Author: ageekinjapan

Categories
Japanese

Hemorrhoids – 痔

A co-worker sent me this picture, she was laughing her ass off. At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character 痔 means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character 侍, which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character 痔 that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!! Poor kid… although probably he is very happy without knowing what the character means 😉

Hemorrhoids sweater

The same thing is even worse when people decide to have tattoos of Chinese or Japanese characters; my advice is: Don’t do it… unless you know a native! For example, a soldier in the last cover of TIME magazine has a tattoo written in Japanese in his right shoulder. Most likely he wanted to tattoo himself something like “I am a crazy boy!” but when translating, the tattoo artist wrote “気違い” which in Japanese has a VERY pejorative meaning. It could be translated as “I am a lunatic”. The poor guy is being object of many jokes in many online forums in Japan.

Japanese tattoo

Be careful when you buy a t-shirt with things that are not written in your language, and be even more careful with tattoos!

Categories
Various

Highest belly flop World Record

Darren Tayler, also known as Professor Splash, has recently been to Japan to break his own record by jumping from 10 meters and 83 centimeters in a swimming pool of only 30 centimeters of water:


Video by japanprobe.

Categories
Technology

Sekai Camera

As I have been in Spain for the last two weeks, I missed the presentation of one of the most anticipated iPhone applications. I am talking about the Sekai Camera, an augmented reality application developed in Tokyo which allows users to read and add information to objects, locations, buildings or any other thing in the real world using the iPhone as the interface. My friend Nobi was able to attend the presentation and was one of the first people to use the Sekai Camera. This is a demonstration video he recorded in the Loewe store in Omotesando; notice that the application uses the camera to recognize the purses in the shelves in real time so the user can easily obtain information about each item:

It can seem trivial but to be able to create an application like this, a lot of information from many sources (GPS, sensors, Internet) is needed. The good thing is that in Japan there is ALREADY a lot of geotagged information on the net thanks to mobile phones being able to geotag pictures or information since 2003/2004. Having so much geotagged information available via public APIs allows the Sekai Camera to be a relatively useful application from day 1. For example, one of the first applications of the Sekai Camera that is very useful is to aim the camera to a restaurant in the street so you can obtain real time information and reviews about what other clients that passed by think about it.

Right now Japan is the perfect breeding ground for an augmented reality application. Microsoft, Google and many others are also putting a lot of money into the development of augmented reality applications. We will see if the Sekai Camera is able to start the trend in Japan and from there get ready to conquer the world before the big companies take over the market.