Profound Randomness

I'm an American photographer living in Japan. I take photos and talk about them. Sometimes other stuff too, random bits from my brain and whatnot. More?

[0-miso]

japanese emojis — meaning

emoji – meaning – origin

🈁️ here – ココ 

🈂️ service – サービス 

🈷️ month/moon – 月 (げつ / がつ / つき)

🈚️ free of charge / there isn’t  – 無料 (むりょう) / 無し (なし)

🈶️ not free of charge / there is  – 有料 (ゆうりょう) / 有り (あり)

🈯️ reserved –  指定 (してい) 

🉐️ bargain – 得 (とく)

🈹️ discount – 割引 (わりびき)

🈲️ prohibited – 禁止 (きんし)

🉑️ acceptable – 可 (か)

🈸️ application – 申請 (しんせい)

🈴️ passing grade – 合格 (ごうかく)

🈳️ vacancy – 空室 (くうしつ) 

🈵️ no vacancy – 満室 (まんしつ) 

㊗️ congratulations – お祝い (おいわい)

㊙️ secret – 秘密 (ひみつ)

🈺️ open for business – 営業 (えいぎょう)

💮 well done/good job – 大変よくできました (たいへんよくできました)

[dbooster]

Thus he came alone to Angband's gate and smote upon it once again, and sounding a challenge upon his silver horn he called Morgoth himself to come forth to combat, crying: 'Come forth, thou coward king, to fight with thine own hand! Den-dweller, wielder of thralls, liar and lurker, foe of Gods and Elves, come! For I would see thy craven face.'

Then Morgoth came. For he could not refuse such a challenge before the face of his captains. But Fingolfin withstood him, though he towered above the Elven-king like a storm above a lonely tree, and his vast black shield unblazoned overshadowed the star of Fingolfin like a thundercloud. Morgoth fought with a great hammer, Grond, that he wielded as a mace, and Fingolfin fought with Ringil. Swift was Fingolfin, and avoiding the strokes of Grond, so that Morgoth smote only the ground (and at each blow a great pit was made), he wounded Morgoth seven times with his sword; and the cries of Morgoth echoed in the north-lands. But wearied at last Fingolfin fell, beaten to the earth by the hammer of Angband, and Morgoth set his foot upon his neck and crushed him.

In his last throe Fingolfin pinned the foot of his Enemy to the earth with Ringil, and the black blood gushed forth and filled the pits of Grond. Morgoth went ever halt thereafter.

[dbooster]

Expectations

For most people in the Western world, and for many people in the Eastern world as well, there is some expectation of a paradise after death, of a heaven. Some people are looking forward to this a lot and some people are enjoying his life but the thought of an eternal paradise is in the back of their mind and makes them smile to think it's coming.

Let's say there is a heaven, and let's say it is a paradise, a place where we no longer have to deal with sickness or death and all our needs are met. And it is forever. What exactly do we expect from this?

Well... to be happy, I think. But what does paradise have that will make us happy?

Time, am I right? All the time to read all the books we always wanted to read but didn't have time for, distracted by work or kids or a tiredness that never allowed us to keep our eyes open longer than two pages in. In heaven, we will have time! All the time! Forever, meaning time no longer really has any meaning, for it will never run out. We will have time to read all the books we ever wanted to. Then reread them. Then re-reread them. Then re-re-reread them.

If those books start to get a little boring, we can move on to other books. We can explore new subjects that we were never interested in on Earth, we can discover new authors, we can learn to enjoy new genres. In fact, we have forever, remember?—we can read (and reread, and re-reread) everything.

Then what? Forever, remember? There are more more books left to read, no more essays published or unpublished, no more blog posts, no more magazine articles. We've read them all. Our favorites we've read so many times we have them completely memorized, word for word.

So what next?

Move on to our favorite movies, I'll bet. We never had enough time to watch even a fraction of the new ones that were released each week, nor did we even have time enough to revisit old favorites as often as we wanted. Well, now we have forever, so we can watch them all. We can watch everything. And rewatch. And rewatch. And rewatch.

What next? By this point I can imagine reading through a book for the millionth time (any book; we've read them all, remember) might get a little boring. Same for watching movies.

Move on to learning a new skill. All of us have some skill or another that we've always admired and always wished we had time to gain some mastery in. Woodworking, or painting, or growing a bonsai tree. Well, now we have time to do that. In fact, we have all the time; we have forever.

I think we can see where this is going. Eventually we will master the skill, we will master it to the point where there is no challenge in even the most complex application of it. It would be like blinking, like snapping our fingers, so easy and so intuitive that it becomes utterly boring.

Move on to another skill. And another. And another. Master them all to the same level. We have forever, remember? Even the least skilled amongst us can master something after doing it for a billion years. A million million. A million million million. Forever.

When faced with forever, all of us will eventually know everything and be able to do everything. Gods? Maybe not the same as the big guy, maybe we can't create life (then again, maybe that is one of the skills we gained by studying it for countless aeons) but we will certainly be something of that level.

And then what? Most of us get bored out of our minds after a few days on vacation and start to long for the challenges of regular life. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest we might start to get bored of the ultimate paradise too. So what then? Do we start to long for normal, regular life with all the challenges therein?

What do gods do when they grow weary of knowing everything?

Do we then cause ourselves to forget it all and be reborn to start the entire adventure again?

[dbooster]

Summer Nights

Summer night— even the stars are whispering to each other.

This is a fairly popular haiku around the web. Search for it and you will find hundreds of web pages using it. It is translated by Robert Hass, given in his popular book The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa, and is purported to have been written by Issa.

