Japanese Archives - Page 2 of 18

Why I stopped reading Yomiuri Komachi

Do you know Yomiuri Komachi? It’s a Japanese webforum that’s basically an agony aunt site (http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/)*. People post their problems and other users give them advice and potential solutions. Problem posters can write back and answer questions, ask further questions or give updates on how the situation turned out, which was my favorite part of the site. I used to be an avid reader of the site right up to this month. I even translated a few of the problems into English on this very site.

*(More accurately it’s actually 発言小町 hatsugen komachi that’s the name of the agony aunt section, but nvm)

What I liked

All the questions are moderated before being posted, and answers seem to be moderated as well. That means both questions and answers are almost always polite, well-formed and easy to read and understand. No flaming, no vulgarity or cursing or l33tspeak or excessive slang. It’s done wonders for my written Japanese, and I’ve learned lots of proverbs and sayings as well.

Getting updates and clarification from the original poster. Most traditional agony aunt column have the aunt give the answer and then that settles it. Sometimes there are comment sections where the readers can chip in, but you still don’t hear back from the poster about whether the advice helped or not.

Why I’m quitting

– Original poster updates are on the decline. It used to be that most posters were at least polite enough to come back and say “Thanks for the advice” even if they ended up not using it, but now they just post the question and disappear forever. Was the advice good? Did it help any? What happened? It’s like having a movie cut off in the middle. So frustrating!

-Too many defensive thread posters. It’s annoying when people post questions intended to serve as a rubber stamp for their own opinions. “I wasn’t wrong to do Terrible Thing X, was I?” Even if 200 posts follow telling them they were wrong, they either just ignore the thread, pick out the few ones that agree with them or argue endlessly that they’re right. It’s the rare, rare poster whose mind is swayed and can admit they’re wrong when they obviously are.

-Too many indecisive posters. They post the problem. They get advice. They don’t want to take the advice, so they keep coming up with objections. They’re called “でもでもだって” because they’re always finding excuses to everything.

e.g You want to get married, your boyfriend says he won’t marry you. “Find someone else” the advisers say. “But, but, I love him. But, but, what if there’s nobody else? But, but, what if he changes his mind? But, but…” And it just goes on and on and on. Same with people dealing with mooches or pushy neighbors, it’s always “But, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. But, but I don’t want to make things awkward” and on and on. Nowadays I avoid those “my boyfriend won’t marry me” (and it’s always the boyfriends, wonder why) threads on principle because the woman almost never leaves. She just hangs in there going “But but” until everyone loses interest and goes away.

-Too much divorce advocacy. It seems like more and more the only answer people have for any problem involving marriage is “Leave him!” or “Leave her!” Some of the issues are very serious, to be sure, especially those involving domestic violence. But the vast majority of problems can be solved with time, patience, communication and counselling. Especially when there are kids involved, there’s no way just moving out is the best solution.

-And it’s like the users don’t even consider separation as an option, they always leap straight to divorce, like it’s so easy. And yet those same users are super-critical of questions from divorcees and single parents. I mean only a fool would divorce someone just because people on the internet told them to, but the irresponsibility of the posters who would even suggest such a thing makes me shake my head. God hates divorce.

-Overall loosening of morals in general. In the past 4 years I’ve been reading Yomiuri Komachi, I’ve noticed a general loosening of standards, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. When I started reading, the overwhelming mood towards couples living together before marriage was negative. Don’t do it, it’s immoral, you’re wasting your time, just get married already, etc. All good advice. But recently it’s swung in the opposite direction. The number opposing it has gone way down, and those opposing it for moral as opposed to “He won’t marry you” reasons are close to zero.

-On similar note, in a recent thread a woman refused to sleep with a guy after the first date. Not only were there people in the thread saying she was being too hard-nosed but also almost all the responses assumed that she would be okay with sleeping with a guy she wasn’t married to if he would just ask her out first, or if they had gone on a few more dates instead of just one. The criticism directed at people who get pregnant before marriage has also gone way down – which is obvious since they’re basically encouraging people to jump into the sack with people they barely know. Such a huge decline in only four years, which makes me think it will only get worse in future.

tl;dr It was fun to read at first, but now the frustration outweighs the fun. Either I’m more sensitive to moral issues now thanks to the Spirit or there’s been a decline in morals, so it’s not as enjoyable to read. Reading stuff with people praising evil and putting down good is bad for spiritual growth, so it would be better for me to find a Christian advice forum and read the questions over there instead of expecting Biblical advice from non-believers. I’m done with Komachi Yomiuri.

