Darren Holloway

Once upon a time, two battle-weary soldiers entered a small village. The villagers were somewhat surprised to see them, as they were a goodly distance from the front lines of the long and bloody war.

“Good villagers,” said one of the soldiers, “we have fought long and hard for your country, but now we are starving and have not the strength to continue.” His eyes watered, the shame of needing to beg evident on his face as he asked “Would you be so kind to feed us?”

The villagers averted their eyes, until one finally spoke.

“Noble soldiers,” he said, “We are saddened to see your condition, as we ourselves share it.” The villager continued “The war has been long, and most of our food is taken in taxes to support the army. Our village has lost three to starvation just this week. I hope you can understand why we cannot give our meager supply of food to strangers.”

The disappointed soldiers stood, and the one who had spoken before asked if they might rest for an hour in the village. The villagers agreed.

After talking briefly, one soldier walked to the edge of the river and began gathering fallen branches. The other wandered through the town, looking down, until with a cry of joy he picked up three rocks, each the size of his hand. While the first soldier built a fire, the second took a pot to the river and filled it with water, then placed it on the now blazing fire.

The villagers stared, muttering amongst themselves, shooting angry glances at the soldiers, before walking over as a group to the fire.

“This is stone soup,” said one of the soldiers. “It has been our meal for the past week. Despite what you may think, it is actually quite filling. However, the taste is a bit plain; it would be nice if we could add a carrot for flavouring,” he asked hopefully.

The villagers continued to stare.

“Might anyone have a carrot to spare?” asked the soldier, to which a young man strode forward and yelled “How dare you ask for a carrot, when you have already stolen twigs and rocks from us?” The other villagers grumbled affirmatively as he continued “And in a time of war, no less! Do you think being a soldier is a license to be a criminal?”

Suddenly, an old man shuffled out of the smallest home in the village. The villagers stopped talking, and the soldiers, relieved at the diversion, took a few steps back, but did not flee, for the water in the pot was boiling, and there was no way they could take their pot until it cooled.

The old man stood between the soldiers and the villagers, looking first at one group, then the other, than back for several minutes before he spoke.

“It is true,” he said quietly, as he turned towards the soldiers. “The military may not take what is not paid for. You must pay for what you have taken.”

At that, the villagers rushed forward with a cry; the soldiers were penniless, and they paid with their lives. Afterward, the villagers celebrated and ate the soldiers’ corpses, which was okay, as all the villagers were Christians, and would thus still go to heaven.

I’ve been studying Japanese for two years now, and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that there are a few letters of the katakana alphabet that I still can’t remember.

However, I don’t think I’ve alone. Almost every person I’ve met who studies Japanese in the west admits the same thing; In our textbooks, katakana is rarely used, whereas in Japan, you see it everywhere – on signs, advertisements, magazines. The problem is one of exposure.

Here’s the solution that struck me today and I’ve been doing for the past hour:

You will need:

• Your first Japanese textbook (because you are already familiar with all of the grammar and vocabulary, even if you’ve forgotten some of it.)
• Some paper and a pen.
• A kana table of katakana. Either from your text, or write one by hand, looking up those characters you can’t remember.

Here’s how it works:

1. Starting from the beginning of the book, find some running text; stories, dialogues, whatever. Look for something at least three sentences long.
2. Copy it out longhand in hirigana.
   1. If you know the kanji for a word, use it instead of the kana.
   2. If you know there’s a kanji, but you can’t remember it, write the word in hirigana and circle it; you can come back to it later.
3. Close the textbook.
4. Get a second sheet of paper
5. Now, from the text you just wrote by hand, copy it onto the other sheet, but completely in katakana.
   1. Everything. The kanji. Even the particles which would never be written in katakana.
   2. Resist the urge to look at your katakana table, until you’re sure you don’t know the character – Two seconds is a good rule.
6. Now, read the text out load from the katakana version you just wrote.
7. Rinse and repeat.

After you’re done, look up all the kanji for words you circled on your hirigana copy. Write each one ten times.　Say the word out loud each time you write it.

An added bonus is that you will be implicitly reviewing grammar and vocabulary at the same time!

No applause, just throw money.

A somewhat lame example:

Original Text:

こんいちわ！　やまだ　です。　きょうは　がっこに　いきませんでした。　どうしてか？　にちようび　んです！　はははははは！　
[Hello. My name is Yamada. Today I didn't go to school. Why, you ask? Because it's sunday! ha ha ha ha ha!]

And yes, I know I misspelled school. :)

I am not quite sure why I decided to write this…

Actually, I know exactly why: I was browsing air fares between North America and Japan, and found the cheapest fair had a stop-over in South Korea. The interesting thing was one leg of the flight is on a Boeing 747…

I’ve only once ever flown on a 747, and that was a half-hour flight where I was the only passenger. I’ve never taken a “real” flight on one. That got me to thinking “what are all the other aircraft types upon which I have flown?”

Hence this list…

• Airbus A320 (ACA)
• Boeing 737 (CPC, CDN, PWA, SWA)
• Boeing 747 (ACA)
• Boeing 767 (ACA)
• Boeing 777-300 (JAL)
• Canadair Regional Jet 900 (DL)
• Canadair Regional Jet 700 (DL)
• De Havilland Canada Dash 7 (TAF)
• Douglas DC-10 (CPC)

I’m sure I’m missing some.

Click here to go to the gallery on flickr.

I’m back at Fanime again this year. My latest kick is “take less photos and thus spend less time in photoshop, and thus be able to post in a reasonable time.”

