Nasty tricks and technological tongues －悪意のあるトリックとテクノロジー舌

“Who do you think you are: Windows 10?”

An angry outburst directed against a persistent salesman, overheard in Tokyo 

I wrote a few weeks ago about the rough seduction tactics of Bill Gates’ Microsoft with regards to Windows 10.  I was annoyed that the pop up message asking users to change to the new operating system kept appearing again and again every 20 minutes and couldn’t be gotten rid of.

When there is some new product being offered, I expect its makers to smile at me, flash their eyes, laugh at my jokes, and perhaps to reveal a hint of perfume.  I want to feel enticed to take the product home with me as an act of my own free will.  In contrast, Microsoft’s pop up messages for Windows 10 have felt more like being grabbed on the street and having Bill Gates’ tongue forced down my throat.

And it’s not just me who thinks so.  I had begun to wonder if I was just an old-fashioned gentleman, unused to the new seduction techniques practiced by a more liberal minded, technology driven age.

But I read an article about Microsoft’s pushing of Windows 10 on the BBC News web site this morning which shows otherwise.  Apparently Microsoft have had to change their style of marketing Windows 10 after sustained customer complaints.  People have been unintentionally installing the new operating system by trying to close the persistent pop up message.  If you clicked the cross at the top-right of the message then Microsoft was interpreting this as accepting the upgrade.  Normally, of course, clicking the cross has the exact opposite effect.  One commentator called this a “nasty trick”, and likened it to swapping the brake and accelerator pedals on a car.

According to the BBC article, Microsoft will keep sending hold-outs like me annoying pop up messages.  But they will “[provide] the customer with an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade”.

Here’s a suggestion for you Bill: Try to be a bit less forceful.  Some of us don’t like it.  When Windows 11 comes out, you can make it up to me with chocolates and flowers.  And no more technological tongues, please, until we know one another better.

 

Vocabulary:

an outburst – a sudden strong expression of an emotion

to overhear – to hear without intending to

rough – violent; forceful; impolite

sustained – continued

to liken A to B – to suggest that A is like B

a hold-out – one of the last people resisting a change, military attack etc.

 

 

 

Dipping one’s toes into Hakone －箱根につま先をひたす－

Last week I took a short trip to Hakone.  It is a couple of hours away from Tokyo, amongst mountains and volcanos.  It is a popular tourist destination in the summer, since its high elevation makes it cooler than the urban areas below.

I like the idea of volcanos.  I climbed one years ago in Indonesia, and ate blackened eggs cooked in boiling, sulphurous water.  You can do the same sort of things in Hakone.  There are active volcanos, the same blackened eggs, and plenty of hot springs, heated by the natural processes of the Earth.

The trouble is that the volcanos in Hakone are a little bit too active.  One erupted fairly recently and people had to be evacuated from their homes and tourists kept away.  No one really knows when a volcano which has been pleasantly warming your bath, cooking your eggs for you in an interesting if slightly smelly way, and bringing in a steady stream of visitors, is going to turn nasty.  It’s a little like being married.

Well, I don’t like hot springs anyway.  I’m a Scotsman with pale skin and a low tolerance for heat.  So my wife and I decided not to fully immerse ourselves in hot springs or hikes around volcanos.  We found a lovely cafe called Naraya.  It calls itself an “ashi-yu cafe”, or a cafe with a hot water foot bath.  We sat outside with our legs soaking up the hot water, while we ate sweets and drank coffee at the table above.

It was a modest trip, I admit.  We enjoyed the food in an Italian restaurant, strolled around the lakeside and up to Hakone Shrine.  We explored an outdoor museum and ran into a screaming child who was determined not to appear in a group photo.  We searched in vain for the yodelling channel on the cable tv in our hotel room, and settled for the Okinawan folk music channel instead.  I’m not sure we found the real Hakone but sometimes it’s best just to dip your toes in the water.

 

Vocabulary:

elevation – height above sea-level

sulphurous – containing sulphur, the smelly element often found around volcanos

to erupt – of a volcano, to violently explode or release material from within the Earth

to immerse oneself in something – to become completely engaged or involved in something

to do something in vain – to unsuccessfully attempt to do something, or to do something for no reward

to dip one’s toes in the water – of an action, to do something just a little, without fully engaging or committing oneself

 

Loaded questions, half male/half female partners, and missing body parts －誘導的な質問、半分男性で半分女性の恋人、欠けた身体のパーツ－

“How am I to get in?” asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

“Are you to get in at all?” said the footman.  “That’s the first question, you know.”

From Lewis Carroll’s, “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland”

 

Police department web page: If you have committed a crime and want to confess, click “Yes”.  Otherwise, click “No”.