Little Boy manga review

Little Boy is a miserable excuse for a manga. Its only redeeming feature is that it’s about baseball. And I suppose there might be points of interest for Mitsuru Adachi fans, since he drew the art for this series. Since this manga came out in 1974, early in Adachi’s career, it might be interesting to people seeking to trace the evolution of his art, before he settled on the same few character archetypes and evidently decided, why fix what ain’t broke? The story is by Mamoru Sasaki, who I’d never heard of before and hope to never hear of again.

I’ll skip lengthy explanations of the story and characters because it really doesn’t deserve it. I’ll just say it gets worse and worse as the series progresses and it’s a good thing Little Boy only lasted one volume. Gou, the main character only gets more and more difficult, rude, selfish and impossible to root for. In many series this is balanced out by letting you root for the rival instead, but all the “rivals” in this series show up for only a few pages a chapter to lose unceremoniously to Gou’s overwhelming skill and power. The one match he does lose isn’t satisfying either, because he isn’t that torn up over it. He’s just like, welp, gotta work harder. Typical shonen hero.

His ‘girlfriend’ Michi isn’t worth writing home about either. Gou threw one bloody ball (literally) which landed near her, and that makes her go all “I’ll follow you forever!” Michi even kicks up a stink when Gou agrees to marry another girl so the other girl can teach him a secret pitch (because that’s the kind of guy Gou is. He sucks.) The question of what she sees in him is never, ever answered. Unless it has to do with their mutual fetish for public peeing (yes, you read that right). Every Jack has his Jill, as the saying goes.

For the reasons I’ve mentioned above, Little Boy has zero merit as a romance or character-based manga. More importantly, because of the monotony of the matches, the nastiness of Gou and the colorlessness of the opposing batters, it has zero merit as a sports manga as well. The art is actually decent for a manga that old, and the action is always simple and easy to follow, but that’s as far as it goes for the positive side of this manga.

Amateur Slugger manga review

Amateur Slugger is a baseball romance drama manga, this time not about high school baseball or professional baseball but about amateur sandlot teams sponsored by local businesses. Apparently they’re quite common in shopping districts in Japan. Kousuke, a college player, plays for one of those teams. As a high school player his one claim to fame was hitting a homerun off an amazingly good pitcher during his final Koshien tournament. Now, as a sandlot player, Kousuke’s motto is “Don’t put pressure on me.”

One day, however, Yuuki Tsukasa, the girl on the cover, shows up at a game and strikes him out with ease. Turns out she’s the sister of Yuuki Toujiro, the pitcher he hit the homerun off, and she wants revenge. She even promises to give him her first kiss if he ever gets a safe hit off her.

Long story short, he gets the hit and she gives him the kiss. Turns out that while she did start out looking for revenge (because the homerun exacerbated her brother’s already terrible pre-game nervousness), she quickly discovered that Kousuke isn’t a guy who hates pressure, despite his claims, but rather one who performs best under pressure. She decides its her job to provide that pressure and one day get him to move up to a bigger stage in the baseball world. That’s it for the story.

Despite the “1” on the cover, Amateur Slugger is complete at one volume. While the story starts out about Kousuke, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that he’s a boring, overrated player and that Tsukasa is by far the more interesting and promising player. I mean, when you think about it seriously, a player who performs excellently under pressure but is meh everywhere else is basically useless. Sure Kousuke would probably play great in the playoffs, but you wouldn’t even get to the playoffs with him on your team.

Tsukasa, on the other hand, is a fantastic pitcher. Despite being a high schooler of diminutive size, hitting her pitches is enough to train Kousuke to handle her brother Toujiro’s pitches when said Toujiro shows up to challenge him. At that point Toujiro is a major league starting pitcher, which means Tsukasa is on the major league level as far as speed and form go. This makes her one of the best pitchers in Japan (if we can believe such a thing is possible), and a shoo-in to be a softball star if she ever takes it up.

If the manga had continued and had not ended with Kousuke and a starry-eyed Tsukasa starting a lust-fueled relationship, I’m sure eventually she would have noticed his feet (and whole body) of clay, as opposed to her own overwhelming talent, and the whole basis for their relationship would have crumbled into dust. As it is, things end pretty well. Kousuke gets his hit off Tsukasa as well as a base hit off her brother, Kousuke and Tsukasa hook up and may or may not start dating, Toujiro returns to the majors and continues to dominate, and business continues as usual in the shopping district.

