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my opinion to the article "Japanese TV show featuring blackface actor sparks anger" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42561815 My conclusion is that black face should NOT be a racist expression. As you know, white people have the history that they had treated black people as slaves and the history that black face is used as a racist expression, so I can understand black face is a taboo in many countries. But the common sense about black face as a racist expression in those countries is not likely to exist here. Of course, black face has been also used negatively sometimes before in Japan. But on the other hand, it has been used respectfully too. What it all comes down to is that black face is colorless here. (It might be a weird expression, though.) To associate black face with racism is artificial. It looks like the arbitrariness of language explained by de Saussure. There is no apparent reason between black face and racism. Only the people who were taught it point it out. Baye McNeil, who drew attention to the show and insisted on stopping it on Twitter, seemed not to have tried to understand the context how it was dealed in the TV program. That's why he couldn't help showing his shallow idea that "it is definitely problematic regardless of whether the people doing it have racist motives or not" as his excuse after some criticism against him came up. Similar things like this TV program will still happen in Japan from now on. I'd like to ask you if educating "black face = racism" can be a fundamental solution method or orient people the better direction. It's difficult for me to agree with it. I wonder if to build the world where you can blackface for the expression to respect a black person or a black person can whiteface to love a white person and really want to be is healthier. Having said that, I don't think that the people who have carried on the tradition "harmony first" for more than 1.4 thousand years can ignore the attention. Some Japanese tell it to the others who don't know it. So it's too extreme to smugly say that Japan is a savage country or a developing country in human rights, isn't it? Japan just doesn't have the history of treating black people as slaves and enjoys black culture.
January 9, 2018
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Don't panic. I thought I would stay in the toilet eternally because the stop button didn't work. The waterjet kept coming to clean my ass and got cold. I was like a trainee monk under a waterfall. A tip for you: Push the power button in this case.
April 12, 2017
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Comma Interference How helpful commas are! They let you from a western country pronounce the numbers easier because the commas are added every three digits. 1,000 is one thousand, of course. 10,000 is ten thousands. 1,000,000 is one million. You also have an advantage to multiply on account of the commas. For instance, One thousand times one thousand equals one million. (1,000 X 1,000 = 1,000,000) Ten thousands times one thousand equals ten million. (10,000 X 1,000 = 10,000,000) One million times one thousand equals one billion. (1,000,000 X 1,000 = 1,000,000,000) Wow! amazing! That sounds like a magic. If commas were added every four digits to group like below, it would be much much easier for Japanese to pronouce them. 1,0000 is 1man. 10,0000 is 10man. 100,0000 is 100man. 1,0000,0000 is 1oku. 1,0000,0000,0000 is 1cho. But the reality is like below. 1oku = 100,000,000 10oku = 1,000,000,000 Have you already realize that Japanese need a bit longer time to realize how large the number with commas is? Because they ignore(!!) the commas and count all of the digits from right to left like "ichi, ju, hyaku, sen, man, ju-man, hyaku-man, sen-man, ichi-oku, ah, this is 1oku." Moreover, most of Japanese haven't noticed the similar mutiplying like I told above because of commas. For instance, 1man X 1man = 1oku 10,000 X 10,000 = 100,000,000 (every three digits) 1,0000 X 1,0000 = 1,0000,0000 (if every four digits) 10man X 1man = 10oku 100,000 X 10,000 = 1,000,000,000 (every three digits) 10,0000 X 1,0000 = 10,0000,0000 (if every four digits) 1oku X 1man = 1cho 100,000,000 X 10,000= 1,0000,0000,0000 (every three digits) 1,0000,0000 X 1,0000= 1,0000,0000,0000 (if every four digits) The convenient commas added every three digits make multiplying inconvenient in Japan. I think it can be called Comma Interference.
March 20, 2017
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