Chrono Trigger in English

(tags RPG, Chrono Trigger, Dual Screen, English, Japanese)

I was totally surprised that Chrono Trigger for the DS is also in English as well as Japanese. W00t!

I'm in yer browser, rubying (Furigana Injector)

(tags browser, Japanese, Firefox)

I only bumped into this today, but it seems useful for language learning. There is a Firefox extension that automatically adds the furigana readings (pronounciation) for kanji on a web page. It's called Furigana Injector. Here's a sample from picture-heavy, kanji poor Moeyo Akiba Blog, regarding the "Moekore Plus No. 3 Miku Hatsune" PVC figure sample preview for 2008-08 (my trans. from 「ボークス「モエコレPLUS No.3 初音ミク」PVCサンプルレビュー」).

In this sample, all of the conversions are correct. I did notice some incorrect conversions on some other pages, though.

The conversions are added on the fly, and you can manually add them through right-clicking. You can dial the non-conversion level to your level of competency. I have mine initially set to ignore the "980 most common" kanji. Yeah, manga and figure blogs aren't really good Japanese practice, I know. Perhaps this will help when slogging through Yahoo News or Wikipedia, ugh.

This extension works with the XHTML Ruby Support extension, which I've been using without much practical benefits.

I never did understand why furigana was also called ruby. I better read up on the ruby explanation at Wikipedia Japanese. Oh, the name comes from the 19th century England-created font. Okay.

Kyoko Endo in Osaka, rare?

(tags live, music, artist, Japanese, anime)

80時代のシンガーソングライター遠藤響子（旧芸名：遠藤京子）は、2003からライブ活動を復旧していた。ファンハウス時代のファンとして、私は行きたかったが、そのライブは東京と名古屋中心だった気がする。

それで、突然のメールで「こんにちは。遠藤響子です。」という、大阪ライブの知らせを受けた。今までのメールは「pure modeです。」だったから、これはアーティストが直接にファンを招いていると思っていた。嬉しかった。でも、水曜日夜のライブは神戸から行きづらいだよね。今回はパスしかないな。メールを返事すべきですかね？「応援したいが、ごめんなさい。」

ところで、遠藤響子は2008年6月に、岩男潤子、Les.R、東 真紀、emikoと一緒に「From Voice Vol. 5」というコンサートに参加する予定。参加者にちょっと驚いた。岩男潤子は有名なアニメ「カードキャプターさくら」の声優/歌手で知っていた。またemikoはアニメ「うた∽かた」の音楽関係で知っていた。しかし、遠藤響子のアニメに対して縁がないと思っていた。なぜだ。

Great artwork, crap story: Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora

(tags manga, anime, 2007, failure)

I finally got around to reading Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (京四郎と永遠の空), the manga. The first two volumes were somewhat interesting, but the story fell apart in the third. The artist Kaishaku (介錯) draws faces really well. I love the long flowing hair, long skirts, and meido. The color illustrations rock as well.

Still, what a waste of time. I want some kinda of logic in my stories, please.

The only reason I gave the manga some time is because I store my Xbox 360 discs in this nice Kaishaku-illustrated CD case. Or maybe it's by the anime staff. I bought it for the rawr factor, intending to watch the anime later on. Somehow, the manga was more convenient to start.

Anyway, I'm totally unmotivated to watch the anime. :-p

Cube otaku? Conversation killer/starter

(tags rubik's cube, practice, Japanese)

My Japanese teacher introduced me to the Nakaji-kun article. However she rolls her eyes whenever we discuss the Rubik's Cube. I try to at least make it palatable by not discussing the technicalities, but about how I feel when I do the cube. You know, share my human experience, don't be a bore. It isn't working though. Last time, I asked her to give me a copy of the article and I decided to quickly change the topic. Still she explained a relevant phrase: 「たかがキューブ、されどキューブ」 == It's just a cube, but it's deep.

Sometimes when I'm cube-commuting, elderly people try to spring up a conversation with me. Its funny to hear in a roundabout way how Nakaji-kun gained the spotlight. The conversation quickly degrades to "which country did you come from", oh yeah.

Lightweight people prefer Ruby and Haruhi

(tags presentation, Ruby, Japanese, English, China, criticism, anime)

Here's a "lightning talk" called "Diligent People. Lightweight people." done by Masayoshi Takahashi, chairman of the Nihon Ruby-no Kai, the Ruby programming language core and libraries developers (and support) group. (Thanks to _why's post "Chairman Takahashi in Taiwan") This is a rare English sample from the mainly Japanese presentation group.

Basically a lightning talk a short 3 minute speech with big kanji Powerpoint-like (or is it Evangalion-type?) visuals, usually on programming topics. Try it out here: "About Nihon Ruby no Kai" (日本Rubyの会について), but don't forget to maximize your browser.

So Takahashi makes an argument for lightweight ("lazy"!) people and processes instead of "diligent" people, but rather than spoil the humor I urge you to watch the video.

I realize when says "lightweight people prefer scripting languages like Ruby" he is expounding the strengths of unit-testing, dynamism, and less documentation, as much as a 3 minute talk can allow.

But his "lightweight people prefer Haruhi (light novel)" is just icing on the cake. He's definately not saying that Ruby is so like last year's anime, ie. old news. Still any programming language that can be associated with making people dance in the streets is novel.

Final Fantasy in Japanese?

(tags PlayStation Portable, game, RPG, remake, Japanese)

Games blog at Wired has the screenshot scoop on the Final Fantasy 1 remake coming out for the PSP, uh, tomorrow. The photo shows, for the US version, language options "English", "Japanese Kana" and "Japanese". Dood that's like with kanji for those too slow to read kana. Win is me.

I've played Final Fantasy 1 almost 20 years ago, but I haven't replayed it since then. I skipped the various remakes. Since I've been very satisfied with the whole PSP gaming experience, I had the mind to take up Kohler on the offer to buy the Japanese game to see if it had the English, but I'm sure I can handle the four elements in Japanese, right?