Japanese Lessons: Your Entire Life on Video

In my my article on the creepy TV show episode, Your Story,  the title of the TV show presents a couple of talking points to help Japanese learners become more fluent and deepen their understanding. So let's get right into them. Remember! It's much easier to read these articles, and they won't display gooble-de-gook if you're doing so on a device that can read Japanese characters.

First of all, let's look at the title of the TV show, 世にも奇妙な物語, which reads Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari. The yo (世) is commonly read this way when it is alone, though I think a lot of foreign speakers I've spoken to are used to seeing it read as se in sekai (世界). Both yo and sekai mean world, but yo has a less literal and more figurative meaning. You'll see the word used in more factual and formal circumstances such as the World Bank, sekai ginkou (世界銀行), the concept of world peace, sekai heiwa (世界平和), or the actual designation of a world. In many video games, the dark world is yami no sekai (闇の世界) and the light world, hikari no sekai (光の世界).

Yo (世）is a much older term and more poetic. It stands for society, the perceived world, the human idea of what a world is. If you want to say "That's just the way it is!" in Japanese, you'd probably say something like, "Yo no naka wa sonna mon da!" (「世の中はそんなもんだ！」). Here, yo no naka (世の中), means the everyday world we're accustomed to live in. Paintings of the floating world were known as ukiyo-e (浮世絵), a study of the opinions in a society is known as a yoronchousa (世論調査) and the expression in the title of this show yo ni mo (世にも) is a saying that emphasizes that the thing that comes after the "mo" is something so extreme it could hardly be thought to be part of this world.

One of the most famous usages of the yo ni mo expression is yo ni mo fushigi na mono (世にも不思議なもの). This means something close a thing or idea that is "out of this world mysterious."

Now that you have a better idea of what the title is saying when it uses yo ni mo (世にも), next comes kimyou (奇妙), which means bizarre, strange, unlikely, weird or peculiar.  The title uses kimyou (奇妙) instead of fushigi (不思議), perhaps because the ki (奇) in that word can take part in words that mean anything from a miracle (kiseki, 奇跡), to novel, as in new and interesting (kibatsu, 奇抜) to rare and marvelous talent (kisai 奇才).

Meanwhile, myou (妙) can often be used by itself to describe that is odd and out of place. If you got up from your desk and noticed that your cup wasn't where you left it last, you might say myou da na (妙だな), meaning, "Well, that's a little off/odd/strange."

Put them together and you have a perfect to describe the many arresting, novel stories of people beset with odd situations and strange, miraculous powers.

The last part of the title is monogatari (物語) part. You might notice the title is written na monogatari (な物語), but the oft-used expression is written na mono (なもの. Well beside the na character being there to designate a noun after an adjective, there isn't much of one. The title could be written in hiragana characters and still be the same. The mono (もの) used is the same meaning as the one used in monogatari (物語). That mono is hard to explain. Mono are things that are true about life, on a deep and irrefutable level. They are also physical things, like lamps and paper. Sometimes mono can also be living things, but in this case, it isn't. Mono are different from koto (こと/事), which is an incident. So for instance, if the name was yo ni mo kimyou na jiken (世にも奇妙な事件), which is jiken but contains the character and meaning of koto (事), then it would be about strange and peculiar instances. But because it uses mono, these are stories, in other words, by the Japanese way of reckoning, a telling of the way things are on their most basic and true levels. Katari (語り) is just that, using words to tell about something. It just loses the ri (り) character in writing and becomes gatari after mono for grammar reasons too tedious to expound upon now.

So if you put it all together, it's a novel truth about life and society told in such a way that it is too strange to be believed as part of this world.

Now you see why some people (like me) get headaches from trying to translate Japanese into English properly!

Mystery is Everywhere: Your Entire Life on Video

Mystery is everywhere. It lies behind a waterfall, inside an ornate locked box, or in the school's meat. Mystery improves games. Without it, magic isn't magical. The horizon doesn't beckon without mystery's enticing finger. Mystery lies at the heart of games, because it's always the most enticing question: what happens next?

If I were a game and I were looking for inspiration, I might look at one episode of Japanase television short story seriesYo ni Mo Kimyo na Monogatari ; perhaps a good translation might be Strange Stories for a Stranger World or There Are Pecular Stories Out There.

