As probably happens to quite a few blogs, other things in the world intrude, and the blogging has to take second fiddle to real life. For me, it's the knowledge that I'm going to have to rent a Japanese apartment (about 2 months of rent up-front for first-month and deposit, and about 3 months worth of rent in a never-seen-again institutionalized bribe they call "key money." That means it costs you $4000 at the start to get into an $800/month apartment), but also that I'm going to have to get serious about getting rid of this mass of clutter I call an apartment while at the same time meeting my deadlines. There's also the visa stuff and other personal business...

The saving grace is that in previous years in Japan, I find that my writing increases dramatically when I get over there. Writing has been a good substitute for therapy when I need to get frustrations out or just feel like communicating in English. So the blog should pick up pretty well a week or two after arriving in Japan.

But also, in the meantime, there are days when I just have to run on at the keyboard, and this is my site for that. It won't be regular, but I imagine there will be things to get off my chest before the move as well.

So the dojo will be mostly self-study for present. Anyone who needs a question answered, Contact Sensei still works, and I can usually get a response out in a few days of receiving the question or comment. But unfortunately Sensei's Ramblings will not be an everyday affair for a few months. Sorry about that.

Talk to you soon,
Sensei

Posted by dojosensei at 08:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for the sudden disappearance. A manga had to be finished and sent to the publisher, and I needed to set aside just about everything and finish it. These outages may happen from time to time.

Posted by dojosensei at 10:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Which means that today, I'll be taking another short break to concentrate on work.

But a few quick notes...
Ow! We were number 1, but then came a freight train called Fruits Basket.

If anyone is wondering why my prior 2002: The Odyssey post was so Viz-centric (without searching through the whole dojo for the answer), I was Editor-in-Chief of the Viz editorial department during the time of the change-over.

Garage Sale update: If anyone buys the featured DVD - Dead Again, I'll throw in the Japanese tankôbon for Akazukin Chacha volume 2 for free. Just because I think Dead Again is such a great movie! (But follow the rules at the bottom of the Dead Again Garage Sale page.

Will post tomorrow.

Posted by dojosensei at 10:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, this has little to do with translation, but I just heard some great news. Misaki Itoh is going to play Kyoko Otonashi in next Spring's Maison Ikkoku dorama!

If you're not familiar with how Japanese TV dramas (doramas) work, they run 9-12 episode complete stories during four seasons worth of a broadcast year. There have been occasional "double season" doramas, but those are the exception. If a dorama is extremely popular, they will have a sequel series about a year or so after the original dorama aires. (NHK doesn't follow this general pattern, but most of the commercial networks have at least a few doramas every season.) Some recent top-rated dorama include the Socrates in Love dorama and the Summer of 2005's Trainman dorama.

Misaki Itoh is a 29-year-old actress who, years ago, was one of the two stars of the You're Under Arrest dorama adaption, and she played the supporting role of the "pretty teacher" in the first adaptation of the manga-based Gokusen. But her breakout role was the lovely Hermes in Trainman last year. Since then she's had two or three more doramas that are basically vehicles for her. Although she's 29, she's a good choice for the character of Kyoko since she has some comedy chops. Her timing isn't as spot-on as, say, Izumi Inamori or Yuko Takeuchi, but she can hold her own. This means that the dorama will be anchored much better than the 1980s Maison Ikkoku movie was since it was used as a vehicle for a couple of relatively talentless idols at the time. (Although Yotsuya was brilliantly portrayed in that movie.)

I'm a little worried about the compression that will take place to stuff the 15-volume series into about 11 episodes. I'm sure Nikaido, who was even dumped from the 2-year-long anime, will never see the light of day, but I'm a little worried that a great character like Yagami will be dropped for space. Also, most dorama mirror the season they're broadcast in, so they usually take place over the course of 12 weeks within the dorama as well as in real life. But with MI, Godai takes something over five years (seven or so?) to gradually change from a hopeless teenager into a man who is worthy to marry Kyoko. It'd be hard for him to change realistically over the course of three months.