Problem is... no one can find the original. According to David Lanoue, it doesn't exist.

Lanoue:

This haiku, supposedly translated from Issa by Robert Hass, is lovely but not authentic. In the Complete Works of Issa (Issa zenshû), there are only thirteen haiku that contain the phrase, "summer night" (natsu no yo). None of them mention "stars" or "whispering." One can only conclude that Issa did not write this haiku.

Did Hass write it himself and credit Issa? Doubtful. Robert Hass is a very successful poet in his own right and doesn't need to resort to such shanigans in order to publish his original haiku.

As he was assembling material for his book, did he come across one of unknown authorship and decide it must be Issa and therefore credit him? This seems a bit more possible, but then again probably not. I'm going to assume he had some people working under him when he assembled the book and that they sourced the poems to be translated from reputable sources.

I think it's far more likely that he took an Issa poem and altered it in his translation that it bears so little resemblence to the original that even Lanoue, the Issa expert, can't figure out what the original was.

Looking at Hass's other translations, he does have a tendancy to alter the haiku imagery if he thinks he can improve it, making his translations less "translation" than "interpretation" or maybe "reimagining". Many other haiku readers have pointed out this fact, so I am hardly the first to do so.

Anyway, all this in mind, I'm wondering if anyone can make any stabs at the original Issa poem. As Lanoue points out, none of Issa's 13 haiku that use "summer night" (natsu no yo) also mention stars or whispering, which means the original either used a different kigo (not natsu no yo) or only suggested at Stars/whispering but didn't mention them.

Anyone? (also, if you know it, please include the kanji in any guesses made. Links to Japanese sites are ok for me. 日本語大丈夫)

[dbooster]

Traveling to the Inn (From my Haiku of Japan series)

the moon’s guidance: please come this way a traveler’s inn —Basho

月ぞしるべこなたへ入らせ旅の宿 (tsuki zo shirube / konata e irase / tabi no yado)

(more)

[dbooster]

I've never gotten into GOT (I know someone who plans on changing this fact), but this is a cool video.

[millennial-review-deactivated20]

[dbooster]

Michael Flynn secretly called the Russian ambassador to the U.S. the day before President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia.

Mr. Flynn’s secret call did not violate the law, Mr. Trump’s spokesman said.

At one time I was taught colluding with foreign powers was treason. Guess I was taught wrong.

[dbooster]

Today we saw a “press conference” by our incoming president at which he put forth a farcical plan to allow his own sons to continue running his vast business empire while he is president, and spoke at length about his belief that as president it is impossible for him to have meaningful conflicts of interest, which is why he felt comfortable presenting his decision to turn down a $2 billion business deal with a Middle Eastern real estate mogul as something noble, rather than as an obvious decision that would be made as a matter of course under a normal presidential administration. He dismissed serious reporting that reflected poorly on him as “fake news,” and promised to retaliate against news outlets that displeased him. These things are not normal. These things are not okay. These are actions that flout well-established ethical and civil norms.

[dbooster]

Allegations now floating around range from the salacious (Russia has Trump sex tapes made at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow) to the serious (using intermediaries, Trump and Russia agreed to an explicit quid pro quo in which Russia would give him electoral help and in exchange he would shift US foreign policy). None of this is proven, and much of it is unprovable (if the FSB has a secret sex tape, how are we going to find it?) but the truth is that these kind of allegations, though difficult to resist, simply shouldn’t matter much compared to what’s in the public record.

[dbooster]

[dbooster]

So it begins...

[caterpie]

Poster promoting the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985)

[brianmichaelbendis]

Is it really impossible to write a good Superman movie?

mario puzo did it.

[dbooster]

Notes #fieldnotes in action in the land of the rising sun. Brought to you by #hipstamatic - Aatto lens/Reeta film.

[dbooster]

Not only do you face off against Hitler in Bionic Commando, but he calls you a damn fool. My young mind was blown when I made it to this point.

[dbooster]

What do Japanese people think about China?

Answer by David A. LaSpina:

What does a group of people think about another group of people? Answer: everything!

Some Japanese don't think much of China (mainly right-wingers).

Some Japanese think China is a powder-keg and will self-destruct or at least fall into civil war (some Japanese have been thinking this for many decades).

Some Japanese like China but worry about the government of China.

Some Japanese love Chinese history and have general positive feelings about the country.

Some Japanese love kung-fu films and think everyone in China is secretly a martial arts master.

And on and on. You will find as many opinions as there are people.

Based on all the Japanese I have talked to in my ten years in country and all I've seen and read, I might offer a general answer is: Japanese like China and the Chinese people in general (though they think they are often rude/loud/selfish), but aren't so happy about the Chinese government and wish they would stop bringing up WW2 so often* (and suspect the reason they do bring it up so often has more to do with distracting the public from domestic problems than anything else). They worry about pollution from China and complain endlessly about Chinese sand (Asian Dust). They love Chinese food but think it's too oily. They worry about industry jobs leaving this country for that one. They admire traditional Chinese wisdom and everyone knows someone who swears Chinese medicine is much better than Western medicine. They think the language is crazy difficult.

Now note, these are just my ideas as I sum up everything I've heard, read, seen, etc, in my time here. I do not claim to speak for the Japanese themselves nor could I, since (as I mentioned above) everyone has a different opinion and there is no collective single viewpoint.

*: Let's not open this can of worms here. Plenty of questions and answers already on Quora about the matter.

What do Japanese people think about China?