This tale starts with a woman browsing through a video rental store. Nothing looks enticing until she notices a series of white videos entitled Your Story (Anata no Monogatari), which is also the title of the episode.

Existential worries in the video store of life.

Mami, our main character remembers a conversation she overheard in the train between two school girls. A series of tapes in white with nothing but the words "Your Story" printed on them can sometimes be found in video stores. According to the girls, the person who watches the video will see their entire life from the day they are born to the day they die.

Intrigued, Mami rents the first video and returns home with it. After putting it in, Mami is disappointed to learn there's nothing on the video. She leaves it running and gets up to make a cuppa.

"Hello there Mami, I've been waiting for you."

While Mami is in the kitchen, she suddenly hears a baby crying. She returns to find herself being born on the television screen. Though her parents never filmed her birth (she says there were only photographs), in vivid detail, there lies her first few years after coming into this world. Intrigued, Mami rents more videos and relives her life.

The contrast in these scenes is intriguing. We, as the viewer, know that this can't lead to a good place. (This episode was filmed after the success of The Ring made electronic media devices a thing of terror and besides, anyone who has encountered stories like these know they don't usually end well.) However, Mami is thrilled. Her life is depicted as so bland and ordinary that any kind of spirit and enthusiasm has been filtered away like mediocre coffee. It's only the scenes where she encounters her old life with her 5-years-dead father that the screen shows a real and vivid vibrancy.

 

Hello, TV snow, my old friend.

Eventually, Mami runs into a tape that shows her walking around in a video store, renting the same tape she is watching and even shows footage of her watching it. It is at this point that I, and I think many others, would so creeped out we might need to excrete the excess creepiness out our butts. But Mami runs into a problem in real life. Invited out for lunch at her workplace, and bristling with curiosity, she wants to know what will happen tomorrow. So she watches the first tape to show the future.

It is at this point that I will not reveal what happens next. It's a lot more clever than you might think. Suffice to say that Mami finds out something that has us questioning the nature of how we perceive the future. No, it's not that. And no, not that either. Oh God no, heavens no, it isn't that hackneyed old thing either.

I especially like this scene:

I pissed in your tea, Mami.

Mami is watching her future self, who knows she is being watched by whatever entity films the tapes. She turns around and stares into the camera of her mysterious filmer. Future Mami stares right back at Past Mami, knowing she is watching herself, knowing what will happen next, in a look of utter hopelessness.

So why is Your Story successful at using mystery? One reason is because what Mami does isn't very mysterious. Every step of the way, from beginning to end, we know why Mami does what she does and what motivates her. The story is crystal clear here. 

It's everything that surrounds Mami that is murkier. Where did the tapes come from? Who is filming them? How does this whole mechanism work? Did she really see the tapes as they were or was she just renting regular shows and hallucinating? Was what she saw the truth or did she misunderstand something? Would her life have been better if she -- oops, can't tell you that.

The actress here is Manami Konishi, known for her work in movies and television dramas as a charming, relate-able character actor.

Consider the following three scenarios and ask yourself, "Which do I find the most mysterious?"

a. A girl is walking through the forest. She can hear the sounds of a baby crying and no matter were she goes or looks, the sound doesn't fade, become more faint or louder. Eventually, she ignores the sound, picks some berries and goes out of the woods.

b. A girl is walking through the forest because she needs to pick some berries for a medicine that will help her mother. She can't find the berries and is about give up, when suddenly she hears the sounds of a baby crying. Distressed and concerned, she searches everywhere for the source, but the sounds don't change no matter where shes goes. It still sounds as far away and as close as when she first heard it. Eventually, she runs into the berries she is searching for. Having no time left and knowing her mother is sick, she decides to ignore the baby and go home.

c. A girl is walking through the forest. Her mother is pregnant and she needs berries to cure her ailing stomach. She has heard stories that in this forest, babies are thrown away by mothers who did not want them. She is picking the berries when suddenly she hears the sound of a baby crying. In distress, she tries to find the helpless baby, but no matter where she runs the sound of the baby's cries are just as loud and far away as when she just heard them. It doesn't seem to be getting any closer or farther away. At a loss, the girl rushes home. When she enters her home, suddenly the baby's crying becomes unbearably loud and she drops the berries. After scolding the girl, her sister prepares the berries in the stewing medicine for her sick mother. Meanwhile, the girl is writhing on the floor in pain from the sound of the screaming baby. Suddenly, the screaming stops. Looking up, the girl sees the remnant of the medicine dripping from her mother's mouth like blood.