Maison Ikkoku means a lot to me. Not only because I worked on the subtitles for about the first half of the television series working freelance for Viz in the mid 1990s (until I actually got hired by Viz, then I didn't have time to continue it anymore), but Maison Ikkoku tought me more Japanese than any of my human Japanese teachers. After the first year, and especially when I was in Japan on the exchange program, I would pull out MI every couple of months and give reading it another go. It had no furigana (pronunciation guides written next to kanji), so I had to look up each kanji in my Nelson's dictionary, and some of the conversation (especially Akemi and Ichinose) were pretty slangy. But Kyoko, Godai, and Yotsuya always spoke very polite Japanese so it was very nice to see polite (masu- and desu-style) in action. And the subject matter was always very domestic, so most of the vocabulary I learned on it was useful in my everyday life in Japan.

I'm a dorama fan, so I'll be watching it on a weekly basis this coming Spring. I hope they do a good job with it.

Posted by dojosensei at 09:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Sensei is looking around at his apartment and realizing that if I intend to move to Japan this winter (which Mrs. Sensei is anxiously awaiting), that I'm going to have to get rid of a lot of this stuff. Japanese apartments are not the storage extravaganzas that American apartments can be. Books, DVDs, toys and tons of other things have to be waved a tearful farewell.

Do you want some of it?

If you do, then Sensei has a deal for you! In an effort to get rid of many Japanese-related things that will not fit into the new confined space (such as untranslated manga and Japanese toys that I've picked up over the years), I'm including them as extras for the dojo readers when you buy sensei's non-Japanese-related stuff. Since the sites I'm using (Amazon, mostly) only gives a small shipping allowance that doesn't leave room for adding an extra pound to single DVD shipments, I can't add books or toys to most videos you buy. Instead, I'll add a signed personalized card from Sensei, so you get at least something extra. But on books, DVD boxed sets, toys, etc., I can afford to send along a goodie.

I'll be working through Amazon's Marketplace and E-Bay, depending on what seems most appropriate for the item. So you will need a credit card for the Amazon items, and you'll need a Paypal account for the E-Bay stuff. Also, these are big, public sites, so the items will be available to anyone who uses those services, but the extras are only available to dojo visitors. Once you've bought one of my items, use Contact Sensei to let me know that you've bought it. (There are a couple of details -- and you'll find them written on the item pages -- that you need to include in your Contact Sensei e-mail. This isn't generated from legal advice. I just don't want anybody to get something they or their parents -- if they the buyer is a minor -- aren't prepared for.)

Go to Sensei's Garage Sale to see what I have on sale at the moment. Stuff will be constantly sold or added to the list. Four DVDs have already been sold, so my photos and web pages for those items were wasted. (Waaaah!) But that's what I get for listing things I want to sell.

Some will not be the lowest price available for the item, but they're the lowest price I can afford to sell it for (and still get you your goodie). If you buy from somebody else -- no goodie. It's only for buying my stuff. On E-Bay, make sure you're buying from Santogill. On Amazon, make sure it's from Dojosensei.

So take some of Sensei's stuff off his hands and help out a little bit with the move. (Don't worry, Sensei will be blogging in Japan too.) Maido!

Posted by dojosensei at 11:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to the bookscan report I pick up (for a fee) from Book Standard online magazine, Tsubasa Volume 10 debuted in the number one position beating out a whole slew of Naruto manga!! And according to Love Manga, it placed number #95 on the USA Today book-sales list. Go CLAMP! (Thank you, CLAMP, for padding my resume!)

I'm going to use this as an excuse to take a day-long break from my normal blogging and use the morning to work on a few projects that need working on. One is a new section for the dojo, of which you'll learn more in the near future. Another project is continuing the translation of the recently-announced Mushishi manga (Yay!). And a third project is laundry. Yes, Sensei's dogi will not stink tomorrow (but stay upwind today).

