Creepy much?

Just about everyone I know has been asking the same question lately:  “Huh?  ‘Karate’ Kid?  Shouldn’t it be ‘Kung Fu’ Kid?”

With the massive ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, controversy over illegal immigration, high unemployment, the still-tanking world economy, collapsing European nations, growing government bureaucracy, multiple wars, poverty, starvation, and Lindsey Lohan, America is getting bored and needs something real to worry about.  Enter “The Karate Kid.”

Why “Karate” instead of “Kung Fu?”  It’s obvious that it was done for brand name recognition.  Hollywood normally presumes that most Americans is even stupider than they is, and don’t want to bewilder the monkeys.  Can you imagine the confusion over naming a remake of “The Dukes of Hazzard” something like “Them Crazy Rednecks?”  What would’ve happened had the writers of “The A Team” remake not inserted the line “… this Alpha Unit, or ‘A-Team’” so that the viewing public wouldn’t get uneasy with all that jargony Army stuff?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers of “The Karate Kid,” hip to the throngs of people asking why it isn’t “The Kung Fu Kid,” didn’t throw in some dialogue to placate the herd:

• Fresh Prince, Jr.: “Hey, you’re just like Mr. Miyagi, and I’m like the Karate Kid.”
• Jackie Chan:  “No.  Not Karate.  Kung Fu.  See, Karate comes from Okinawa.  The Japanese later adopted, Japanized, and spread the art through the world, but it’s originally an Okinawan art (which, by the way, originally came from China).  Kung Fu means ‘hard work’ in Chinese, and it is a Chinese art.  I am Chinese.  I speak Chinese.  We are filming in China.  Do you understand the words that are coming outta my mouth?”
• FPJ: “Whatever, man…  you crazy.”

Or something like that.

Here’s a history/language lesson for those who give a crap:

Karate was originally developed in Okinawa, but has strong Chinese roots.  In fact, the Chinese characters originally used to write it are 唐手, which means “China (T’ang Dynasty) Hand.”  (Interestingly, the Koreans still use this nomenclature in the form of Tang Soo Do – 唐手道 – way of the China Hand.)  In most areas in Okinawa, the art was often referred to by the name of the region in which it was practiced, e.g. Naha-Hand, Shuri-Hand, etc.  After Funakoshi Gichin brought the art to Japan, the Japanese said, “Uh… yeah… we’re not comfortable with all that ‘China’ stuff, so if you could just go ahead and change that first character, that’d be great, mmmkay?”  So, it was decided that they (the Japanese) would use another character which was (and still is) also pronounced ‘kara.’  Enter 空手 (empty hand).

Kung Fu is written 功夫 in Chinese, and basically means something like “skill earned through hard work.”  I like to think that this name actually originated from a joke.  Imagine some white tourists shlepping around the Chinese countryside, when they happen upon some monks training in the fields.  One corpulent tourist asks the tour guide, “Hey… what’s that stuff?”  The tour guide replies, “Kung Fu (snicker).”  The tourist is so pleased with his new knowledge, that he fails the notice the tour guide elbowing the bus driver in the ribs, saying, “Did you hear that?  I told him it was ‘hard work.’  Now he thinks that’s what the art is called!  BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA…”

Wushu is more likely what they’re doing in the movie (just speculation, as I haven’t seen it yet.)  This is where things get weird.  Wushu is written 武術 in Chinese.  (In Japanese, that word is pronounced Bujutsu.)  Wushu literally means “martial art,” but is more often used today to describe the showy, gymnastic-y, flashy stuff that came about after the Communists killed off, or drove into exile, all the truly powerful Chinese martial artists, only to later realize that they needed something culturally uniquely Chinese in nature to show the world how awesome they are.  In China, Wushu is for showing off athleticism.  In Japan, Bujutsu describes the “old school” combat systems.

I blame Mao.

1. Enter about:config in the address bar.
2. Add a new boolean option called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set it to false.
3. Restart FF and hope for the best.

Caveat Emptor: I am not responsible for you screwing up your FF config.  You break it, you buy it.

