Click Opera guest hosts: Kaori and Hisae

[imomus]

As the Berlin mercury hit 33 centigrade, we went to play guerilla badminton in the minty-coolest place in town: down in the Kottbusser Tor U-bahn station.

Comments

[ex-chellovec979.livejournal.com]

i was in your berlin while you were away.
it was very well behaved, but playful.
east berlin is fascinating.
as soon as the wall came down there was this vast urban frontier for the taking.
i love what berliners have done with it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's sometimes easy to forget that Kreuzberg (where the girls are pictured in this shoot) was in West Berlin before the wall came down. I think that's partly because large chunks of former East Berlin adopted the character of Kreuzberg: ludic, non-conformist, radical, tolerant. Of course, being Berlin, things continue to change. There's a lot of blank space (you see it from the S-Bahn) which might turn into anything: yuppie condos, trance clubs, Polish punk squats, architectural experiments, refugee camps, art biennale grounds, Starbucks... it's all still to play for.

[becki1111.livejournal.com]

please let it not be yuppie condos. That is what they are doing with every square inch of free space in Milwaukee.

[wronggirl.livejournal.com]

rob thomas in the background really brings out something special in that.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm rather glad that I have no idea who he is. Please don't tell me. I've managed to remain completely ignorant of who Fred Durst is, for instance, and that's already an achievement.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Talking of girls, I'd like to signal a new episode of the Shift Zine's Girls on the Street (http://www.shift.jp.org/101/st/) series. Being Shift, bless 'em, it's a month late and the girls are all wearing winter coats, and it's not so much "girls on the street" as "girls who come into our cafe, the Cafe Soso in Sapporo". But nevertheless this month's bunch is a good one. Wired magazine has a Japanese Schoolgirl Watch (http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/play.html?pg=4) as a regular element in their futurology, but, although the idea is sensible and legitimate, the column is sadly full of manga cliches; I'd much rather ask the Soso girls "What are you wearing?"

[shadowblue.livejournal.com]

that's awesome. i'm under the influence of things that poison the brain, but it's awesome.

ROB THOMAS!!!

[(Anonymous)]

ROB THOMAS!!!

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

Ah, urban sports. More laughing, than actually playing...

(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/TibetanPhotos/Lady.tennis.players.jpg)
Tibetan lady tennis players

[scottbateman.livejournal.com]

I'd like to apologize on behalf of America for the giant Rob Thomas poster in your subway system.

[(Anonymous)]

ヒサエさんとカオリさんへ、

あなたたちは今このブログを編集してると思った。どうしたの？モマスは自我が大きい過ぎるの？？

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Your nihongo is not very convincing, Anon, but you're right: I've kidnapped the girls and am using them as glove puppets. Yum.

[(Anonymous)]

Hardly an authority on the Japanese langauge are you though Nick? As you'd be the first to admit. You persist with speaking English to the Japanese then lambast guys like Marxy who've made an effort to learn the language, comparing them to Western missionaries or whatever...

I guess some consistency would be just too much of a masculine trait in your eyes!

Rather than Marxy et al I'd say it's you is just slightly guilty of cultural imperialism. Unintentional but guilty nonetheless.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The comment on the Japanese style came from Hisae, who reckoned the comment had been generated by web translation, so stilted did it sound.

As for avoiding cultural imperialism, I think it's more important to learn the Japanese way of being than to learn the Japanese language, although of course they overlap. Most missionaries are fluent in the languages of the nations they visit, but unwilling to adopt the ways of being they find there.

[(Anonymous)]

When will foreigners learn: the Japanese rarely use pronouns and don't really use the word "jiga" (ego) on a regular basis!

I'll give you this: Momus' Japanese is much better than Rob Thomas' Japanese.

Marxy

[(Anonymous)]

Well, thanks David for explaining my errors rather than just dissing my effort. 'Ego' was given as 自我 in my dictionary, so what should I use instead?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You should use the eigo word for ego, "ego", and keep it in katakana because it's an imported word.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks very much Ni... uh, Hisae!

[(Anonymous)]

Ego is an imported concept...

[(Anonymous)]

Egos get in the way of centralized, authoritarian power.

[wronggirl.livejournal.com]

jiga what?

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

gettin' jiga wit it.

[saikoutron.livejournal.com]

best. post. ever.

[kidplastik.livejournal.com]

oh shit! haha, i love it!

[zenmonkeykstop.livejournal.com]

OMG!!!1! It's hipster DOA: Beach Volleyball!

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Hah, i find it funny that a friend of mine who happens to appreciate your blogs and music, momus, happens to think that your two latest posts are "a bit weird". ;)

(Dunno what he's talking about though.)

[may--kasahara.livejournal.com]

memory
memory
memory (:

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Fabulous post, but which lady was the victor?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

They were playing co-operatively, not competitively. The main aims of the game were to get photographed and to fill in the 8 minutes before the next northbound U8 train came.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

I figured with the excess estrogen their womanly competitive urges would overwhelm their co-operative arrangement.

[(Anonymous)]

you have no idea what you were doing... you risked hundreds of passenger's lives. does that make you laugh? you are rotten inside!