[Man clicks “No”.] 

Police department web page: You have chosen “No”, which means that you have committed a crime but don’t want to confess.  A [police car] is now speeding to your home.

From American tv show, “The Simpsons” 

Some questions aren’t fair.  A famous example is the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”  If you say, “Yes”, then you are admitting that you used to beat your wife.  If you say, “No”, then you are admitting that you beat your wife now.  There is no option being left for someone who has never beaten their wife.  This is sometimes called a loaded question.  The question contains an assumption, which is not necessarily true: in this case, that at some point in the past, you beat your wife. 

I heard another loaded question posed on the radio recently.  There was a gay rights campaigner, who argued that it was wrong to think of people as either one thing or the other – either gay or straight.  He argued that we should instead think of everyone as being on a line, perhaps closer to being gay or straight, rather than wholly one or the other.  He may well be right.  But I couldn’t help but laugh at the unfair way he tried to demonstrate his point.  He asked a question like this: Would you rather your partner was a woman on the top half and a man on the bottom half, or a man on the top half and a woman on the bottom half?  Whichever answer someone gave, he could then show that they at least partly accepted the idea of both a male and female partner.  There was no option to choose someone a little more ordinary.

For a different reason, I got into trouble answering an impossible question many years ago when I was a primary school student.  My teacher had had an unfortunate accident ice-skating, and had lost a large part of two of her fingers.  One day when I was playing in the playground, I hit my head quite hard and sat on the ground feeling groggy.  My teacher came running over and wanted to make sure I wasn’t suffering from concussion.  She held up her damaged hand and asked, “How many fingers can you see?”

I sensed danger and thought hard.  “Three and a half, Miss,” I said, as honestly as I could.  When she got angry I thought it was so unfair.

I am going on a short break from this Thursday, and don’t have as much time as usual to write my blog.  Would you rather read a stupid article, or a lazy and poorly researched one?  Too late!

Vocabulary:

to pose (a question) – to put forward, present or set something such as a question, dilemma or challenge

straight – In this sense, heterosexual; someone attracted to members of the opposite sex

groggy – a feeling of dizziness or lack of mental clarity

concussion – damage suffered after a blow to the head, often causing temporary loss of consciousness

 

Having junior high-school students negotiate your business deals －あなたのビジネスディールを中学生に交渉させるー

You run a small Japanese company.  You have patiently grown the business on a tight budget.  Every decision - whether to hire a new member of staff, where to rent an office, from whom to purchase your raw materials - has been taken with painstaking care.  You know that most businesses fail within the first few years.  You have been running at a loss, running up debts that you hope to pay back when the business matures.

And now along comes a critical opportunity.  A foreign company is interested in buying your products.  The success or failure of this deal could make or break your business.  So you send your most trusted employee to give a sales pitch and conduct the negotiations.  It will have to be done in English, of course.  But don’t worry.  All of your employees are fully trained in business English.  They did an on line course.  The course providers promised that junior high-school level English was fine, if only you knew how to use it.  It promised to give your employees sufficient business English skills from only 1,500 words.  So what could go wrong?

Now that scenario might sound rather fanciful.  But I haven’t entirely made it up.  A good friend of mine who works for a small Japanese company was recently asked to do further business English training.  The training course used only junior high-school level grammar and vocabulary.  The course claimed that a knowledge of just 1,500 English words was enough for dealing with normal business situations.  Their argument was that business English is mostly spoken by non-native speakers.  For a Japanese company, you might be dealing with a Chinese or Korean company, whose staff also speak English as a second language.  So, unlike native speakers, they will tend to use simple sentences and vocabulary.

That argument does make some sense.  I have occasionally taught students who were obsessed with perfecting an American accent.  If a Japanese person is speaking to a Chinese person, I don’t see why either of them has to have an American accent.  But they do need to know a lot of words that junior high-school students don’t study in Japan.  Could a typical junior high-school student explain why one piece of financial software was more efficient than another?

One of the example sentences being taught by the business English course was, “I want a nice apple.”  I am struggling to think of a business situation in which this sentence might be useful.  Your company makes apple juice?  An apple farmer tries to sell you some apples that aren’t nice?

[a, the, an, one, two, is, I, and, nice, apple]

That’s ten words.  You only have 1,490 left!

There are no shortcuts to learning a language.  Don’t believe in magic solutions such as tapes which teach a language in your sleep, English courses which can be learned without any effort, etc.  On the other hand, if you are just going on holiday or learning English for fun, knowing ten words can be much better than knowing none at all.

[Sorry, Thank you., I don’t understand., Yes, Please, No, Beer]

With only these ten words, you can have a great holiday.

