Now, whenever you view the Nihonshock homepage, below the most recent post you will see:

These are basically short posts (just a paragraph or so) about a specific Japanese word that I thought was either interesting or worth talking about. The words included will (for the most part) be quite high level, or will otherwise offer unique trivia for lower level words, but I’ll do my best to make the explanations accessible to learners of all levels. I will, however, stay away from words that aren’t known even to native Japanese.

Note that on the top page, just an excerpt is given, so be sure to click the words to go to the page with the full explanation.

I haven’t gotten around to making a dedicated page where you can easily browse through all of the vocabulary (there’s only 2 words right now, anyway), but it’s on my “to do” list.

I’ll try to add words at a frequency of every day or every other day, but no guarantees.

There’s 4 ways you can keep up with Nihonshock’s new vocabulary section.

1. Bookmark Nihonshock’s home page and come back every day.
2. Follow me on Twitter (I’ll let everyone know when a new word goes up)
3. Subscribe to the Vocabulary RSS Feed
   • Vocabulary will not appear in the regular RSS feed.
4. Join the Nihonshock vocab goal on smart.fm (I’ll try to keep it as up to date as possible)

As always, I’m interested to hear everyone’s opinions and suggestions.

UPDATE: April 24, 2010

I made a dedicated category page that makes it possible to quickly access past vocabulary. If I can keep up the whole word-a-day thing, this section is going to get pretty big pretty fast.

Check it out: Nihonshock Vocabulary Bank.

In any country, the start of a New Year is a time to reflect upon the past and to make goals and plans for the future. In the English-speaking world, we have “New Year’s Resolutions” but in Japan they have 新年の目標 (shinnen no mokuhyou).

How did you do last year? What are your goals for the new year?

A look back…

Nihonshock started in August of last year, so it isn’t quite half a year old yet, but I’m very happy that the site has started to mature and come to life. Everyone who has something to say seems to like the site and its content, and I love the warm and fuzzy feeling i get from looking at my Google analytics and seeing that people are arriving here and finding exactly the information they wanted.

Those of you who have been visiting for a while know that the site recently got a pretty thorough graphical overhaul (see pics below). I felt that the old scheme was uncoordinated, loud, and felt very packed-in because of the high contrast. The new paint job gives things room to breathe, cuts back the red, and improves the overall page flow.

It’s hard to believe that a year ago I was so clueless about web design that I didn’t know the difference between a Class and an ID (it’s true!), and now I’m hand-crafting date sprites and optimizing my template’s php code. It just goes to show just how much a person accomplish in a year.

A look forward…

Notice how in the old version, nihonshock’s tag line was a blog for Japanophiles but in the new version was changed to language & stuff? Well, when I came up with the original tag line, back before I had written a single post, I wasn’t really sure what sort of content there was going to be on nihonshock or what people wanted to see.

30 posts later, nihonshock’s content has a clear direction and personality, hence the new, more descriptive tag. So basically, I’m going to run with this “language & stuff” theme this year and see where it goes!

My first major project this year (other than clearing FFXIII) is to update the cheat sheet. Whereas the old one was composed in Microsoft Word, I’m redoing it from the ground up in Adobe Illustrator. The finished product will be easier to read, contain more complete and better organized information and will also correct a few mistakes that were found on the first version. Also, I’ll be getting professional prints… but more on that later. (Some of you may have already realized that I have a tendency to fall behind schedule, but I’m currently shooting for a mid-January release.)

Hopefully by the time spring rolls around (mmm… spring rolls…), I’ll have implemented my second major idea, which is some kind of weekly content. I haven’t decided what the content will be yet (except that it will almost certainly be language-related), just that I want to include something that will keep the site fresh, since my real posts are kind of sporadic.

Also heading into spring, I’ll be working on guest posts for some other Japan-related blogs around the net. Feel free to contact me if you have a blog somewhere and you’d like me to write something for you!

In the summer you’ll probably start to see more interactivity at nihonshock. This would include polls, contests, games and other things like that.

I am really looking forward to my first full year of improving and expanding nihonshock.

Also on the drawing board…

In order of likelihood (more to less):

• more cheat sheets
• a nihonshock mascot
• video posts
• a travel section
• a Japan bookmarks section
• a Q&A section (for Japanese learners)

On a personal note…

My new year’s resolutions are…

• Speak perfect, natural Japanese!!! (my top goal for 6-7 years running, actually)
• Get a good camera and learn the basics of photography
• Read more books, in both Japanese and English
• Get an S on Evans EXT (Jubeat), become a Y3
• Make more money, spend less
• Start waking up earlier (6:30am would be awesome)
• Stop picking at my fingernails… (….no, bad Lloyd! I said stop!!!)

But I doubt as many have heard of Silver Week! But there’s a good reason you may not have heard of it though: this year is the first Silver Week ever.

Silver skies on Citizen's Rest Day, the view from my apartment.

The holidays

Saturday, August 19 : A day off for some.

Sunday, August 20 : A day off for more.

Monday, August 21 : Respect for the Aged Day (敬老の日). This holiday comes every year on the 3rd Monday of August. However, prior to 2003 it was always on August 15th.

