Gostop! STOP!!! STOPPP!!!!!

Beautiful cards. Evil game!

So I spent saturday night at home with my wife, my 2 brothers in law, and my brother in law’s wife (which is also my sister in law, right?  Heck, I don’t know..)

Well, after eating an awesome dinner we started to gamble on things.  First was Tekken 6 on my PS3.  I generally am better than either of them, but because I don’t play Tekken 6 as much as I played 5, or 4, or 3, some of the new characters are difficult to play against.  I still prevailed and won more than I lost.  This gave me a little bit of pocket money.

We then switched to poker, and I schooled them in Texas Hold’em.  I then got schooled in 7 card stud, but it was for lower stakes than the previous two games, so I was still on top.

Then they decided to switch to GoStop!

What’s GoStop?

GoStop is a Korean game… no wait.  It’s a Japanese game… no wait… It’s a Korean game played with Japanese cards that has some similarity to an originally Japanese game, but it’s not quite as popular in Japan anymore as it is in Korea.

Wait, what?

Why can't Japan be more like South Korea?

This is the title of an article from the Japan Times. While I can’t say that I totally agree with it, I am still quite surprised that the Japan Times even let it see print.

The article suggests that while Japan has lead Asia for so long, they could learn a few things from Korea. Usually the feeling towards Korea in Japan is one of superiority, even if whoever is making the opinions doesn’t actually come out and say it, the opinion pieces I see are nothing but critical accounts of Korea’s government or corporate infrastructure, all the while praising something about Japan to show why it is better. Granted this article isn’t written by Japanese, but it’s interesting that the Japan Times, Japan’s English language face to the world, would allow something like this to be presented.

Why don’t you totally agree?

Well, the article praises the fact that many of Korea’s leaders in society are foreign educated as a Korean strength, while in Japan, being foreign educated is actually a setback. It may be true that it’s a setback in Japan, but in Korea, one could suggest that the main reason why a foreign education is seen in such high esteem is because Korean universities by and large (with the exception of the SKY Universities and KAIST) are seen as inferior.

I also don’t think the article stressed the negatives of Japan’s colonial era on Korea. Sure, it didn’t come out and say that it was all positive, but in an article that is intended to praise Korea, saying that the legacy of Japanese colonialism is still felt leads the reader to assume that it was positive. But I digress…

I am somewhat proud of Japan that it is allowing pieces critical of itself to be printed in English media. If only the Korea Times and Korea Herald would print such stories critical of Korea, because as amazing as this country is, it seems as if anyone not Korean is critical of Korea, they will be attacked by Korean pride. If anyone Korean is critical of Korea, then the argument is swept under a rug when it comes to English media.

I’d like to see more discourse between Japan and Korea on a lot of issues. This article isn’t either the start or the end, but it kind of stands out.

(Credit to Ask a Korean for posting the article, thus making me aware of it.)

Pump it up!

In the late 1990’s a shift in video games occurred. In the 1980’s it was pretty much established that video games were to be played with a hand held controller. The shift occurred as video game technology changed. Games home games went to 3D, and were still primarily being played with a controller, but the coin operated games started needing a gimmick to be worth spending lots of money in an arcade. (Afterall, why would anyone pay good money to play a game in the arcade instead of waiting a few months to buy the home version, which they can play for free?)

So, what kinds of gimmicks started to be prominent?
Well, the first type were the gun games. These actually were not new, as gun games had been made since the 1970’s. But as graphical technology increased, the 3D realism of the gun games made them popular.

And then Japanese arcades became noisier...

Next, there were the music games. Here, the player had to have rhythm to perform a set of actions based on music. There were dancing games, band games, DJ games, and all sorts of games requiring manipulation of a musical instrument-like controller. Here, we will be mainly concerned with the dancing games.
Dancing games?

Girls' Generation releases Japanese Music Video

A lot of times, there are cases where Japanese or Korean artists try to make it in the other country, and make the dire mistake of simply taking a song in its original language and simply translating or writing new lyrics in the other language. Usually this doesn’t work… at all.  Girl’s Generation is the latest to take their music to Japan and have released their song Genie in Japanese.  SNSD, well actually I guess if we are going by their Japanese name, it’s SJJD, wants to take Japan by storm.   But I don’t really see it.  I could be wrong, after all DBSK (also known as TVXQ and THSK) were extremely successful in Japan.  The difference is that most of Tohoshinki’s music was not mere reproductions of their Korean library.  They were original songs.

Wait, SNSD, SJJD, DBSK, TVXQ, THSK?

Yes yes, let me explain.

Dong Bang Shin Ki (동방신기 Rising Gods of the East?) is abbreviated as DBSK.  They are also popular in China, where they are called 東方神起 (Tong Vfang Xien Qi), and in Japan, where they are called  東方神起 (Tohoshinki).  Hence, DBSK is the abbreviation of their Korean name.  TVXQ of their Chinese name.  THSK is something I made up 30 seconds ago, because in Japanese it’s never common to abbreviate anything with acronymns.  Usually they would take the first and third characters and but them together, so 東神　(TOSHIN) would be how that works.  I don’t live in Japan, so I am not sure if they even bother to abbreviate it.