Edit: Sensei should read Love Manga with more care. I made a mistake on how high Tsubasa Volume 10 ranked on the USA Today charts. It's fixed now.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you sneak into the back of the dojo to that rarely used back room, and slide open the shoji screen, you'll see sensei there staring at the ceiling, or from time to time, pulling out an old computer game and letting his brains drip out of his ear.

Sensei just got back from the extended convention trip and is today recovering. He is catching up on recorded TV programs, erasing the huge loads of e-mail that all seem to have variations on misspellings of the word "viagra," and answering the e-mail that needs to be answered today.

But the dojo is open again. The doors leading outdoors are all open, and the hall is cleaned up and ready for your practice again. Sensei will begin his regularly scheduled ramblings tomorrow, so you can look forward to that. (Or sigh in resignation to the inevitable -- whatever is your style.)

I'll be long-winded tomorrow.

Posted by dojosensei at 01:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah, Sensei is finished with the manga death march and is cleaning up the tatami mats, hanging up the honyaku dogi, airing out the back rooms, gathering up the cooler, tents, fishin' poles, and packing up the station wagon.

Of course I won't be ignoring my sensei duties completely. I'll be prowling the San Diego Comic-Con International for a good portion of this break, and I'll have my full sensei regalia on for the Lost in Translation panel on Friday evening. If you're at the con, come up and say hi!

But the dojo will be available only for self training during this two-week break (no parties while I'm gone!! It's no fair to have parties without me), and I'll be back to crack the whip on July 26th or the 27th (depending on how bad the convention/vacation hangover is).

Your assignments are:

Novice, White Belts: Recite your "te" form five times a day.

Novice, Yellow Belt: Engage an elderly Japanese person in conversation at a bus stop.

Apprentice, Brown Belt, 1st Degree: Read Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.

Apprentice, Brown Belt, 2nd Degree: Go to SDCC!! This is the con to be at.

Jouneyman, Black Belt, 1st Degree: At the con, hand your card to all manga & anime companies.

Journeyman, Black Belt, 2nd Degree: Just enjoy the illusion of your importance.

Journeyman, Black Belt, 3rd Degree: Buy yourself one new dictionary.

Journeyman, Black Belt, 4th Degree: Introduce yourself, and let's swap stories.

Masters: Tell me how you got there.

Take care, everybody!

Posted by dojosensei at 10:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Like I said a couple of days back, I'll be hosting a panel for translators at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. This is a recurring panel at the con that I've been setting up for (at least) six of the past seven years. 2003 was a hell year as far as work load was concerned, so I couldn't make it to the con and couldn't find someone else to run the panel for me. But for the four years before and the years since, I've been able to find translators who are both going to the con and want to be on a panel.

David Welsh of Precocious Curmudgeon found my post about the panel on The Engine, a forum set up by the very successful comics writer Warren Ellis that is frequented by quite a few comics industry professionals. In response he said this:

I can't find it on the con's official schedule, but Bill Flanagan mentions a "Lost in Translation" panel over at The Engine that will feature Flanagan (who works on XxxHOLic for Del Rey), Jonathan Tarbox, and Jake Forbes, among others. (No women though, which strikes me as odd. Based on a quick scan of the titles on my shelves, at least half of the translators working in manga are women. Maybe they all devoted their travel budget to Anime Expo? Tarbox and Forbes should guarantee a lively hour, though.)

Since I've heard several other people aside from David wonder at how I determine panelists, let's dispense with a few mistaken impressions about the panel. The panelists aren't chosen by some judge who looks upon all translators and chooses the ones considered most worthy to have a seat on the panel. (I wish!!) The panelists are found by me looking through my list of contacts, sending out the e-mail, and trying to wrangle up three or four people who know, in April, that they will have enough time and money to go to the convention, have an open enough schedule to promise to be at the panel whenever they schedule us, and are willing to speak in public. (Translators spend most of their time alone in front of computers. Public speaking is not a job requirement.)