And here are some more words...

Vocabulary:

raw materials – materials before they have been processed – for example, in a paper factory, wood may be a raw material

painstaking – needing a lot of care, effort and attention to detail

to run up debts – to accumulate debts, or money that you owe to another person

(for a business) to mature – (for a business) to move from an early stage to a later stage of development

to make or break – to be either a great success or very damaging failure

a sales pitch – a speech, demonstration etc. in order to sell something

fanciful – unrealistic; imaginary

Escalator Wars - Making a mountain out of a moving mole-hill エスカレーター・ウォーズ －動くモグラ塚から山を作る－

 “All they say is ‘Please mind the doors’,
And they learn that on the two day course.
This job could be done by a four-year old;
They just leave us freezing in the cold.
What you smell is what you get:
Burger King and [pee]and sweat.
You roast to death in the boiling heat,
With tourist treading on your feet,
And chewing gum on every seat,
So don’t tell me to ‘Mind the gap’:
I want my [bloody] money back!”
From parody song “London Underground” by Amateur Transplants
 

How many angry blogs have been written about public transport?  It seems like a topic with unlimited possibilities for anger.  There’s the way perfectly healthy people fight for seats in the priority section, the crazy rush-hour train experience in big cities, and etiquette controversies surrounding the use of phones, passengers putting on make-up and so on.  But recently on the London Underground there is a controversy before you even get on the train.

It is about walking on the station escalators.  Up to this point, the etiquette in Britain has been to encourage people who wished to stand to move to the right side of the escalator, and for others to walk past them on the left side of the escalator.

Common sense surely shows that walking up escalators is more annoying than useful.  Do you really have to barge past me, wildly swinging elbows, a briefcase and an umbrella, just to get to the top 5 seconds earlier?  If you’re that keen on mountaineering, couldn’t you instead climb a mountain, or at least the stairs?

In fact, research now shows that you’re not even getting to the top five seconds faster.  Especially if it is a long escalator, you are actually getting there more slowly.  Or at least on average most people will get to the top more slowly.  When London Underground experimented with an escalator on a crowded platform, they found that making everyone stand greatly improved efficiency.  The number of passengers able to use the escalator in one hour rose from 12,745 to 16,220.  One reason is that for long escalators, most people want to stand.  But splitting the escalator into two sections reduces standing room by half.  This results in longer queues and more difficulty getting on the escalator at the bottom.

So given this research showing the clear benefits of having everyone stand, London commuters must have been quick to embrace the changes, right?

Nope.  As you can tell by reading the lyrics to the song “London Underground” at the top of the page, people don’t necessarily have any great respect for the hard workers in the Underground.  Aggressive commuters, used to barging past elderly passengers felt cheated.  A spokesperson for the Underground said, “Passengers just don’t like having these things changed.”

The Underground staff were scared that if they wore their uniform and blocked the left “walking lane”, they might be physically attacked.  So instead, the station employed people to stand at the bottom of the escalator with a loudspeaker encouraging commuters not to walk.  They also had staff members disguised as commuters standing in the left lane to block anyone who tried to walk.  There was still some initial difficulty and resistance.  Staff saw one commuter pushing a standing child out of the way so that he could keep walking to the top.  What kind of person would do that?  Did he think he was fighting his way to the top of Mount Everest?

The next time you ride an escalator on the Underground, I’d like you to take a good look around.  There’s more going on than you might have realised. 

Vocabulary:

To make a mountain out of a mole-hill – to make a big issue out of a small matter; to overreact

“Please mind the doors.” – “Please be careful of the doors.”; a phrase often broadcast to commuters on the London Underground

To tread – to step

To barge (past) – to aggressively or forcefully move (past)

To be keen on – to like or enjoy

 

 

 

Oh Hell, I’m in Heaven －ちくしょう、天国にいるんだ－

“Lucifer protests he was never to blame for [making] anyone sin, and that he’s never had an interest in owning souls: They die and they come [to Hell]... and expect us to fulfil their desire for pain...  I don’t make them come here.  I need no souls.”

From Neil Gaiman’s comic series, “Sandman” 

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world a hell.”
Oscar Wilde

“An intelligent Hell would be better than a stupid Paradise.”
Victor Hugo

I recently featured an extract from the short story, “The spider’s thread”, written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.  The story revolves around the notorious criminal Kandata.  He is in Hell, but the Buddha takes pity on him because he remembers Kandata performing one small good deed.  The Buddha lowers a spider’s thread for Kandata to use to climb out of Hell.  All seems to be going well as Kandata climbs half-way out.  But then he looks back and sees thousands of others climbing out behind him.  Worried that the weight of these others will cause the thread to snap, he shouts at them to get off.  Then, presumably because of this further selfish act, the thread snaps and Kandata falls back into Hell.