Tuesday, August 22 : Citizen’s Day of Rest (国民の休日). Not technically a “holiday”, but according to the Japanese specifications for holidays, a “Citizen’s Day of Rest” is to occur to fill a gap between two holidays that are separated by only one regular working day. But you don’t need to strain yourself over the details… the next such case isn’t for 6 more years. However, you should know that this Citizen’s Rest Day was originally created in 1986 to ensure that the Japanese would have an unbroken holidays for Golden Week, regardless of what days the holidays happened to fall on. In 2007 however, the government designated May 4th as Greenery Day, making the Citizen’s Day of Rest no longer necessary for this purpose.

Wednesday, August 23 : Autumnal Equinox (秋分の日）. Either August 22 or 23 every year.

The name

Decided based on the results of a televised poll in November of 2008, Silver Week (シルバーウィーク) is more than just a call-back to Golden Week. In Japanese, silver refers to the elderly, making silver week an appropriate label for a string of holidays in which the most important one is Respect for the Aged Day.

Just as a quick language digression… It’s commonly thought that the word silver came to be associated with the elderly as a reference to how hair becomes gray when one becomes older, but the actual origin of the usage apparently came from silver seats (シルバーシート), which was the old name for priority seating for elderly and disabled individuals on trains (Source: Wikipedia Disambiguation for シルバー, Japanese). The term silver seat fell out of use in the early 1990s when the trains began using the term 優先席 (ゆうせんせき) (literally: priority seat) in an effort to make the seats more open to pregnant women and injured people (by that time silver had already come to be associated with being old).

How to celebrate

Well, doing something nice for your grandmother and grandfather might be a good idea. Here’s one more good (?) idea.

Recently Released, Pokemon "Soul Silver" for Nintendo DS

Don’t get used to it

Because Silver Week requires the 3rd Monday of August and the Autumnal Equinox to land just exactly right, the next one won’t be until 2015.

As an idea of how to spur the economy, the LDP was considering designating an early November long-holiday similar to Golden Week that might have included Health and Sports Day, Culture Day and Labor Thanksgiving Day, but since the LDP recently lost power to the Democratic Party, this plan’s future has become highly uncertain, and because Silver Week is already pretty well linked to Respect for the Aged Day, it’s unlikely that this new string of holidays would be referred to by the same name anyway.

I think most people expected the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lose the election, but the sheer margin of this defeat is mind boggling. If the Democrats in the US had won like this last year, health care reform would be finished already and we would all have jobs and eco cars… maybe.

Oh well, that’s what they get for not taking the election seriously enough… Prime Minister Aso Taro didn’t resign like many thought he should, and during the election even rudely walked away from the Democratic party leader after a debate without bowing or even making eye contact. And what was up with those TV ads with the emotional music and prolonged clips of Aso just staring into the camera, interrupted occasionally by words like “experience” and “responsibility”?

This is a historic political moment for Japan, and everyone will be watching carefully to see what exactly changes as a result of it. At the very least, I imagine it will take the LDP quite a long time to regain their status as a political player.

LDP 84, Democrats 289 (not final numbers)

Where are you?

You’re looking at a blog dedicated to all things Japanese.

It was a few weeks ago that I suddenly decided for no reason in particular to start thowing random Japanese proverbs and their English translations/equivalents onto Twitter. Most likely I was just bored (if necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the handsome young milkman). After a couple days I got the urge to step up from the realm of short, quickly buried and forgotten tweets to an actual blog. I’ve also recently been getting into web design, so it was a good chance for me to start working with WordPress. Less than a week later, this blog was born.

So that’s the story of NihonShock!

Who’s responsible for this?

My name is Lloyd Vincent. I’m a translator/interpreter living and working in Nagoya, Japan. I’ve been a Japanophile since high school, and I majored in East Asian Studies at Western Washington University. I also have JLPT Level 1 certification (2007).

What will you find here?

• Japanese language and study tips
• Pictures and stories of strange and interesting things from around Japan
• Information useful for moving to, living in or travelling around Japan
• Cultural tidbits
• Occasional Japanese news that is of interest
• …and more!

I personally am an anime/manga fan, but NihonShock will not be an “otaku” blog. I’m not shunning the topic by any means; I just don’t think I could write anything of interest about it.

Anything else you should know?

If you have a question about Japan or Japanese, or if there’s a specific topic you’d like me to write about, feel free to message me on twitter. Of course I can’t guarantee to be willing or able to do an article on everything that is requested, but I’ll try my best.

Also, be aware that this site will contain content that some households might consider inappropriate (I mean, the subject of this site is the country that invented used panties in vending machines and has a festival in honor of the male reproductive organ, among other phenomena…), so consider yourself warned.

What does “Nihon” mean?

“Nihon” is how you say “Japan” in Japanese.

Okay, that about wraps up the introduction. Check back frequently for updates, or subscribe to NihonShock’s RSS feed!

I’ll be tweaking the site here and there for the first month or so while I get everything the way I want it, let me know if you notice any bugs or design glitches.