"working on my faults and cracks..."

12.09.2007

Today's Japanese lesson:
"Do not learn Japanese"


"Is that everything? Are you sure?
It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that..."

If you watch closely, you'll find a number of things at work in the fifth chapter of the "Go-En Chronicles."
The first, and most obvious, is me trying to get my $600 doorstop either repaired, or outright replaced.
You may already know that such attempts were expectantly unsuccessful.

Anyone who has ever studied it at length, can probably tell you a whole hell of a lot about the "say one thing, mean ten" mentality of the Japanese language. On one hand, it's fascinating. On the other hand--the hand smacked repeatedly against one's own steaming forehead, is how irritating and exhausting reading through all the fluffy subtext can be. As with any other context-heavy languages, in Japanese, a compliment, a suggestion, an assertion, an insult, or an outright verbal pimp-slap could very well be cunningly tucked between the politely apathetic folds of the same statement. Translation boils down to a lot of contextual approximations, which may vary from time to time depending on your relational distance to the speaker, or on the audience.
Or sometimes simply how annoyed you are with the lack of progress being made.

The following video is a short compilation of lowlights and frustrations from a 45 minute phone call, by the end of which, if it were physically possible to stab someone in the mouth through the phone line, I'm sure SCEJ's "Toyota" and I both would have thrown down in spectacular no-holds-barred fashion. In their defense though--I didn't expect Sony Japan to attempt service on an American machine (I assumed the attempt would fall apart as soon as they requested the serial number, but it was unfortunate that my operator kindly waited until the end of the call to obtain this information). Lucky for them, I still picked up the phone, being bored, hopeful, and totally stoked about giving Docomo another hefty chunk of my tiny paycheck last month.

Japanese speakers may pick up on other thinly veiled attempts at satire within, but for most everyone else, this is simply me being juvenile about my situation, and how calling Sony Computer Entertainment's J-train tech support just made it worse.

You're welcome.



6 contributions to this piece:

Anonymous said...

can you still watch the bouncing butterfly chasers? or is that happiness gone?

Dagbert said...

The happy garbage bags are safe and sound.

Valerie said...

Looks like our Acting for the Media class came in handy.

All it needs are some empty beer bottles and a fuzzy navel.

Seth Shapiro said...

Great video. Good work on the camera-person. Found the funeral, and serial number reading very funny, and the 15 seconds it took to say "no can do"

Sorry about your PS3.

How often can you get away with cursing in english?

Seth Shapiro said...

ps. whats the song at the end? Google fails to find matching lyrics.

diNexus said...

It was actually the same song playing throughout the entire video.

Google Dios Malos "Old Field Recordings" and you might find what you're looking for.


 
Copyright 2010 - Powered by Blogger - Header Image: Banksy at Sundance