There is an order in which I contact people, though. I give panel veterans the chance to join the panel before I send an e-mail to someone new. But aside from a year when the entire panel consisted of European comics translator Dwight Decker and myself, I've always managed to get at least one new person on the panel every year. This year will be Jake Forbes' first time.

(On a side note: I love David's blog and am a fan of his balanced coverage of comics and manga. I stop by Pre-Cur pretty much every day.)

To answer one of David's comments, I never even thought of male-to-female ratios this or any year. I was trying my best to get diversity of specialties and diversity of client companies for the panel makeup. I managed to get diversity of companies, but unfortunately most of the translators this year are in the manga field. Charles McCarter will be our anime expert. (Last year I was able to get in anime, games, and European comics into the mix.) As for gender, Julie Davis is something of a panel regular and Trish Ledoux has been on at least one panel in the past, but this year, none of the ladies I was able to contact were coming to the convention.

Besides, as far as I know, gender really isn't an issue in this profession. When I was editing at Viz, which translator did which series was entirely based on availability, and when more than one person was available, what translator's talent would be best suited to the manga. For example, when we were able to license Revolutionary Girl Utena, I knew that the first person to offer it to was Lillian Olsen for the literal translation. I knew that she'd put in the time reading through the series carefully to spot the symbolism. The adaptation went to Fred Burke because he was the best that Viz had in weird or occult-oriented manga. We never really saw the freelancers so it was easy to judge by skill (and on-time performance, of course) rather than any other factor.

Of course, if any translator feels that gender, race, orientation, or other distinguishing feature is a factor in the way translation companies choose talent, please use Contact Sensei and let me hear your thoughts on it. I'd be fascinated to hear other points of view.

Also, if you're a translator in the industry, and you'd like to be on the panel, write to me at Contact Sensei, and I'll add you to my list of contacts. (I can't guarantee you a spot, but I promise that you'll be in the running.) Let me know how long you've been in the industry and the names of some of the books you're proud of.

Still, David is right, Tarbox and Forbes does guarantee a lively hour and a half.

Posted by dojosensei at 09:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To anybody who tried to download the San Diego Comic-Con programming PDF file... um... That was actually last year's file.

Bad Sensei! Bad, bad Sensei!

I've edited the file so that it presently doesn't link to anything.

Posted by dojosensei at 11:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To give credit where I think it's due, I first heard the phrase spoken by Julie Davis, the brilliant editor of the late, lamented Animerica magazine. It was perfect, so I've stolen the phrase and use it whenever I can.

(Please note that below, I am using "he" as a generic pronoun since the gender-neutral pronoun "per" flopped heavily during the early stages of the feminist movement. Gender neutral language is a pain in generic descriptions such as the one below. I want it established that this is in no way discrimination. I firmly believe that women can be just as stupid as men sometimes.)

A guy goes to Japan, and perhaps lives there for a while. While living there, he discovers something that is popular in Japan but hasn't quite made it in the West yet. The person does some research, learns a little about the discovery, and decides that this might be a good experiment -- a potentially profitable investment -- to make when he gets back to his home country. And since he's done some research, he has decided that he knows everything about the discovery.

When he comes back to the west, he realizes, to his surprise, that other companies have made the discovery before him. But going over their products, he sees details that they've missed. He will do this product RIGHT! He knows what's right because he did that research! Prior performance be damned, he KNOWS what makes the product tick because the way HE'LL do it is how they did it in Japan.

He is the FIRST GAIJIN IN JAPAN!!! He's been there! He knows all!

That's the type of guy who thinks that because he's been over there, he is gifted with perfect knowledge that is greater than the combined knowledge of those around him. This kind of arrogance is reminiscent of The Greatest Translator in the World phase of translating, but it usually happens to entrepreneurs.

