Japanese Banking Crisis

According to inside contacts, the Japanese banking crisis shows no signs of ameliorating. If anything, it’s getting worse.
Following last week’s news that Origami Bank had folded, we are hearing that Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank plans to cut back some of its branches.
Karaoke Bank is up for sale and is (you guessed it!) going for a song.
Meanwhile, shares in Kamikaze Bank have nose-dived and 500 back-office staff at Karate Bank got the chop.
Analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank and staff there fear they may get a raw deal.

Cherry manga review

Cherry is a short romantic comedy series by Eisaku Kubonouchi. I quit after one volume, then skipped to the end to find out it was all a dream… or was it? The story is about two young adults from the boonies who meet, fall in love “at first sight” and run away together to Tokyo to avoid a forced marriage.

At first Cherry seemed like it would be an interesting look at the difficulties of city life for a pair of outsiders with no money. Can they overcome the barriers, or will they be forced to go home in despair? Will Fuuko’s rich family come looking for her? Will the police? Where will they live? What will they do for money? What— stop worrying. Kubonouchi took the easy way out.

The couple almost immediately run into helpful people who give them a place to live, both Fuuko and her boyfriend find part-time jobs almost immediately, everybody loves the innocent, cheerful Fuuko, and Sakurabou’s only worry becomes “When can I have sex with Fuuko?” Every time he shows up, that’s all he can think about. I felt filthy just reading it, so I quit.

*spoilers for how it ends*
I skipped to the last chapter and it turns out everything was a dream. The house Fuuko supposedly lived in is ruined and empty, the people he “met” are probably people he imagined from reading about them in a magazine, and his ex-girlfriend is the one who runs from her wedding to be with him, not Fuuko. Fuuko never existed in the first place…or did she? There are a couple of problems with this:

1. This setup would have worked for a 1 volume series. After 4 volumes, however, the readers have grown to know and love the cast. Fuuko in particular has been shoved heavily down our throats, and now you say she never existed?
2. Several months must have passed in Sakurabou’s dream. In that time he must have fallen head over heels for Fuuko and forgotten all about his old GF (Meguppe who?). You can’t send him back to the beginning and tell him to re-fall for Meguppe, it’s not so simple.
3. Meguppe leaves her wedding to come see Sakurabou. But he still has no job, no prospects, no place of his own and no proper education. As long as he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, he can’t take care of anyone else. They have no future.
4. In the original timeline Meguppe turned into a skank who insulted and dumped Sakurabou very cruelly after leaving for Tokyo. Having seen this side of her, he’ll probably never be able to see her in the same light again. At the very least he’ll never trust her, so this relationship is not going to work.

In other words, “It was all just a dream” doesn’t solve anything at all! Thanks for that slap in the face, Kubonouchi. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Off-topic rambling

The ATV stream is back! Woo-hoo! You don’t know what you have until it’s gone, and all that.

Just in time, cos I was going astray, visiting all kinds of English websites and reading about Japanese celebrities. They’re all so coy. They won’t even admit to the plastic surgery and dental work many of them (Namie, Gackt, Amuro, etc) have obviously had. Come on, don’t be so shy. We know you did it! Actually I believe stars are entitled to their privacy just like the rest of us, and that their obligation to the fans stops right at entertaining us. But as a fan, I can’t help it. I loooove celeb gossip!

Just now I dug up some dirt about B’z vocals Koshi Inaba. He’s one of the most intensely private Japanese stars out there, and the only thing he’ll cop to is having parents, a brother and some dogs. Now I can finally put the doubts to rest: he’s married and has at least one kid as of 2002! Bob Marley had these lyrics: “Only your friend / Know your secret / So only he / Can reveal it”! Yup, it was someone on one of his tours who spilled the beans: American bassist Billy Sheehan, via his official website. Source: http://www.billysheehan.com/photos/photos_bz06.html

More of these, Billy. Go on more tours and reveal more information oh so casually on your site! Next up, Tak Matsumoto. He’s 50 and apparently…single? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Going My Way

Nothing interesting’s going on with me, I’m still plodding faithfully along. I gave up on books for now to focus on internet resources. I was lucky enough to come across Milan’s Cantonese blog with several Cantonese monologues recorded by his wife, a native Cantonese speaker. They’ve made excellent sacrifices to my Cantonese SRS deck, MWA HA HA HA HA! I’m happy with how much I’ve learned from them so far, but I’m also encouraged by how much I already understand. I can’t call myself a beginner any more, maybe more like a lower-intermediate learner. I can get the gist of most things I listen to, and even understand quite a bit of some topics. As for the news, once they have those Mandarin subtitles up, it’s all over for them. Needless to say, I enjoy watching the news quite a bit.

Or more like I enjoyed it, because the ATV stream I used to watch regularly suddenly went down a few nights ago. I’m heart-broken sad Now I have to find a new source of terrible dramas and annoying tourism shows and endless mahjong tournaments and pro-Beijing news to watch. It was fun to have ATV streaming away whether I watched it or not, and I learned a ton of new characters and compounds from the news broadcasts. But it does no good to lament the past, just got to keep moving forward. I’m sure I’ll find something else eventually.

Requesting a three day pass

An Israeli soldier who just enlisted asked the Commanding Officer for a 3-day pass.

The CO says “Are you crazy? You just join the Israeli army, and you already want a 3-day pass? You must do something spectacular for that recognition!”

So the soldier comes back a day later in an Arab tank!

The CO was so impressed, he asked “How did you do it?”

“Well, I jumped in a tank, and went toward the border with the Arabs. I approached the border, and saw an Arab tank. I put my white flag up, the Arab tank put his white flag up. I said to the Arab soldier, ‘Do you want to get a three-day pass?’ So we exchanged tanks!”