J2J Episode 04: Kan you kankan?


Today's katakana-English puzzle is "peerueeru" (ペールエール).
What might it be?  Read on and find out, and I'll give you a hint:
it's not the same as the fizzy French mineral water "periee" (ペリエー).


Speaking of puzzles, I've decided to tackle a bigger one: the
平成12年度日本語能力試験 aka the 2000 Japanese Language Proficiency Exam,
level 2 to be precise.  Levels 3 and 4 are little more than trivial,
while passing level 1 is roughly equivalent to graduating from a Japanese
high school, but scoring the 60% required to pass on level 2 just
might be doable.  Not that this is a particularly easy task, mind you,
the 3-part exam takes the whole day and checks up on 1000 kanji,
listening ability and grammar -- albeit entirely through multiple choice.
This fun will also cost me 5420 yen plus 700 yen in postage plus
another 700 for the 3 photographs required for the test application.
Which, BTW, was quite lovely -- I'm sure there are just dozens of
native speakers of Kikongo (code 631) from St. Vincent and the Grenadines
(code AM37) drooling at the opportunity to certify their Japanese skills,
not least by having to fill out their address nine (9) times in kanji.
I already sorely regret not getting at least 20 pictures taken at a
studio in Finland for peanuts, as various applications ranging from
alien registration to gym pass have already swallowed up 12 if my
count is correct -- and the Japanese insist on requiring 3x4 cm photos
for some purposes and 4x5 pictures for others.  (Maybe I _should_
dye my hair pink and wear a tutu for the exam...)


It's still Obon time and it's also typhoon season, so lately
I've been going to a lot of museums.  I probably visited 20-odd
in Tokyo alone the last time around, but this is one city
where you could spend your life going to a new museum every day...
the English "museum" always seems musty and faded, but the
Japanese are careful to make a distinction between the
hakubutsukan (博物館), ie. historical museum; the bijutsukan (美術館),
the beautiful-craft-hall ie. art museum; and then just the plain
old kan (館), which these days tends to mean a company showcase.


My first destination was the recently opened and somewhat extravagantly
named 東京都写真美術館, the Tokyo Metropolitan (Art) Museum of Photography
in Ebisu Garden Palace.  Ebisu Garden Palace is yet another one of these
company-operated city-in-a-city systems that Japan is full of,
featuring shops, restaurants, hotels and a few tourist attractions in
a large, wide-open, clean, (more or less) tastefully decorated and above
all coherent package, all in drastic contrast to the crowded and chaotic
mix of the rest of urban Japan.  Entrance is through a long series of
moving sidewalks, all of which remind you to watch out for your honorable
little toesies, simultaneously but out of sync.  The effect is
downright eerie: "Ashiashiashimotomotomoto ni gogogogochuuchuui-i-i-i
kudakudasaisaisai."


Ebisu Garden Palace is masterminded by Sapporo Breweries (and the site is
in fact the former location of their main brewery), so I was sidetracked
to the inevitable Beer Museum! (麦酒記念館, lit. Barley-Alcohol
Recording-Memory Hall)  Definitely in the company showcase category, most
exhibits were a bit lackluster, although the etiquette collection was interesting
("BEER -- For Allied Forces Use Only.  Please Return: Losing Bottles Means
That Much Less Beer For You!").  The Virtual Brewery Virtual Adventure
features, and I quote, "3D screen and audio show you secrets which we can
never really find."  Indeed.  One secret I did learn is that the Sapporo,
Asahi and Yebisu labels are in fact all disguises for Sapporo (and probably
the same vat of beer, at that).


On the plus side, the Tasting Lounge of the museum is probably the only 
place in Tokyo where you can get 4 glasses of different beers from the
same vat for 400 yen.  (Even if they aren't particularly big glasses, mind you.)
Having had quite enough Sapporo beer the night before in Roppongi
thankee-very-much, I opted for a taste of Sapporo's attempt at stout
(サッポロ黒生ビール), which remained an attempt, and a rather feeble one with
a bad aftertaste at that.  Although not quite as bad as the one I would've
gotten from buying one of the neat "B.M." T-shirts or gift-wrapped packages
of beer jelly on sale in the museum shop,


Fortunately being in possession of the enzymes required to digest the
alcohol, I managed to navigate my way past the Tsutaya CCC (Culture
Convienience Club, ie. video rental shop) to the Photography Museum without
too much trouble.  The Museum's exhibits change constantly, but I was
lucky enough to catch an excellent one by chance: 「この国の記憶：
長野重一・写真の仕事」(A Chronicle of Japan by Nagano Shigeichi).
An astounding collection of black and white photographs gathered over
50 years, from 1945 all the way to 2000, documenting the rise of Japan
from the ashes of WW2 and the dark side of the economic miracle.
The tone was often somber -- the very first picture shows the ruins of
his own house, firebombed in the war -- and a few pictures really hit
home: the bombed-out shell of the Mitsukoshi Department Store in the
Ginza (later to become a symbol of Japan's wealth), the reconstruction of
the Sensou-ji Temple in Asakusa, which can also be written in different
characters to mean war (戦争/浅草), the hastily wrapped form of a
salaryman who had just committed suicide by jumping off a building,
blood trickling down towards the drain...  and the pictures of the
rural Japan that has now ceased to exist, young couples rowing bales of
rice to the market and peasants trudging amidst thatched houses in
the frozen valleys of the Snow Country (雪国) in Tohoku... and series on
mine closures (the locked door of a shaft with graffiti scribbled on it:
"サヨナラ...サヨナラ...バカ"), the student protests against the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, even two short sequences on divided Berlin
and the Buchenwald concentration camp.


I returned home through Shibuya, where Eminem yelled "May I have your
attention please!" from all three 5-story video screens suspended
above Hachiko Square simultaneously.  Fine, just give it back when
you're done.  After a meal at the first Ethiopian restaurant I've
ever been to (commendably authentic, at least as far as I can say,
having never eaten the Real Thing), I went on another 100-yen
shopping spree (I bought a bag of nattoo-flavored hard candy for a
friend who has the misfortune of not being on the J3J list) and I even
discovered the aspirations of the traditional Japanese housewive condensed
into a single pithy slogan: "Clean toilet and fine life."  Let's!


And the answer to the puzzle: "peerueeru" is that old British
standby, pale ale, on tap at Ebisu's "What the Dickens" British pub.
No, I didn't get it either.


(BTW, if you're wondering what the title of this episode means,
it's a trilingual pun in English, Japanese and Mandarin.  The first
person to decypher all three gets a free bag of nattoo candy!)


ObTechno: This weekend, Future Sound of London, Richard Harvey,
Subhead and Thomas Krome at an outdoor party on Mt. Fuji!  Eat
your hearts out, suckaz...  and it's time to see how well my
funky new Tokyo U. instant-respectability T-shirt and handy-dandy
everready "日本語できる！" (I speak Japanese!) sign work at
getting rides.


Chiaazu,
-j.