Many people, I think, would prefer the last one, C. A is probably too vague. We don't know the motivation of the character, why they're in the forest and what is going on at all. Many mysterious stories are just incoherent. They try for mystery by referring to creepy ideas, but there isn't anything else to latch onto and it feels like the authors just omitted details to make it mysterious. With B, we have some idea, but I think a lot of people prefer the creepy details of C. The suggestion that the medicine will kill the baby in the pregnant mother is suitably macabre.

However, I think the best and most mysterious would be somewhere between B and C. If you ask me, the extremely overt suggestion that the berries aren't good for the baby isn't a mystery so much as it is an answer.  

Your Story reaches this magical median between the two. What happens is not a mystery. Why it happens and what the story is suggesting is extremely mysterious. There are any number of interpretations I think could be valid and they suggest any number of things. One of the strangest things about this story is what it suggests about its own nature. Your Story subverts the traditional idea that a character can change the future positively by becoming proactive and suggests something entirely different. 

The final shot of the piece.

Your Story has a lot of other excellent virtues, such as an economy of style that does a world of good for its storytelling and a confident sense of time and place -- even though rental video stores still exist in Japan, elsewhere they are becoming a thing of the past. I watched this for the first time 8 years after it was filmed. Imagine the story 40 years from now to a young boy or girl who has never even heard of the concept of renting videos from a store, let alone VHS! The tapes in this story might be as arcane and mysterious as crystal balls or tarot cards.

Your Story understands that in order to leave an indelible impression in people's minds, the art of the careful direction cannot be underestimated.

Mr. Fix It: How to Make MMOs More Interesting?

Dear Sazanami,

I feels like I'm going nowhere. My master says if I keep going, eventually this guy will drop something so he can get a widget to make an armor to let him beat up a tough guy. I wish this were more fun. What would you do?

Yours,

A Hamster

Dear Hamster,

I understand.

Everyone loves being a dentist. The monsters in these games, they enjoy showing their teeth. Roaring and yelling and making an awful racket. Instead of killing them, I think we should solve their dental problems.

A cave drawing left behind by the Ancients, of a monster suffering tooth pain.

Heal the cavities, make their mouths a better place, for you and me and the entire monster race. There are molars hurtin', if you care enough for dental hygiene, make a healthier mouth for you and for me.

I'm certain the reason these monsters are so cranky and eager to eat humans, elves and dwarves is because their usual scrumptious diet of diamond-encrusted scrumptious gibblies is too hard for their now brittle teeth.

The same cave drawing in HD.

Players could check for cavities on trolls, clean the teeth of carnivorous plants, perform dental surgery on dragons, and put braces on young vampires so their teeth grow nice and straight. Monstrous dental hygiene will surely lead to world peace.

Or, you could be a paper boy. Deliver the news to the monsters of the world. Educate them on the economic problems of the dwarven ruby crisis. Let them know the plight of the elves who are discriminated for not having pointy-enough ears. Help them understand the damage of the "We can do everything, we so dynamic" human propaganda.

You could use a variety of mounts to deliver papers. Rocket-powered bikes, Dali Elephants, land-tunneling uberdolphins, jetpacks fueled by candy canes, Santa's sled with your own private collection of reindeer. Bonus points for delivering a paper smack in the eye or into their hands. Throw points into developing more dynamic trick throws to catch the attention of ADHD monsters, or into different "Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The Ministers of Marbles has Lost His Balls!" type of newsie shouts.

Another valid job would be elderly dance instructor. Take a look at this charming music video:

Hopefully, the infinite wisdom of the Overlords has been maintained and you can still watch that, because it contains a valuable truth of life. South African group Mi Casa demonstrates how sometimes all you need to get your groove on and impress the opposite sex is the intrinsic wonder of dance moves invented by sleepy grandpas.

I say we incorporate this into MMOs. Dance with the monster, and it will have a fun night. Teach the monster to dance, and its groove will be infinite.

