothing like the original comic version and holds less than half the magnitude he should have. That might be because I only saw him in Solitary Gourmet which is a very different character from what Yagami Soichiro should be.

No, that’s not it. Yagami Soichiro is not so skinny.

I first came into contact with Death Note when I watched the movie version back when I was in university. I loved it and watched the anime, and found out that the story ends differently and even better than the movie. That made me love it even more. Then, I bought the comics and read it through. Then I had thought about catching the musical but didn’t do it in the end. Now, the drama is out, I’ve been following the past 2 episodes. This is about the only story that I can watch again and again and followed every spin-off so far except for the musical, which I intend to catch if the chance comes.

Due to the nature of Japanese dramas being really short, the story proceeds very quickly in this new take on the story, which is perfectly fine for me. When I heard that the story is a little different from the original, it bothered me a little but not too much. I was keen to see how it has been changed and if it did as good as the movie version.

But I soon realised my dislike for the altered storyline. Apparently, the writer decides to make Light a fan of Misa-Misa right from the start and tries to save her. WHY!? JAPANESE PEOPLE!?

Having said that, I’m still going to try following the series till the end. Let’s hope it will be salvaged somewhere, somehow. If not, we can always remember that this drama version has a better Yagami Light than the movie. That’s it.