It would seem that Japan still had one more adventure in store for me on my final day here. One the way, the bus driver made an announcement that we would be needing to take a detour because of a big accident on the expressway. This required him to drive some “back” roads through the idyllic, picturesque Chiba countryside. I snapped some photos from the bus, but don’t know how they came out. I think that I’ll just wait to post them all to my Flickr photostream after I get home. Right now, I think I’d prefer to drink my Pocari Sweat and relax while waiting for my flight.

With that, I’m signing off for now to enjoy my Almond Choco and relax, pending the boarding of my flight. See y’all on the other side of the pond.

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* The T.S.A. should be required to do their first 6 months on duty here, being trained by the staff at Narita. I think it took me a grand total of 18 seconds to pass through security. Everyone was polite and respectful to a fault. And not one single loud-mouthed jackass could be heard yelling at the herd of bread-dead traveling cattle to put their liquids in a baggie, take out their laptops, throw out bottles of water, or make sure their firearms are unloaded. These things are posted on signs… which the Japanese, apparently, read.

All my bags are packed
I’m ready to go
I’m standin’ here in Tokyo
I hate to wake you up to say “I’m heading to Narita and should be home relatively soooooooon…”

[ahem] Sorry.

Anyhoo, I’ve been scouring the room to make sure I don’t leave anything behind, when what should I find in the desk drawer? A New Testament and Buddha Book sitting quietly side-by-side.

Is this the Japanese equivalent of “Praise Buddha and pass the katana?”

Off to take a shower, finalize packing, and drag my sleepy, sore, exhausted butt to Narita airport. See y’all soon.

Suffice it to say that I spoke more Japanese in the last 3 hours than I have in the last 3 years. I’m finding the language very difficult to speak, which is rather frustrating. Words don’t come to mind as easily as they used to… I can’t seem to pronounce things… I trip over my own tongue. Yet, one of my conversational partners was nice enough to swear that if he had his eyes covered, he’d think I was a native Japanese.

Note: The Japanese excel at over-complimenting.

The boss made the new guy give a speech to everyone in English. (He doesn’t speak English.) It was so comical as to border on the painful. After a few seconds, the boss feigned snoring and everyone cracked up. That didn’t stop the new guy who, by then, had sufficiently filled his tank with his “gasoline,” as he put it. (In other words, he was sloshed.)

I spent several hours talking about the Japanese language, history, entertainment, contemporary culture, rural dialects, and various other random topics. I even dropped into Russian a few times with one of the guys.

I think the Tokyo office now has a better idea of who I am and what I can do. Perhaps that will give them a more solid idea of how exactly they can use me. At any rate, I made several friends I intend to keep up with. I hope to be back before long… maybe even in September. Next time, I plan to try and spend more time with some of the folks I met this time. If nothing else, it will help revitalize my Japanese.

The long-anticipated meeting with Sony has been accomplished. It took place at SCEI (Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.), home of the Playstation and PSP.

The inside of the ground floor lobby was amazing. It looked like one might expect Kato Kaelin’s guest house to look if he were crashing with the Architect of the Matrix. Displayed everywhere were samples of different PSPs, PS3s, with (ostensibly) upcoming games playing everywhere. Unfortunately, photography was forbidden, or I’d have taken shots to show all of you.

This was the second time in two weeks I’ve been able to meet with the same folks. The entire meeting lasted only a few minutes, and was largely designed as a pressing of the flesh. At least I can now say that a Sony VP has my business card

Up next is a dinner, but I may skip out early.

As you can probably see, typhoon #4 appears to still be on track. Thankfully, it looks like its effects will largely miss Honshu, pelting us only with wind and rain. If Ol’ #4 doesn’t hammer the mainland too badly, my flight should still be good-to-go for tomorrow. At any rate, the rain and high winds in Tokyo have largely waned… for now.

For those (now 4) readers who are still ramen virgins, I’ll lay down some knowledge flakes on you: if you’re not sweating profusely and asking for a bucket to catch the unending stream of snot issuing forth from you schnozz, it wasn’t really very good ramen.

This was good ramen.

See the big dotted circle on top? I’m about 3cm to the left of where that will be when I’m scheduled to fly out of Tokyo Narita tomorrow.

I’ll keep you posted.