JP news translations

[amadeus]

Now Free!

From the Sankei Shimbun:
アムウェイに違法勧誘　容疑で京都府教育庁職員ら逮捕
Kyoto board of education worker etc. arrested for illegally soliciting Amway

Kyoto Police reported the 11th that two people including one employee of the Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education are under arrest on suspicion of violating the Specified Commercial Transactions Law after meeting a woman, 23, on a dating app and then taking her to a salon before soliciting her. The suspects have refuted the charges saying "we told her we would invite her [to join Amway] before [taking her out.]"

According to filed charges, on March 27th the two conspired to invite the woman they had matched with to join, then concealed their involvement in the recruiting. "We recommend this face lotion. If you join [Amway], you can buy it for less," etc. were among the pitches used.

Police report the woman signed a contract to become a member and buy more face lotion, but the next day consulted with police.

Police report one of the suspects is under investigation for soliciting more than 20 women via dating apps.

Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education issued a statement: "if the charges are true, this is improper conduct for a public official. We will confirm the facts and act strictly."

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I didn't know about this law! Would have been handy to me years ago.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

What is Amway?

 

[amadeus]

What is Amway?

If you sign up five friends to be independent sales representatives, you can collect a commission on their sales! And if they sign up five of their friends, that’s more commissions going upline to you! And if they sign up more, so goes your upline!

It’s a marketing program with multiple levels that could be described using a three-sided shape with which you are undoubtedly familiar.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Gosh, the dating world just gets more vicious every day!

 

[amadeus]

I just noticed it: transaltions

Well, you get what you pay for!

 

[amadeus]

From the Mainichi Broadcasting System:
店舗の屋上から買い物カート投げ落とす　逮捕の１４歳少女「人を狙ったわけではない」
Shopping cart thrown from store rooftop - girl, 14, arrested says "not trying to hit anyone"

５階建てのビルの屋上から買い物カートを投げ落とし下にいた男性らを殺害しようとしたとして、大阪府内の１４歳の少女が逮捕されました。
A 14-year-old Osaka girl has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after throwing a shopping cart from the roof of a 5-story building.

The suspect arrested is a 14-year-old junior high school student from Osaka Prefecture. According to police, at about 6:30 on Nov. 26th, the girl and a 13-year-old accomplice threw a shopping cart off the top of a 21m high discount store parking lot with the intent to murder a man standing below.

The cart, 8 kilograms in weight, landed about two meters from the man, however there were no injuries. Police looked into video surveillance footage of the scene and identified the suspects. The girl denied part of the charges, saying "it was half in fun. We knew they'd die if we hit them, but it's not like we were trying to hit anyone."

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I know exactly where this place is and passed through it a few times. I bet the MBS staff sent to take the footage were a little pleased that it happened here since it's just one subway line from their studio in Umeda down to Suminoe. 20? 25 minutes?

 

[tjs282]

According to police, at about 6:30 on Nov. 26th, the girl and a 13-year-old accomplice threw a shopping cart off the top of a 21m high discount store parking lot with the intent to murder a man standing below.

Not excusing the stupidity of what the girls did, but charging a child with "attempted murder" seems a little steep — murder usually implies intent to inflict injury, rather than simply indifference to the possibility of injury occurring.

I mean, by the look of the place on Google (https://www.google.de/maps/place/Su...e32edd!8m2!3d34.6091167!4d135.4828518!5m1!1e2), they would have had to heave the cart over a high wall (6-ish feet), so it's not likely that they could have been deliberately aiming at anyone, they just didn't care.

In the UK, a similar crime (which in itself is basic vandalism — property damage to the cart, and maybe the footpath — but with an inherent risk of causing serious injury to an unlucky passer-by) would (I think; IANAL) be charged as either "criminal negligence", or more likely "reckless endangerment". Of course, if the cart (or any shrapnel) had actually hit someone, then that would ramp up to actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, or manslaughter depending on injury severity.

Does Japanese legislation not have similar "in-between" statutes?

 

[amadeus]

(6-ish feet)

https://www.j-cast.com/tv/2021/11/29425858.html?p=all

少女たちはなぜ重いカートを落とすことができたのか。屋上は駐車場になっていて1メートル90センチほどの塀に囲まれているが、屋上が傾斜している関係で、一部は塀の高さが110センチ程度と低くなっている。
How were the girls able to throw the heavy cart over? The roof is a parking lot enclosed by a 190cm fence, however as the roof is at an incline parts of the fence are only as high as 110cm.

 

[Takhisis]

/subscription post desu

 

[Berzerker]

can you teach us a little Japanese? I've seen those box-like caricatures but dont know what they mean. You dont have to go into detail but a brief explanation for the symbols and their relationship to other alphabets or writing systems would be a start.

they look a bit like cartouches

 

[amadeus]

@Berzerker could you clarify? Did you mean 囲み? Katakana カタカナ? Happy to answer any questions but I’m just afraid I don’t know what you are referring to now.

 

[Berzerker]

they look like numbers and letters in those little boxes 30 ab, 30 bf, 30 ab, 30 ca

nm, that cant be Japanese writing

 

[amadeus]

@Berzerker well I guess that settles that then!

Anyway, I thought I'd write up a quick thing on the language:

Where did Japanese come from?

It goes without saying that most of the writing came from China. The spoken language is kind of a hybrid of highly-localized Chinese readings called onyomi and native Japanese readings called kunyomi. This is not to say that spoken Japanese and Chinese are in any way mutually intelligible, the grammatical forms are different and Japanese has no emphasis on tones like Chinese.
​

Why does Japan have three writing systems?

This is a bit misleading. Does English have two writing systems because of upper and lowercase characters? A lot of people intimidated by the language cite this as a stumbling block to learning, but it really shouldn't be. There are kanji, the Chinese-derived characters, hiragana, used mostly for grammar and words that aren't represented easily by kanji, and katakana, often used for loanwords from other languages. There's really no confusion in the "three" systems any more than you'd have difficulty trying to figure out when to use upper/lowercase characters.

Here's an example sentence using all three: kanji are highlighted in red, hiragana in green, katakana in blue.

私はパンを食べた。
I ate bread.

私 - watashi, meaning I.
は - ha (pronounced "wa"), the grammar signifying that I am the subject of this sentence.
パン - pan, bread. Pan is a loanword from Portuguese.
を - wo (pronounced "oh"), the grammar for the bread being the object of the sentence,
食 - ta, meaning food/eat. See below.
べた - beta, past-tense form when combined with ta to make the verb eat.
​

Why is Japanese difficult to learn?

Part of it is of course the nearly 2,000 Chinese characters that are used regularly. There's good news, though! They're not entirely random, and a lot of them share the same characteristics and accompanying meanings. Here again are a few examples:

金 gold, metal
銀 silver
銅 copper
鉄 iron
針 nail

Look at the left half of all those characters... all the same! They're also all associated with something metallic, so that gives you an idea of how it's not as daunting as it seems initially. Here's the bad news, though: each character will have multiple readings based on context. That goes back to the native Japanese and Chinese readings for words, and even native Japanese make mistakes (including one frequently-bumbling former Prime Minister.)
​

I think that covers the major things!

 

[Takhisis]

^The above explains the pun in the name of the work ‘GinTama’, which is, of course, deliberately written in kanji.

amadeus, you might be interested in this article about the ‘extended’ set of kana, hundreds of which were marginalised after Japan standardised writing as part of its modernisation/Westernisation efforts.