Sticky review of 2015 － 2015年のネバネバしたレビュー －

The time of year after Christmas and before New Year is a strange one.  It’s a bit like being in an airport lounge.  You are comfortable enough.  There are plenty of snacks and cheap entertainment to keep you occupied.  But there is a sense that you are stuck between where you have just been and where you are going.

Many people try to fill the time with lists and reviews.  Do a quick internet search for “Review of 2015”, and you’ll quickly come across a whole range of reviews of the year from different perspectives.  In the first few pages I found the following:

ABC News - The Thirteen Biggest News Stories of 2015

The UK government’s  Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015

Best dishwasher of 2015 reviewed

From these, I have been reminded that:
1.
“From start to finish, many of this year’s biggest news stories were centred around violence, terror threats or a general sense of fear.”

2.
“The Uk will work with the rule based international order and help strengthen multi-lateral institutions.”

3.
“High-tech dishwashers effectively remove build-up from your dishes and leave them sparkling clean.”

I don’t know how I could have forgotten these things.

Well, if everyone else is filling in time by compiling lists, then so will I.  Here are links to my favourite three blog posts from the last year.  Relive the sticky, hard to remove blog build-up from 2015.
 

Do you like to kill people? Check A for Yes, B for No an C for Maybe... －人を殺すのが好きですか？A：はい、B：いいえ、C：もしかしたら・・・－ 

 

Better value for sumo passengers?　－ 力士のお客さんの方がお得？ －

 

 

 Getting older, getting better －年をとること、上手になること－

 

Happy New Year.  Best wishes for 2016.

Does Santa really like Christmas? －サンタさんは本当にクリスマスが好きなんですか？－

What do we really know about Santa Claus, otherwise known as Saint Nicholas?

1 - He lives at or near the North Pole.

It must be pretty cold up there.  There’s no public transport.  The cinemas play nothing but “It’s a wonderful life” over and over again.  Even if you go to the beach it’s too cold to swim, never mind the fact that you have to watch for polar bears. 

In short, Santa Claus probably isn’t satisfied with his work location.  

2 – He lives with elves or, some say, dwarves

Who are these magical helpers anyway?  Do they make good dinner companions?  Do they keep Santa company when he’s not flying around the world, giving presents to children?  Wouldn’t a healthy red-suited, red-blooded man rather spend time with rosy cheeked women, perhaps chatting over a newspaper and a cup of coffee?  And, as comedian Bill Hicks once pointed out, all of these are available for sale on the streets of New York.  In comparison, the company of magical “helpers” at the North Pole doesn’t seem like a great deal.

3 – On Christmas Eve, Santa manipulates time so that he can travel to the home of every child in the world in only one night

What a hard job!  Does he get paid overtime for this?  Have the elves got Santa on a zero-hours contract?

Honestly, imagine having to experience the excruciatingly long and boring task of visiting every child in the world, checking their names against some kind of good kids/ bad kids check list and shoving a Nintendo DS in their stockings, when you can’t even get electricity in the Arctic.  Then when a seeming eternity of work finishes, you find that the elves or dwarves or whatever they are, have used their magic so that only 24 hours have passed.  At 6 pounds and forty pence minimum wage, that’s not even going to cover your heating bill for the night.  And after that the elves make you go through a body search, unpaid, to check that you’re not stealing any of the presents!

I don’t think that Santa is getting a good deal at all.  I think those elves/ dwarves are keeping him up at the North Pole working under conditions of slavery!

Neil Gaiman agrees.  Here’s an extract from his very short story, “Nicholas was”:

“Once every year [the dwarves] forced [Santa], sobbing and protesting, into endless night.  During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside.  The children slept, frozen into time.  He envied Prometheus... His punishment was harsher.”

Merry Christmas to the good kids and to the bad kids, and to the overworked and suffering everywhere. 

 

Vocabulary:

“It’s a wonderful life” – The title of a famous movie from the 1940s, often shown at Christmas

red-blooded – Of a man, manly; masculine

to manipulate – to control; alter; operate

a zero-hours contract – An employment contract which does not guarantee a salary.  The worker is only paid for the time which they actually work.

excruciatingly – extremely painfully

to shove – to push something roughly

to sob – to cry

Prometheus – A god from Greek mythology, who was punished for giving fire to man by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten every day by an eagle 

Good news for grumpy people －イガイガする人に良いニュース－

“My favourite shows on tv have 12 minutes of advertising.  I can’t get behind that kind of time!”