Click to go to the gallery on Flickr…

Anime I watched that I want to see the rest of…

1. Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners
2. Kurokami

I also watched a few episodes of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, which was a show I watched in Elementary school in its bastardized^W westernized version as “Battle of the Planets.” Man, those 70′s haircuts and clothes!

I dreamt that I got promoted to Vice-President at work. On my first day as a VP, I arrived at work and opened my email…

The first email was from another VP, which said “You’re going to ruin everything. Meet me in my office so we can discuss how I can save the company from you.” I thought “This is not going to be a fun meeting.”

I took a cruise on San Francisco bay last weekend on the USS Potomic, which was FDR‘s yacht back when he was president of the U.S.

The cruise was put on by Keeble and Schuchat, and there were about 60 photographers on the cruise. It didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted to look for shots they weren’t seeing.

I did take the standard photo of the Golden Gate Bridge…

But to be completely honest, I far prefer this shot:

It was pretty windy on the bay

And I have no clever comment for this shot of Alcatraz.

So, today at my local Starbucks, I ran into Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He’s only about an inch taller than me. I thought he would be bigger.

Today I got a letter in the mail from the US Government.

It said: “Expect to receive, in about 10 days, a letter from the US Government.”

note 1: I did get a letter from the US Government.

note 2: A week later, I got another letter from the US Government that said “did you receive your letter?”

The web server upon which I host this website just forced me to change my password; “We are improving our security and now require stronger passwords,” they say.

It won’t let me use G2lEnrYMqzJqiMMJQecMXvHNwmsONLDcTqigHgSzFdP1qPdZ† as a password, because “that password is too weak – it does not contain a punctuation character.”

However, it’s perfectly happy to let me use abAB12!@

† I basically live out of 1Password, which lets me generate random passwords like this for websites and auto-fills the login fields when I enter my 26-character long master password. It even synchronizes my passwords to both my home computer and my laptop. Highly recommended.

Remember to handle every stressful situation like a dog: If you can’t eat it or hump it, pee on it and walk away.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I wrote this very short entry, which said (in its entirety):

My car is one year and ten days old today, and I just rolled over to 10,000 km. That’s 6000 miles for the metric-impaired. I think I’ll buy her a drink. She looks thirsty.

Today I found the following comment in the moderation queue:

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Now let’s see…

1. The comment is longer than the entry itself.
2. It did not contain any links to questionable web sites.

Either someone is being sarcastic, or I have been hit by the world’s worst comment spammer.

Comment: Mark as Spam. Click. Done.

Today is my birthday. I decided to treat myself to a frozen pizza.

I went over to Safeway and got a pizza. All I had was a $100 bill. All she had for change were $1 bills. So I got 94 one dollar bills and a pizza.

She said “Go over to customer service; they can trade it up.” But there was nobody there. After five minutes of waiting, a cashier decided to call on the intercom for customer service. After 10 minutes, they called again. After 15, I gave up.

Frankly, it annoys me that Retail stores assume their customers’ time is worthless. By making us wait longer, they save money by not having to pay one more employee.

Photos from my November 2009 trip to Japan to photograph the fall colours are now up on Flickr.

I am too lazy to make 110 individual links.

Googlefood only…

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Tomorrow I fly home. Which means today, I took the train from Kyoto to Tokyo, dumped my bag in a locker at Tokyo Station, then headed over to Akihabara to buy stuff and visit the cat cafe.

Yes, the cat cafe – A place where you can have a coffee and play with cats.

After 3 days of trying, I finally found Eikan-do!

Fall colours at Eikan-do, Kyoto, Japan.

I’m in Kyoto and my feet are sore. I’ve been looking for a certain temple for two days now and haven’t been able to find it. Fortunately, I’m finding lots of other nice stuff.

Fall Maple Tree Leaves in Kyoto, Japan

I’m in Nara right now, despite the amazing fact that I somehow missed my train stop when it was the last stop on the line. Yes, when the train starts going the other way, you know you’re doing something wrong.

I woke up this morning at the photographer-friendly time of 5:30 a.m. and walked over to Nara Park. It’s huge. And full of really tame deer.

Deer and Japanese Schoolgirl in Nara Park.

Being there so early in the morning gave me a chance to catch the good morning light, and catch the monks in the act of… well, whatever the heck he was doing.

Sunrise at a temple in Nara, where a monk is throwing water around.

Around 4:00 p.m. I was getting pretty sore and tired – I’m not used to spending 8+ hours on my feet, so I spent the rest of the day studying Japanese.

There’s nothing like climbing a mountain to teach you how out of shape you are.

Yesterday, I went to Mount Takao, which involved taking the subway 14 stops to Shibuya station, realizing that I meant to go to Shinjuku station instead, three stops on the JR line to Shinjuku, then taking the commuter railway for 50 minutes to Takaosanguchi. Then, a simple 4 km walk up 600 metres of vertical to the temple at the top of the mountain.

Oddly, there were a few maple trees at the station that were in glorious fall colours, but higher up on the mountain, most of the trees had yet to start turning.

About 3/4 of the way up, there was a reasonably good view of part of Tokyo, which stretches as far as the eye can see, yet it’s still beyond comprehension that 35 million people live here.

Tokyo from Mt. Takao

Since the days are short, I took a ski-lift chair down from about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. It was very Japanese; you stand on a conveyor belt and the chair sneaks up on you; at the end, you step off onto another conveyor belt. The whole way down, it was either 3 metres off the ground, or three metres above a raised platform with net so you wouldn’t hurt yourself (much) if you fell, yet there was no bar to keep you in the chair.

It’s just started drizzling here in Tokyo; today I head off for Nara, where it’s cloudy and expected to be sunny tomorrow.