Do you remember when TokyoPop first came out as Mixx Entertainment with their MixxZine? They used print fonts rather than the more conventional hand-printing-style fonts because Japan used print fonts. They also had a policy that all of the sound effects should be real words since most onomatopoeia in Japan are used quite frequently in Japanese conversation. That led to sound effects like BLOOOOW for when the wind blew. (Something that caused me no end of amusement while reading manga in the mid-to-late 90s.)

They basically ignored 80 years of U.S. comics history because they thought that changing the font and changing some of the sound effects would make a difference. What they didn't take into account is the thing that makes a difference in manga is the story. Given an equal choice, people would rather have a nice, accurately translated, well proof-read, and competently lettered manga, but really, there is no choice. Only one version of a best-selling manga will ever come out in the U.S., and if it's a good enough story, people will read it no matter how well or poorly it's done. Sailor Moon sold great with sound effects like BLOOOW, and would have sold great no matter how the sound effects were translated.

But those types of ideas are typical for the First Gaijin in Japan syndrome. Basically taking superficial, cosmetic differences, and thinking that they are the cause of the success or failure of a product. The arrogance comes from personal pride in the discovery. The syndrome doesn't stop at manga, it will happen in any of the Japanese originated fields such as flower arranging, martial arts, tea ceremony, Buddhism or Shintoism, etc. Somebody will come back to their home country feeling that they have special knowledge, never realizing that their knowledge hasn't ever really been a secret in the first place.

Posted by dojosensei at 06:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As a prospect, I understood that one would never become famous being a translator, and since I've never really sought out fame, conceptually, that was fine with me. But like most people, I've never actually seen real fame in action.

Then along came Pokemon.

Of course, real fame never actually brushed me personally, even with a juggernaut like Pokemon. There were a few people who foolishly asked me to sign autographs since I had "something to do with it" (I wonder if those autographs actually brought the value of the manga down), but when I said that I was the translator, most people nodded with an uncomfortable smile, then went off looking for someone important to sign their merchandise.

But real fame brushed the manga author, Toshihiro Ono, at the San Diego Comic Con in 1999, and I was right there to witness it.

Ravening hoards. That's the only way to describe it. I guess rumor had gone around that he was the "creator of Pokemon" rather than the author of a manga based on the anime and game. So there were huge numbers of people who wanted him to sign cards from the collectible trading card game, anime tape and DVD boxes, plushies (difficult to sign), T-shirts, and even bootleg material. And it didn't end. Remember that scene from The Mummy when countless people from the town are all stumbling forward chanting "Imhotep, Imhotep..." in never-ending waves? That's my memory of that convention.

Still, most of the ravening hoards were young and enthusiastic about Pokemon, and that makes up for a lot of ravening. But the worst parts of the convention were not the hoards themselves but the hoards' mothers.

We knew that with the popularity of Pokemon, there would be far more people in the signing line than could reasonably receive even a signature let alone a sketch. So we made up some cards on a nice, white, heavy paper stock, photocopied some of his cute Pikachu images on them and asked Mr. Ono to sign them ahead of time. So we had a good-sized stack of them ready at the signing. During the first half hour, we realized that he wouldn't go through many people at all giving them sketches (he wanted perfect sketches for each person), so we informed the line afterwards that it would only be signatures from that point on. Then when it was about 15 minutes until the end of the signing, we informed the still-long line that they would have to make do with a handshake and the pre-signed card.

That's when a few children started crying and more than a few mothers went on the war path. (Especially one who got in only minutes before the line was closed.) I guess they assumed that Mr. Ono was like a bank -- if you get in there before closing, you are entitled to full service. And invoking reality to these people went nowhere. I tried to explain that a man gripping a pen for more than two and a half hours will wear him out a little. He isn't a signing machine. But that argument didn't make any difference to the angry mother of a crying child. In the end, the only thing I could do was be the villain. Direct their anger on me rather than on him. Pretend that my arbitrary rules were the cause of the unfairness of the world, and allow them to vent.

I guess it's the never-ending line of people and the unreasonable expectations that convinced me that a career choice of a great degree of anonymity was the way for me!

Posted by dojosensei at 07:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)