Campaign promises

It was election time, again. So, a politician decided to go out to the local reservation to gather support from the Native Americans. They were all assembled in the Council Hall to hear the speech. The politician had worked up to his finale, and the crowd was getting more and more excited. “I promise better education opportunities for Native Americans!”

The crowd went wild, shouting “Hoya! Hoya!”

The politician was a bit puzzled by the native word, but was encouraged by their enthusiasm. “I promise gambling reforms to allow a Casino on the Reservation!”

“Hoya! Hoya!” cried the crowd, stomping their feet.

“I promise more social reforms and job opportunities for Native Americans!”

The crowd reached a frenzied pitch shouting “Hoya! Hoya! Hoya!”

After the speech, the politician was touring the Reservation, and saw a tremendous herd of cattle. Since he was raised on a ranch, and knew a bit about cattle, he asked the Chief if he could get closer to take a look at the cattle. “Sure,” the Chief said, “but be careful not to step in the hoya.”

Passed JLPT N1!

With flying colors, I might add. I got the certificate in the mail. It’s like college apps all over again: big envelope means you passed, small envelope means you didn’t. The certificate itself is pretty soft and flimsy, though. I prefer hard paper.

But I digress. The pass mark for N1 was 100/180, if I recall correctly. Pretty low standards, if you ask me. I got 150/180, which is 83%. Not bad at all. The breakdown was 57/60 for grammar, 44/60 for reading and 49/60 for listening. I should have worked on my reading skills some more, I suppose. A pass is a pass though. All that traveling up and down and going back and forth paid off.

The real question though, is “what next?” Now I have my N1 certificate, what now? I don’t have an answer for that. I didn’t take it for any practical reasons. I just wanted to have that qualification “just in case”, and just so I could say I did. For now I have no intention of going to Japan or working for a Japanese company. In any case, any company worth its salt should be more concerned about my actual ability than about any piece of paper I possess. However you never know when that may change. I doubt the certificate will ever make or break any job application or school application I write, but it could sway things in my favor a bit. And it looks good on my resume, which never hurts.

In short, I’m going to pack the certificate away somewhere safe for now. Maybe in the future I’ll have a use for it, maybe I won’t. For now, I’m just happy I have it.

Hayate no Gotoku manga review

Hayate no Gotoku! a.k.a. Hayate the Combat Butler is an anime based on a manga series by Kenjirou Hata about a debt-ridden butler and the rich young girl who saves him. The story is pretty straightforward: Ayasaki Hayate’s parents rack up a debt of 159 million yen to the yakuza and take off, leaving Hayate to handle it. After a failed attempt to kidnap Sanzenin Nagi (the rich girl) for money, he ends up working for her as her butler and owing his debt to her instead.

I started out by watching an episode sometime in November and really liked it, but didn’t have time to really dig in until earlier this year. I spent a couple of weeks blasting through both seasons of the anime and then read the manga from chapter 148 onwards. I’d like to go back and read it from volume 1, but I’ll save it for another time.

I tend to prefer character-driven manga to story-driven manga anyway, unless the story is really good. HnG has a number of interesting and likeable characters (Hayate, Maria, Nagi, Tama, Hinagiku, Isumi) and not so interesting and not so likeable characters (Sakuya, Wataru, Saki, Klaus), but even the less interesting ones still make for a few good laughs.

I enjoyed the constant spoofs of and references to other anime and manga as well. I actually got a lot of them, which shows I’ve been watching too much anime… That said, I thought the quality of episodes in Season One was really iffy. Some were good, some were not so good. Later on I discovered that most of the ones I thought were bad were actually filler, which just goes to show that Hata’s unique touch isn’t so easily imitated.

Anyway, after putting the anime behind me, I’ve finally caught up to the current manga chapter, chapter 309. That was a whirlwind ride, especially the Mykonos arc where Hayate ran into his old flame Athena. I like Athena a lot. This is may sound like blasphemy to Hinagiku fans (of which I was one until Athena showed up), but I think Athena fits Hayate better in a lot of ways. She understands that he has feelings, that he’s often in pain, that sometimes that smile is just a mask. Hinagiku still doesn’t really know Hayate, deep down inside. To be honest I think the main frontrunners for Hayate’s affection right now are Maria and Athena, with Hina in third place. Athena x Hayate forever!

That being the case, I’m rather pissed off at this whole Alice arc, wiping out Athena’s memory and turning her into a kid again for 3 months. That puts a halt on any romantic development for the next 200 chapters or so. Boo! Hiss! Hata’s also added another girl called Luca/Ruka to the mix, we’ll have to see what she can bring to the party. It might be time to drop this for a while and see how things work out.

Two more radio programs

This time for Japanese. I scribbled them down on my noticeboard, but I forgot to note which programs they were. Knowing myself, they’re almost certainly music programs, most likely Japanese 60s, 70s and 80s classics, because that’s what I listen to the most. Anyway, they’re both on Sankakuyama FM, Wednesdays at 8pm GMT and Fridays at 9pm GMT. I used to really like Sankakuyama FM because they had a great mix of music and talk, and because their stream was fairly low quality it could stream on my slow connection without a hitch.

Unfortunately the other day I started listening and there was this right-wing guy on spouting all this racist crap about Koreans and Russians and how they think they’re better than everyone else, and that kind of pissed me off. I know Japan’s been having trouble with Russia lately, but to cast aspersion in all Russians because of that is the height of ignorance. So yeah, I’ve been souring on them a bit lately, but I still listen when that idiot isn’t on.

Cantonese is going well, I’m up to Lesson 23 of Teach Yourself Cantonese! And I finally learned to say “computer” and “fax machine” (actually I’d already learned them elsewhere, but let’s pretend I hadn’t), but not “internet” or “e-mail”. I’ve been going at a pretty good pace, but yesterday I wasn’t up to it and skipped a day of review. Yikes, 180+ items backed up in my SRS! I’m still catching up even now.