Girls’ Generation is known as 소녀시대 (Seonyeo Shidae) in Korean.  English speakers have abbreviated this to SNSD, which the group itself was surprised to learn when they went international.  In Japanese, the name would be 少女時代　(Shoujo Jidai).

(Edit: I think I just made the funniest typo ever!  I had originally written the group’s name as 処女時代 (Shojo Jidai)！　Good thing I caught it.  Japanese can sometimes be difficult to distinguish long and short vowels.  This typo is hilarious!  If you don’t know why it’s hilarious, I recommend that you study Chinese characters. )

Back to the music!

Busan's Chinatown, actually Russiatown, and Hwagyo

Chinatown? Oh really? Why isn't the sign in Chinese?

In almost every major city the world over (or at least near it), there is a Chinatown.  Chinatowns usually have gigantic Chinese style ornamental gates, and all of the businesses inside it are owned and run by Chinese.  Some cities I’ve been to with great Chinatowns are New York, Boston, and Shanghai.  (Okay I know, Shanghai is actually in China, but how much more authentic can you get than that?)  There are of course other cities which had a Chinatown, but most of the Chinese people moved away, making the name of the town anachronistic.  Washington DC’s Chinatown at this point is nothing of the sort.  Sure it has a big Chinese gate and a smattering of Chinese restaurants, but the MCI Center (or whatever it’s called now) is also there, and most of the people who live and work there aren’t Chinese.  Most of DC’s Chinese people have moved to the suburbs, specifically Rockville, MD, I think a few streets of Rockville should be classified as Chinatown.  Seoul itself used to have a thriving Chinese community in the area next to Yonsei University, Yonhee-dong.  There’s still a school for overseas Chinese there and lots of Korean style Chinese restaurants, but these are largely remnants of a time long past.  Everyone in Seoul knows that the real Chinatown is in Inchon now.

My trip to Busan earlier this month wasn’t my first, so this information about Busan’s Chinatown isn’t anything new that I discovered, but I thought it would be interesting to my readers.  Chinatown is located across the street from the Busan Train Station.  It has a huge gate showing that it is Chinatown.  Click the picture and look.

A pharmacy in Chinatown. I don't read Russian, so I don't know what that says, but I'm pretty sure the Chinese at the top doesn't say anything about medicine.

Notice something funny?  It’s clearly labeled as Chinatown, but there isn’t any Chinese writing to be seen!  I don’t know the history about Busan’s Chinatown, but somehow between the 1980’s and 2000’s it ceased to be Chinatown and turned into Russiatown.

Yuna Kim and Brian Orser part ways

Neither Yuna nor Brian look happy in this picture

Figure Skating?
Okay, I’m not much of a figure skating fan. The only time I ever got into it was whenever there was a controversy (such as the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding event in which Tonya hired someone to beat Nancy’s legs to solidify her place on the US figure skating team, even though both skaters ultimately made it) or when I discovered Kim Yuna.

Okay, well discover is the wrong word for it. Korea is in love with its sports heroes, and often digs deep to find heroes with even partial Korean ancestry who haven’t lived for a significant amount of time in Korea. Around late 2009 I was bombarded on all ends by everyone telling me about how awesome Yuna Kim is. I didn’t really pay much attention to it at first because I really don’t care about figure skating, but one day I happened to be flipping through the channels and I saw her on TV. WOW. She was amazing. Everything she did looked flawless.

In the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, there was so much hype about Kim vs. Asada Mao, Japan’s best figure skater. It was pretty much a given that one would get gold, and one would get silver. So here we have quite possibly the greatest figure skater in the last 20 years (if not ever) and some good old fashioned Korea-Japan rivalry. Needless to say I was eagerly watching. Kim eventually won the gold and Koreans everywhere puffed their chests and smiled.

One thing that was also interesting was that her coach, Brian Orser, had also been a figure skater, and was also in a heated Canada/US rivalry with American Brian Boitano. Many to this day say Orser was the better skater, but at the olympics in which they competed with each other, Boitano was better. Koreans all seemed to really like Orser for all he had done with Yuna to help her get the gold. He and Yuna came to Korea right after Vancouver to heroes’ welcomes. Not since Guus Hiddink had a person of foreign origin involved in Korea’s sports been so highly regarded.

Fast forward to today. After reading a few things in the Korea Herald. It appears that the two are destined to part ways, as Kim’s agency informed Mr. Orser that he will no longer coach Kim.

Caught by the BoA constrictor…

I can’t get this song out of my head! I hate when that happens but it is so catchy that the chorus of the song has been in my brain all weekend and will not go away.

http://www.youtube.com/v/jHzQIcx2r80?fs=1&hl=en_US

Katrina took out the city of New Orleans. I wonder where any Hurricane Venus might hit?

