Tim’s Ramblings

A traditional Japanese dance demonstration at a street fair in Chiba.

Since this loads a mediaplayer plugin (sorry mac users….) it’ll be placed after the cut.

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I’ve added a new category called Videos.

Now that I downloaded a decent and easy to use plugin that allows me to embed YouTube videos, if anything catches my attention, it’ll be tossed up in that category.

So far I have 2. One with a 5 year old Japanese kid totally kicking some serious DDR ass and another Japanese video about a meteor colliding with earth (cheery subject I know…).

(^_^)

A friend sent this to me. A neat and alarming video from Japan that shows just what will happen if a meteor slightly bigger than the size of Japan’s main island slams into the earth.

Here’s a hint. The earth will be juuuust fine. Anything living on it including us humans are SCREWED.

The pretty decent translation is from this blog.

Click on the link below for the translation.

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Let’s see if this funky plugin works.

Go kid go!!!

*sigh*….

So, after a long LONG day today (meeting from 9am to 12…woo…then another from 2 to 3…woo…and other crap) I head over to H’s place.  I go there every Thursday, or at least I try, to…in theory…teach violin to her daughter S.  Yeah….it’s summer….I’m not strict….H sees this as a hobby too…so needless to say, it usually ends up with me playing Nintendo DS with S and maybe having dinner and I keep trying to guilt her into practicing…

Today was no different.  H’s stepmom was there and her husband M was out grilling.  S was there playing on her DS with her friend V.  Both just finished 5th grade and are 11 years old.  Cute kids. :)  As a background, I’ve known S since before she went to kindergarden.  Heck…I knew her when she was still learning to walk.

So, after dinner and playing some DS (she had some furniture for my house and I had to pay her 20,000 bells…don’t ask) we decided to go check out their new house that’s almost finished being built.  It’s huge and beautiful.  It’s a condo, 2 houses connected, but it’s really big.  I mean…wow.  And I love it.

But anyway, H and M drove and, since I can never remember where this place is, S and V piped up that they will ride with me.  Now, S is vivacious enough, at least with someone she’s comfortable with (aka me) but with S and V in the back seat….it’s just crazy.  They managed to get me to turn into a completely different development…I have no idea if it was on purpose…and we eventually got to their new condo after much giggling…MUCH giggling.

After checking it out, H’s stepmom drove home and I told H that I’ll take S and V home.  We head on back when both of them tell me that I need to drop V off at her house.  Okie dokie.  Of course I have no idea where she lives.  I know she lives in the same community but that’s it.  Sooooooo it’s back to “keep going keep going keep going *giggle* keep going keep going *giggle* *giggle* keep going…TURN TURN…NO NO TO THE RIGHT!! *giggle giggle giggle*…now keep going keep going keep going…” style of directions.

They tell me to stop at a condo and then S tells me she’s getting off too to go to V’s.  Not a problem.  I know she goes there all the time.  I tell them to have fun and I head back to H’s to at least tell them that I dropped off her daughter at V’s.

I go in, say hi to M, go to the back where H’s watering the plants and tell her.  She says thanks and we were chatting a bit when I hear the sound of flip flops running towards the driveway.  Yup, S is back already and V’s with her…hmmm.  When they both see me they immediately start to giggle again.  Then finally both of them let out in between laughing that they “really got me!”.

….yeah…turns out V does NOT live there.  The two of them just went along with each other and directed me to a random building.  *sigh*….

Now, there WAS a bit of seriousness where H scolded S and V a bit to say that that was not nice AND that if anything happened to them, I would be in big trouble and this isn’t funny.

*ahem*

But let’s be honest….it’s funny….  They got me.  They were giggling the entire time so I had NO idea they were lying.  And yes, it could be dangerous but the two of them walk around the neighborhood all the time…no biggie really.  *sigh*…it’s nice to know that I am now prank fodder for two 11 year old girls…….

*sigh*….

I know I’ve spoken to a few of you about this so you don’t have to say anything but I wanted to ask this to more people. It may seem trivial to some but to me, this is something that honestly took me totally by surprise and it’s bothering me for some reason at a very basic level…

So, my main question is, and please let me know honestly, how many of you know that the term “Jap” is a very offensive racist term for Japanese?

I’m betting that alot of people didn’t know this.

I’m betting many of you think that Jap is just short for Japanese (it is) just like Serb or Czech.

The difference is the historical usage of the term. Mostly from WWII but it goes back further, the term “Jap” was used in a very derogatory fashion. To us Japanese living in the US, it is a word that is really truly offensive to us.

However, recently, probably the past 2 years or so, I’ve started to realize that poeple don’t know this at all. They use it like it’s no big deal. I was reminded of this on Friday when I found out that a demo of our software was going out with the term “Jap” tacked on to the end of the name of a database to denote one with Japanese enabled. Thank GOD I saw this before we shipped out a bunch to our partners. But the person that did it truly had no idea and I don’t think he really understood my panic.

Other people have actually argued with me when I tell them that the term Jap is offensive to me. For godsake…if a Japanese person is telling you it’s offensive, don’t argue with him. Try arguing about the n-word to an African American and see how far that gets you. ..and yes…to us it’s at that level.

I’ve also realized when playing, of all things, Final Fantasy XI online that people didn’t know. On the bulletin board I see messages about Jap parties and Jap players and Jap servers. At first I was just stunned. But then it quickly became apparent that they didn’t know.

Hell, I was even at a wedding many years ago in Conneaut (out in the middle of nowhere OH) where the priest actually used the therm “Jap pilot” when telling a story about love during WWII between a US pilot and his girl friend… Eeeeeeeesh…..

I suppose on one end, it’s a good sign. The racism of the past seems to be slowly going away. The fact that people don’t know that Jap is offensive can be a sign that the racist use of the term is almost out of the American vocabulary. But at the same time, there are plenty of people around that have not forgotten the negative connotations associated with that word and there is an entire country who do not look kindly to that word either.

Not knowing is fine. In this case, ignorance may be forgiven. Some poeple, when I confront them about this, will get very defensive and actually get angry at me and ask me how they should have known this. As I stated above, the fact that they have lived 20, 30 years without knowing may be a good sign. But at the same time, I hope that they will remember my comment and not use it in a business situation or, god forbid, use it in Japan…

My sister did point out that most people from Japan who have not lived in the US much or have experienced racism here much may not really understand the full impact of that word. That that may be true. However, I also think it’s a tad too early to make that term ok to use in any situation.

Oh, and the proper abbreviation would be “JPN” or “JP” or for Japanese Yen (the currency), “JPY”. Actually, until the early 90’s even the Olympics used “JAP” for Japan on the score cards and after much protest, it was finally changed to “JPN”.

So I’m just curious. How may of you knew this? Or did this take you by surprise?