Apart from the needless fanservice, some rather bad art, and the tendency of Tsukasa to do and say stupid things (like promising her virginity to the opposing pitcher if he wins), Amateur Slugger not a terrible manga by any means. The short length definitely works in its favor. Worth a read if you like sports romance manga and don’t mind some awkward fanservice.

Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! volume 1

Earlier this week, I read volume 1 of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! (がんばれ!!タブチくん!!), a 4-koma baseball manga by Ishii Hisaichi. Western fans might know him best as the guy who wrote the original manga that Studio Ghibli later adapted into “My Neighbors the Yamadas.” I’m on a baseball manga kick right now (as opposed to a real life baseball kick. I’m not that into real-life baseball), so I started this on a whim, but it turned out to be pretty good.

The most interesting thing about Tabuchi-kun – apart from the content, of course – is that it was based on the career of a real-life catcher/first baseman/cleanup hitter. In fact, “based on” is too mild. It straight up caricatured Koichi Tabuchi, right down to using his full name and team. Basically apart from his wife “Miyoko”, any named character in the manga is an actual human being.

Naturally this makes for interesting reading, but it can also make you uncomfortable when the comic gets a little mean-spirited. The whole series is aimed at pointing fun at Tabuchi, but sometimes it’s done in more cruel fashion and sometimes it’s mild and heart-warming. It’s sad to see Tabuchi booed out of the stadium or ostracized by his peers for no good reason other than that the mangaka just doesn’t like him.

It becomes even sadder when you go to J-wiki and read that the manga started right at the time when Tabuchi was playing poorly because he was recovering from a career-threatening injury that put him in the hospital for over three months and led to him gaining some weight. It’s like that tasteless “Derek Eater” headline the New York Post ran a couple of years ago, except imagine they ran that headline every week for 10 years, even long after Jeter had retired (not a Jeter fan, just saying).

Sample done by me. The real manga is in Japanese only.

However, it turns out that the real Koichi Tabuchi is a huge, open fan of the manga and absolutely loves it. He even credits it with helping him meet his current wife, so if anything he’s grateful for its existence. So if Tabuchi isn’t mad, then I’m not mad either. No one knows what other recurring characters like Yasuda (my favorite), Suzuki, Oh and Hirooka think of the series, but since they generally come across in a better light than Tabuchi does, they probably don’t have much to complain about.

This frees me to enjoy the silly, slightly mean humor of volume 1 for all it’s worth. I’m looking forward to reading the rest, because part of the humor comes from the interplay between characters like Yasuda and Ooya, and Tabuchi and Kakefu, and much of the first volume is spent just introducing and establishing those characters.

There are 3 volumes of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! and a further 5 volumes of the follow-up, Tabuchi-kun. You don’t need to know much about Japanese baseball to enjoy this manga, though it helps to know Sadaharu Oh, current holder of the world-record in career homeruns (868) since he shows up a lot. Apart from that, just substitute your favorite team and players and enjoy.

Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu introduces the pitcher and the catcher, which is very kind of it because you can’t really have a baseball manga without them. What’s more, it illustrates what I said in the last post about the tsundere catcher making everything awkward.

When you think about it, she probably has the most natural reaction to having a guy suddenly show up and become manager of a girl’s team (i.e. wtf is this guy’s problem?) but her prickly reaction stands out all the more because the rest of the team have resolutely determined that this it is not a problem.

Anyway, spoiling a bit here, but Ueda does relax a bit and get along better with the rest of the team as the series goes on (all 30 chapters of it). Unlike what you might expect, Masakiyo doesn’t pull a “mighty whitey” and solve all the girls’ problems for them. For the most part they work through their issues together as a team, and Masakiyo is mostly there on the sidelines supporting them. Also there isn’t really any romance in the series, so don’t get your hopes up.

Apparently, after series ended after 30 chapters in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, it was picked up by Weekly Shonen Magazine and rebooted as the rather more fanservicey 2-volume “Macmillan no Joshi Yakyuubu” series I thought the original ended very well, so I have no real interest in following the ‘sequel,’ but it’s out there if you finish this and are interested in what happens next. Happy reading!