It’s BoA’s Hurricane Venus. Hurricane Venus? Hurricanes are named in alphabetical order. The now infamous Hurricane Katrina then was the 11th Hurricane of 2005, and it hit in August, which is the peak in the Hurricane Season. That means that any Hurricane Venus would be the 20th Hurricane, as naming conventions forbid the hurricanes from being named with Q, U, X, Y, or Z. I’d hate to live anywhere in the Caribbean in a year that any Hurricane Venus came along because that would mean that 19 hurricanes preceded it. Hurricanes are tropical cyclones that form in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Pacific, they are called typhoons. In Asia, (Japan at least), they are simply named by number. (Typhoon No. 10 for example.) This is much easier to follow in my opinion, but I guess that naming the storm makes it more memorable if it were to cause a lot of damage. Katrina will always be remembered, but I’m not sure Hurricane No. 11 of 2005 has the same ring to it…
Get on with it! This article is about BoA, not weather!

Okay, okay.  BoA.  Well, to tell you the truth, BoA, is probably one of Korea’s most well known stars outside of Korea.  In fact, she became really popular in Korea only after becoming huge in Japan.  That’s not entirely true, I guess, because she did debut in Korea first, but went to Japan early on in her career and met huge success there.  The success in Japan translated to success in Korea.  Usually Korean artists that go to Japan under a major record label are already huge in Korea.  And sometimes they fail miserably despite their success in Korea.  That’s what makes BoA so interesting.  She hit it big in Japan.  In fact, she has 7 Japanese albums and only 6 Korean ones.  It’d be more correct to say that BoA isn’t a K-pop star, but an international star who sometimes releases music in the K-pop market.

To learn more about BoA and my personal experience with her (with her music, that is… I’ve never met her in person.) Read on!

Was Seoul always called Seoul?

Should this be “Greetings Gyeongseong, we are Gyeongseongers”?

Even Old New York, was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it I can’t say. People just liked it better that way! -They Might Be Giants

So go the lyrics in the chorus of a popular song about the name change of the city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). The quote can easily be remedied with minimal research. Wikipedia says that in 1664, New Amsterdam was surrendered to the British and renamed “New York”. So we have the reason and the date.

What does this have to do with Korea at all?

Plenty, actually.  You see, I live in a city called Seoul.  It is unique in that it is a major place name in Korea that cannot be written in Chinese characters.  Busan is 釜山 (“Cauldron Mountain”), Gwangju is 光州 (“Light State”), and Pyongyang is 平壌 (“Peace Land”).  Seoul, on the other hand can only be written in Hangeul, or phonetically.  In Korea, Seoul is written as 서울.  Outside of Korea it’s usually written as Seoul.  Japanese cities all have Chinese characters, so the Japanese get around the problem by writing the name of Seoul in katakana (ソウル) , as they write the names of other cities that don’t have official Chinese characters.

What about the Chinese?  Don’t they HAVE to use Chinese characters to write the name of the city?

In 2005, Korea wanted to make a Chinese-specific name for Seoul, and came up with 首尔 (uh… “you first”?  That might be a strange name for a city, but the characters weren’t chosen for meaning, but for sound in Mandarin Chinese.)  Shǒu’ěr is how it would be pronounced in Chinese.  Before 2005, they simply called it by an old name, 漢城 (er… “Chinese City”).

(Edit: Dear commenters. I KNOW that 漢城 was never intended to mean Chinese City. I’m just saying that this is what it translates as in current meanings of the characters. Stop arguing with me about what it might have meant in the past.)

So wait, Seoul wasn’t always the name of the city?

No, not at all.

Korea as the next superpower?!?!??!?!

After reading this article by Hank Hyena, where he builds the case for Korea to become the world’s next superpower, I can’t say I totally agree with him, but he makes a pretty decent case.

According to him, a unified Korea is ripe to be a huge player in the world.  He lists off several criteria such as:

e-Democracy – The idea that the public’s voice is more heard than in other less wired nations.

Hardworking Economy – The idea that Korea’s annual growth since 1960’s until now could have Korea rivaling Japan by 2050… a unified Korea, that is.

Robot Future – Korea leads the world in robotics technology and will probably pioneer the robot age, eventually leading to a society like in the movie I, Robot, with Korea as its center.

Military Might – The combined military strength of both North and South Korea along with any estimates in nuclear and shipbuilding technology makes Korea’s the strongest military in the world.

Massive Mineral Wealth – Apparently, North Korea is built over the motherlode.  If Korea unites and infrastructure is bestowed upon North Korea, then  Korea will be super rich.

Education – Echoing sentiments from U.S. President Barack Obama.  The Korean thirst for knowledge is second to none.

Green Goals – Korea is poised to dominate the new Green industry.

Cyber Warfare – Korea’s IT knowhow is set up to counter North Korea’s.  If they could stop working against each other, then they’ll be super strong and able to take down any nation they want at any time.

Well what do I think about it?

今回は日本語で。。。

このブログで今まで日本語をあまり使ってないです。それに、一回しようかなって。僕２００２年から２００５年まで日本の埼玉県、大宮市に住みました。その３年の間働きながら日本語がすごい上手になったけど、今まで４年間韓国に住んでいるし毎日毎日韓国語だけで話しているから、日本語能力はどんどんどんどんだめになっちゃう。日本にいる友達も最近会わない。韓国には日本人の友達もいない。こう言うのはどうすればいいのか？