“I can’t understand why the price of gas suddenly rises when oil goes up but takes months to go down long after oil falls.  I can’t get behind any of that!”

William Shatner and Henry Rollins on the very grumpy song, “I can’t get behind that”

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I am entering the grumpiest time of life.  Having just passed my 35^th birthday, I can confirm that I am at least 10 per cent grumpier than before.  Why is cheese so expensive in Japan?  Are cows in Hokkaido given a daily massage and a personalised fitness regime?  There’s just so much to be grumpy about!

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for us curmudgeons.  How many times have you heard that it is important to keep a positive attitude?  How many times have you heard that stress kills?  Urban legend would have it that viruses run away from a friendly smile.

Nonsense!

A massive study carried out by academics at the University of New South Wales and Oxford University has found the opposite.  They studied nearly 1 million women to investigate whether there was a link between being unhappy or stressed and increased rates of death.  The study tracked 700,000 women for 10 years, during which time 30,000 of them died.  The women were asked to rate how happy or stressed they felt.  After adjusting for lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking, and levels of exercise, the study showed that unhappy women and happy women died at the same rate.

Previous studies which had suggested that there was a link between unhappiness and early death had been confusing cause and effect.  People who were unhappy or stressed were more likely to smoke or engage in unhealthy behaviour.  This could then kill them.  Alternatively, people who were already ill or dying were obviously more likely to be unhappy and stressed.

Smiling doesn’t keep away viruses after all.

Hang on a minute.  This study only examined the effects on women!  Maybe grumpiness does kill men after all.  Damn!  My grumpy wife will be moaning into her nineties and I might choke to death on my grumpiness any day.  It’s just another example of how the world is so unfair!

I’m off to pour myself a drink and light a cigar. 

 

Vocabulary:

to get behind something – to support something

gas – In British English, we would say, “petrol”; fuel which powers your car

a regime - a method of organising something

an urban legend – a common belief passed from person to person, which is not based on science or proper research

to track something – to follow or check the progress of something

to hang on – to pause or stop for a moment

to moan – to complain in a nagging way

to choke – to find it hard to breathe or to suffocate

a cigar – something which is smoked, it is larger than a cigarette and contains tobacco

 

 

 

How to mock friends and irritate people – The Donald Trump guide to success －友人を嘲り、人をイライラさせるには ～ドナルド・トランプの成功ガイド－

“Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump.”
Donald Trump

 

“When Mexico sends its people [to the USA]... they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us.  They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.”

Donald Trump

The top story on the BBC news this week is Donald Trump.  He is campaigning to be the Republican Party nominee for US President.  He suggested this week that all Muslims should be banned from entering America.  I don’t know what to make of him.  Does he really think that he could be elected President with such divisive and controversial statements?

I have another theory.  He will say more and more controversial things and be criticised and talked about all over the world.  He will ultimately lose the nomination but will then use the huge publicity to sell something.  Since everyone is amazed at how successful his unusual campaign has been, a good option would be to sell a self-help book.  Here is a suggestion for the title: “How to mock friends and irritate people – The Donald Trump guide to success”. 

The title is of course based on Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book, “How to win friends and influence people.”  His book was first published in 1936, has sold over 15 million copies, and remains popular today.  Almost 80 years on, perhaps his theories need to be rethought for the current generation. 

And what if Donald Trump is the man to do it?  Below, I’ll compare some of the things Dale Carnegie wrote with what Donald Trump could write. 

Topic: Fundamental techniques in handling people

Dale Carnegie:

Don’t criticise, condemn or complain.

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Arouse in the other person an eager want.
 

Donald Trump:

Criticise, condemn and complain.  Mexicans, women and Muslims are particularly good targets.

Give entertainment and an enemy for people to blame.
Arouse in the media shock and disapproval.  People hate the media, so this makes you look good.

 

Topic: [3] ways to make people like you 

Dale Carnegie:
Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest sound in any language.
Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Donald Trump: Remember that your own name is the sweetest sound in any language.  Name a tower after yourself.
Be a braggart.  Talk about how great you are.
Make yourself seem important – speak about yourself in the third person.