There the story ends.  But I recently read a great article in Japanese which asks what could happen next.  Would the Buddha take pity on Kandata for a second time, and again try to help him out of Hell?  What if Kandata climbs all the way to Heaven, either alone or with the thousands of other damned souls behind him?

The writer of the article speculates that Heaven is a peaceful place of poetry, philosophy, lotus ponds, and a Buddhist atmosphere of abstinence and calm.

He further speculates that Hell, as the opposite of Heaven, must be a place of wild desires and materialism.  In Hell, the damned souls collect gold.  The demons try to put them to work, but can be bribed to allow clever and ambitious souls amongst the damned to shirk their work, drink smuggled alcohol and to carouse with members of the opposite sex.

You can imagine then that if Kandata and his party ever reached Paradise, they might be disappointed.  They would get bored in Heaven, and pester the Buddha to provide bars, gambling dens and other entertainments.

The moral of this article is that Heaven and Hell are in the mind.  You can look at your circumstances and judge yourself to be in Heaven.  Or another person could look at the same circumstances and judge themselves to be in Hell.  It’s a matter of perspective and attitude.

It may well be that this world that we live on is Hell.  Perhaps we’ve all tried Heaven once and found that we didn’t like it.  There are demons on the Earth, tasked with making our lives miserable.  Are they the lawyers?  The politicians?  Middle managers?  I’m not sure.  But there’s no point in wishing for Paradise.  The best we can do is to shirk our work whenever possible and take our pleasures where we can.  At least Hell has better music than the other place.

 

Vocabulary:

Lucifer – In Christianity, another name for the Devil

to revolve – to go around; if a story revolves around A, then A is the centre of the story

abstinence – denial of something pleasurable, such as alcohol or fine food

to bribe – to pay money in return for a favour; to make a corrupt payment

to shirk – to avoid something one is responsible for, such as work or a duty

smuggled – secretly imported or brought in

to carouse – to drink alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy and lively way

to pester – to annoy, especially in a persistent way

 

 

Dealing with priority seat Nazis －優先席ナチスの扱い－

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Edmund Burke

“The only thing necessary for old people to be left standing is for young people not to give up their seats.”
William Lang

In Japan, people patiently wait their turn in queues.  After a natural disaster, people calmly help one another, without the chaos and looting often seen in other countries in such situations.  There are plenty of great examples of the good order kept and manners shown in Japanese society.

So why then does practically no one give up their seat on the train to the elderly, disabled, pregnant, and so on?  Even people sitting on the priority seats will pretend to sleep while a bent old lady hobbles around in front of them.  University students will pull out a banana and start munching happily while a heavily pregnant woman stands in front of them, trying not to throw up as the motion of the train exacerbates her morning sickness.

What would it take for these priority seat Nazis to actually stand up?  If a one-legged blind man hopped forward, trying not to drop his newborn baby twins as he made desperately for the priority seats, would the perfectly healthy salary man sitting there get up?  I doubt it.  He would certainly panic for a moment.  But then he would close his eyes, certain that if he pretends he hasn’t seen the guy coming then he can’t be held responsible.

So is there any solution?  I propose that the government issue a priority seat card.  Like a driver’s license or other official ID card, you would have to apply for it at the ward office.  They would be given automatically to pensioners, the disabled and expecting mothers.  Then a glass door would be built around the priority seats in all train carriages.  You could only get into the little compartment if you swiped your card over a lock at the door.  No doubt some salary men would get their hands on the cards by going to the ward office and feigning injury.  But at least they would have to positively act to keep their priority seat, rather than just closing their eyes and avoiding all responsibility.

Maybe the cost of such a scheme is prohibitively expensive.

So perhaps the trains could install speakers behind the priority seats which played enka (an old style of Japanese folk-pop) all day long.  This would help to remind healthy young people that these seats are not designed for them.

Or maybe the elderly and the pregnant can just sit down on the laps of the young and healthy people taking up the seats.  Once he has been sat on by a heavily pregnant woman, even a priority seat Nazi will soon learn some manners. 

Vocabulary:

triumph – victory; success

looting – the stealing of goods when law and order has broken down, such as during a riot

to hobble – to walk with difficulty, such as with a leg injury

to munch – to chew

to exacerbate something – to make something, such as a problem, worse

to hop – to move forward on one leg by making small jumps

to feign (injury) – to pretend (to be injured)

prohibitively (expensive) – too (expensive) to be done, achieved etc.