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aahaavis	997769.  Sun May 19, 2013 5:28 pm A little comment to season 8 episode 13: The cast is astonished by how Yamaguchi was able to take a train from Hiroshima to Nagasaki after the bombing. Now, of course he did not take a train from Hiroshima. The train station and rails were completely destroyed. He must have travelled by some other means at least to another city from where he took the train. The odds are also not so slim as one would think. People did travel around in Japan during that time and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two big cities about 300 km apart from each other. Because Hiroshima was destroyed, many people left to get to hospitals in elsewhere. For a person whose hometown was as close as Nagasaki it would seem a good option to go back home if his condition allowed it. This also makes the running of the trains of Japan less weird. People wanted to leave Hiroshima and I would be surprised if there were 0 people from Nagasaki who had been in Hiroshima and survived. So actually I think the odds are pretty good. (and pretty good for the survival and long life of such a person too, because there was probably many of them and altough terrifyingly many people died in both bombings, most people in the two cities did survive accute effects) I also think it very arbitrary to call him 'either the unluckiest or the luckiest person on earth'. How do you measure how unlucky or lucky it was? This idea probably comes from presuming that its very improbable, but even if it were, unprobability doesn't equal fortune/misfortune. Even setting aside that this is all arbitrary, it is more the greatness of what happened that makes something lucky. Of course a sense of improbability has to be there, but I would really call someone who died more unlucky than someone who survived. I would also call someone who wasn't there at all more lucky than someone who was there and got injured and had to see all the sorrow. -- But is luck really the avoidance of trouble and the gaining of earthly things? Maybe what happened changed him and his life for the better. Maybe having gone through it made him stronger and gave him perspective. Maybe he was lucky after all, but this we cannot know.
aahaavis	997772.  Sun May 19, 2013 6:02 pm Troux wrote: There are quite a few very similar sounding words in Japanese. These two are only differentiated by how long you "hold" the vowel sound, but are otherwise pronounced the same. shujin = husband shuujin = prisoner shoojo = girl shojo = virgin girl Some are differentiated by where the inflection list. Oxytonic stress or paraoxytonic stress. I don't know what kind of stress you people want... nihon = Japan nihon = two sticks hashi = chopsticks hashi = bridge (be sure you get this right with your contractor!) There are many exact homonyms too, but usually you can tell the difference from the context. I'm presuming you mean paroxytonic stress. I wouldn't say Japanese has oxytonic or paroxytonic stress. The syllables aren't really stressed with force in the Japanese accent. Instead the accent is done with the pitch. In my experience the Japanese will usually understand you even if you get the accent wrong. Actually many Japanese people I've met haven't realised that there is a difference in the pronounciation, because it comes naturally to them. Your voice will sound a bit weird to them if you pronounce the accent wrong, but rarely will they think you meant a different word just because you mispronounced the accent. It really depends on ones native language if words like shojo and shoojo are hard to tell apart. For me as a native Finnish speaker it is no problem.
fenomas	999375.  Sun May 26, 2013 7:15 am Troux wrote: hashi = chopsticks hashi = bridge (be sure you get this right with your contractor!) I'm afraid you're only scratching the surface here! Depending on which characters are used, "hashi" can mean: chopsticks bridge edge (of a table, a town, etc) beak (of a bird) a kind of stair or ladder a city in Shimane prefecture dear or precious a term for Sessanian Persia (?) The last four are not everyday usage, but note that those are all distinct words with (as far as I know) distinct etymologies. And to make matters worse, although similar words are sometimes distinguished by stress, that's strictly a matter of dialect. For example what's in Troux's quote is correct in Tokyo, but in Osaka it would be the other way around. Confusing eh?
Sadurian Mike	1003749.  Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:27 pm aahaavis wrote: Now, of course he did not take a train from Hiroshima. The train station and rails were completely destroyed. He must have travelled by some other means at least to another city from where he took the train. Not true, I'm afraid. The trains were not only running but used to evacuate the wounded. Not a full service, of course, but there were relief trains running from Hiroshima City by noon, less than four hours after the bomb exploded.
Zebra57	1013539.  Thu Jul 25, 2013 8:57 am China appears to be showing its clear intentions to Japan over the disputed islands. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/25/tensions-flare-again-between-japan-china-over-disputed-islands/
Ian Dunn	1080592.  Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:53 pm Japan has now made it law that it is illegal to own child sex-abuse images. Those who currently possess it will have one year to get rid of it. Anyone found with such images could be given a year in prison or a £6,000 fine. This law does not cover manga or anime. The new law has faced opposition from people who believe that is an attack on freedom of expression, with manga artists, free-speech advocates and publishers amongst those against the law. Source: BBC
Jenny	1080727.  Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:50 am Frankly, I think they ought to have included manga and anime too.
Ian Dunn	1084787.  Wed Jul 16, 2014 8:26 am Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi has been arrested on an obscenity charge for sending data that could be used to make 3D model prints of her own vigina. Source: BBC

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