William is going to finish his blog now.
p.s. I am great.  

Vocabulary:
 

to mock – to make fun of; to laugh at the expense of someone
 

to irritate someone – to make someone annoyed or angry
 

ISIS – The [so-called] Islamic State in Syria, a terrorist group
 

controversial – something which divides opinion
 

ultimately – finally; in the end
 

fundamental – most basic

to handle someone – to deal with someone
 

to condemn – to express complete disapproval of
 

a braggart – someone who brags, or praises him or herself or his or her own achievements
 

the third person – in speech or in writing, not referring directly to yourself (I, me etc.), and not the listener (you etc.), but another person (he, she, Donald Trump etc.)
 

When gourmets take to junk food －グルメがジャンクフードを楽しみ始めると－

I saw a BBC news article today which said that a ramen restaurant in the north of Tokyo has become the first restaurant of its kind to receive a prestigious one star rating by the restaurant guidebook, Michelin.

Ramen is a popular dish of noodles in soup, originally imported from China.  It is generally regarded as being cheap and unhealthy, somewhat akin to a fish supper or a late night kebab in the UK.

I live in an apartment a little removed from a busy road on which there is a ramen restaurant.  You can walk to the restaurant from my apartment in about one minute, by cutting through a narrow, dark alleyway.

About a year ago we started noticing a splatter of vomit appearing at the foot of our steps once a week.  The mess was always full of the mangled remains of chewed, swallowed and regurgitated ramen noodles.  Presumably, some binge drinker had gotten into the habit of drinking too much at a bar, getting peckish for ramen, and then realising that he couldn’t keep it down.  Hurriedly paying the bill, he looked across the street and found an inviting dark alleyway.  Stumbling quickly down the alleyway, he spewed his ramen gift at my doorstep before catching the last train home, happy with his evening’s entertainment.

Luckily, the binge drinking ramen eater has stopped his activities around my apartment.  Maybe one day he couldn’t make it out of the door in time and he vomited inside the ramen restaurant, forcing him to look for another quiet little corner of Tokyo to decorate.

Anyway, this experience is what I think of when I think of ramen.  It doesn’t seem like a gourmet dish to me.  Some ramen restaurants stew the bones of pigs in order to make the stock for their soup.  You can smell those places from several streets away.

Presumably, Michelin hasn’t awarded a one star rating to one of these noodle shops.  It would be only one step removed from giving a one star rating to a branch of MOS Burger.  It’s not that I don’t like fried potatoes...  I just don’t associate them with gourmet dining.

The BBC article didn’t give much information about the ramen restaurant which won the award.  They did say that you can get ramen noodles in a red wine sauce with rosemary barbecued pork.  It certainly sounds more appealing than pigs’ bones.  They also said that the restaurant has only 9 seats, and that a bowl of noodles costs between 7 and around 10 US dollars.  That would make it about 1,000 yen.

Perhaps one ought not to be prejudiced about food.  Just because ramen is cheap and has a reputation to match, it doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious.  I was thinking about what I would want for my last meal on Earth.  Rather than bother with an Italian restaurant serving lots of different courses, truffles and tiramisu, I might prefer something simple like natto and tuna donburi (meaning on a bed of white rice).  Besides being tasty, you can eat it quicker and get started on the alcohol sooner!

Oh no, I’m starting to sound like the mysterious Tokyo Ramen Vomiter.  It wasn’t me, honest.  I’m British.  After a night of heavy drinking, all I can think of is late night fish supper.  Yum! 

Vocabulary:

to take to something – An informal phrase, meaning to get into something; to start enjoying something

prestigious – highly respected, desired or valued

akin to – similar to

a fish supper – a British junk food speciality, consisting of fried fish in batter and chips (thick fried potatoes),

to cut through (an alleyway) – to go somewhere via a shortcut

an alleyway – a very narrow street, often at the back of houses or only accessible by pedestrians

a splatter – the mess left when something soft or containing liquid is messily spread over a wide area

to mangle – to break something up into a complete mess of many pieces or parts

to regurgitate – to vomit; to bring back food you have eaten

a binge drinker – someone who drinks a huge or excessive amount of alcohol in a short time

to be peckish – to be (slightly) hungry

to spew – an informal way to say “to vomit”

to be prejudiced – to have a biased or unfair view of something