Scary Games Make People Freak Out

Probably kind of old, but I love watching videos of people playing scary games. Probably my favorite is that one Japanese guy who plays various Resident Evil games (example)

I’ve never played any Fatal Frame games, even though I think I own the first one. So it was neat seeing this guy playing it and freaking out  

I’ve found that as I get older, I suck more and more at playing scary games and I don’t really play any now. Actually, I don’t play games much at all anymore. Darn you age!

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Another Awesome ROM

About 15 years ago, my friend Loco-san and I made a simple RPG called The Freak Farm in QBasic. Afterward, we made many new versions and upgraded versions, but never really finished them. But just now I found this old homebrew GameBoy Color ROM he made back in 2000. For a little test ROM, it looks really impressive! There isn’t much to do, but you can download it below if you’re interested.

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MOTHER 3 Comics Attacked!

These are quite possibly the best MOTHER 3 comics I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Man am I glad people can finally play the game in English now, allowing for stuff like this to get made

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Chinese Chrono Trigger for NES

Leave it to Chinese pirates and hackers to create an oldschool NES version of Chrono Trigger. There’s even Chinese Final Fantasy 7 for NES out there! I wonder if there are any English-language sites that focus entirely on these strange Chinese knockoffs. Here are some more pics and some info.

And, while on the subject of Chrono Trigger… Chronometer!

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Nasubi in English!

About 10 years ago, a Japanese TV station locked a guy in a room, took away all his clothes and belongings, and made him fill out magazine cards for prize drawings. And these winnings would be the only way he could survive. He had to win his food and clothes and such. This went on for months, and Japanese TV audiences loved it. Crazy stuff.

If you don’t remember this story, here are all the wacky details. I know a lot of regulars to my site really liked this story for some reason a few years back.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because you can now see some Nasubi videos subtitled into English! Click here!

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Girls Use Butts to Destroy Stuff

Why is it that girl characters in fighting games often have powerful butt/hip attacks? I can’t think of any male characters that use that as an attack, but as you can see here, girls are able to destroy cars, boulders, even steamrollers with their rumps.

Moral of the story, girl butts are weapons of mass destruction.

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Why “Wa” and “Ga” Ruin Lives

(this is an old, old thing I wrote and somehow lost. Here it is again for old times’ sake)

For anybody who’s taken up learning the Japanese language, the particles wa and ga
are evilly hard to understand. They’re there mocking you from the very
beginning of learning the language, and they’ll be there even after you’ve lived
in Japan for quite some time. Why do wa and ga have to be so evil? I’ll rant about
it then maybe try to enlighten people about them as best as I can.

In ALL the textbooks out there, you’ll see “wa” called the so-called “topic particle”
or “topic marker”, and ga is called the “subject particle” or “subject marker”.
The root of the problem stems from these terms. They’re horribly vague and ambiguous
from the very beginning. To lots of people “topic” and “subject” mean almost the
same exact thing. Books and other people need to think up something better to avoid
this confusion.

Wa and ga are as evil and difficult for us as “a”, “an”, “the”, and “some” are for
Japanese speakers. We use “a” and “the” and those other articles without a second
thought on how they should be used, if they’re right for a certain context, etc.
Likewise, they can use wa and ga without even thinking about it. And in both cases,
if a foreigner makes a mistake with either wa/ga or a/the, then it sounds really
weird. Even the humorous stereotypes of foreigners incorporate these mistakes;
if a Japanese person wants to sound like a foreigner, they’ll use lots of “wa”s
and make some purposeful mistakes. If an English speaker wants to sound kind of
Asian, he or she might use the word “the” where a native speaker normally wouldn’t.

So at least feel relieved that while we have problems with wa and ga, many Japanese
have to go through similar traumatic experiences.

I won’t try to explain the difference between wa and ga too much here, I don’t want
to add to the mess. I had taken about 2 - 2.5 years worth of Japanese classes before
I went to Japan, and in all that time I was bombarded with what wa is for and what
ga is for. I read lots of books and articles and stuff about them, but what they
were trying to say never quite sunk in. I understood what they were saying but I
didn’t “get” it.

I remember when finally I did “get” it. I was in a train on my way to school, and
there was a little sticker/ad on the wall. It said a bunch of stuff promoting whatever
they were selling, but in big letters it said “ima ga chansu!” The moment I read that
everything just clicked. I can’t really explain the difference between wa and ga,
it’s just something you have to experience on your own. If you live in Japan long
enough you’ll probably naturally come to acquire that knowledge. But when I re-read
all those old books and articles, I finally actually did get what they were trying
to say. It’s just that it’s hard to explain, even for professional authors and
native speakers.

Although I can tell the difference between the two, and can use them correctly
most of the time, I’m 100% sure I misuse them sometimes when I’m not thinking.
The point is that they try to explain these really difficult nuances from the
very beginning of Japanese language education and it just makes things difficult.
Learning Japanese in Japan from the very start would probably be the best way to
lessen the effect of this bad wa and ga training.

So that’s it. Hope it was enlightening for you. Man, that was boring stuff.

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Mysterious Japanese Pinball

Saw this just now. I’ve always loved this Japanese TV series, it’s pretty cool stuff. This particular one is about a boy who goes into an arcade when he should be doing his afterschool tutoring classes. There, the shop owner introduces him to a pinball game that is supposed to create a miracle if you get 100,000 points, but nobody’s ever done it before. What’s the miracle?

Although it’s in Japanese, it’s pretty basic stuff and you could probably watch it without sound on and still get the gist of it.

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Becoming a Pro Translator (Part 1)

I’ve been a pro J->E translator for a good while now, and as time goes on I get asked more and more about how to become a professional Japanese to English translator, and more specifically, how to get into professionally translating stuff like anime, manga, games, and all that good stuff. So I thought I’d toss together a page about it so that I can answer people more easily.

I’m probably going to break this up into a few different parts, so skip any parts that don’t really matter to/relate to/interest you.
› Continue reading

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Translation Stuff

It’s not completely done yet, but I’ve been working on a page listing all the professional and unofficial translations I’ve done in the past or am currently working on. I didn’t realize I’d done quite that much stuff. Crazy.

Someday, if I can find the time, I’d like to write tiny individual pages for each thing, the little descriptions there don’t do any of them justice. Mini-translation notes, I guess you could call them.

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