Let us dye the sunset horizon with the conga line silhouettes of zombies, witches, death knights, slimes and gargoyles. Before they put the other foot into the grave, let us pass on the dancing wisdom of the geriatric generation. Teach the two-step to the two-headed. Assure the centaur that having two actual left feet is no problem. Make every night a thriller night.

Surely, an orally hygienic, news-reading, groove-smacking populace of monsters would make for a better world. And for the players, would it not be Sparta?

I argue it would, dear hamster.

Love and Kisses,

Sazanami  

Don't Open the Box: Columns

Face it: dodge ball is the Dark Souls of recess. Maybe the stories don't have any truth in their brittle bones, but I hear that its being banned across schools in the US for being too unfair and promoting violence.

I remember dodge ball in elementary school. It was both infuriating and a lot of fun. People singled me out. Fights broke out. Kids were massive dicks. I think it did me a lot of good. I learned something valuable: sometimes the world is out to get you and its your job to get out of the way until you can do something about it. I like the unfairness of not getting to play at all if you're not good enough, especially when I could inflict it on others.

Dodge ball is a game where you can let out your inner jerk. The greatest of Greek catharsis can be channeled into that ball. Dodge ball should be enshrined as a wonderful little microcosm game for teaching children how harsh life can be.

But instead of having children play games with unclear life lessons where they might have to internalize, reflect and come to their own conclusions, I think we should invest in 3DSes preloaded with the virtual console release of Columns. The easy mode on this sucker is so easy, it reinvents the easy mode. It a shining innovation amongst easy modes. The most inept child could get extremely high scores. Think of the self esteem it would boost! Think of the smiles on millions of improperly diagnosed children on the autism spectrum! And it has shiny jewels that mesmerize as they fade away, symbolizing the fruitlessness of material collection. What else do you need?

Columns is one of those early puzzle droppers. Its fuel is the endless hunger for a better score, not vs. play against the computer or humans, or experience leveling in an RPG tunnel, two roads people would have us say the puzzler evolved into. The score you see up there was easily procured within 20 minutes by messing around on easy. As long as you vaguely try to arrange the gems together into patterns of three or more diagonally, horizontally or vertically you are bound to run into combinations of pattern completions sparkle and disappear that can last for a minute or more of you simply watching the unexplained mass disappearance of gems unfold. Your score blossoms. Your self-esteem grows.

To the left you can see what happened after I triggered one simple pattern erasure near the top of the screen. It looked like I was going to wipe out, but no. It was gem genocide. The Hitler of precious rocks would have been proud.

This could be so valuable in a school setting. Think of the life lessons it could teach! If you bumble along with the basics for long enough it doesn't matter if you get any better or put any effort into anything; matters will clear up all around you with no real punishment. Obviously, this is a much more realistic lesson than dodge ball could ever teach. A great deal of these kids will go onto jobs re-arranging the valuables of others where their effort and hard work will never be properly appreciated. It's best to let them know they can get by through putting in the cool minimum and not think about anything else too hard, except maybe the weekend.

Letters From Our Readers: A Recommendation from Yzmrati

Dear Sazanami,

There is fortune here! Yesterday, I find a great game for my son's 3D's! I download the virtual console thinking game for him because his mother complains he does too much bang killing. So I go to check it out, you know, make sure there are no guns or guts in it. At first, I think "What is this?" but now I think is brilliant.

It concerns the drop of many pieces of four and how you must line them up on the bottom so that the dentist must not fill the cavities. The sound effects are amiable! When you line up the long dotty grey piece to get four lines at once, the virtual console farts! My son will giggle! He will love it. (He is six and he has my eyes. His mother's boobs too. I think we have been feeding him too much of the puddings.)

Anyway, what is best about this thinking game is the life lessons it imparts on our youth. Good work does not leave holes, or else it comes crashing down and we do not get the high score when we die. Sometimes the mood is best for waiting and she will be very happy when the large hard one slides into her. Our score will be high! Sometimes you wait and wait and the good one does not come along, so you settle for plumbing job in east end with dumpy waitress. It is not worth getting game over waiting for life to throw you a bone. If you don't cover up your mistakes quickly, someone will make noise like choking chicken and it will be over anyway. Etc, etc.

My son will learn so many good life lessons! I can't believe more people don't know about this game. Even though it is black and white, it is come recommended (kids do not need the color, is luxury).

-Yzmrati