きののよるはぼくとたもだちがやっことたもいのいずみにいて。

(updated below)

Yesterday by the time I got to work I was feeling alright. From roughly 13:00 to 15:30 I was working on a translation of the World Gold Panning Association [WGA] 2008 Annual General Meeting minutes [AGM].

I should probably give a little more context.

Usotan one of six “parts” or “neighborhoods” of the town of Hamatonbetsu was formerly the “Yukon” of Japan according to some local accounts. Many people moved up here in search of riches and Ki-San once showed me the remnants of an old house. He said some people got very rich, but most made little to no money at all.

Although the rush came and went,  treasure is still to be found in the Usotan streams. Thus every summer they have Hokkaido wide gold panning championships – which I was honored to attend last August – and a few years back they had the distinction of hosting the 2002 World Gold Panning Championships [Pictures].

Me “competing” at last summer’s Japan Gold Panning championships in Usotan. Photo by Tamoi.

The Championships were organized by the WGA, and it turns out that Hamatonbetsu is the Japanese member country of the WGA. Thus, last year’s AGM minutes were sent to the Hamatonbetsu town office. I am not sure why two weeks ago the 2008 minutes were plopped on my desk and I was told to translate them, but I’m not here to ask questions.

Originally I thought it’d be a good challenge for me to just go through the minutes word by word and translate them myself. Sort of a Japanese challenge I’ve been training for all year. As a backup; however, I e-mailed the WGA, explained my situation and asked for a digital copy. Esther was kind enough to send it to me not once, but twice after I accidentally deleted the original.

Given I know no Japanese grammar and only had one day instead of a week to try and translate the 5 page document it was a good decision. One of the first full sentences is something like “The President asked if anyone had any objections to the meeting being declared legal. There were no objections, and with that the meeting was declared legal.” I’ve barely ever heard “legal” used in that context in my own life, and I had no luck finding that usage in my 2 pound japanese to english dictionary or on google translate.

What I ended up doing was writing what they were trying to express in simple English, plugging it into Google Translate and plugging what Google Translate pumped out back in to see what it looked like.

For example with that first sentence I’d write something like

The President started the meeting.

Plug that into google then plug what came out:

大統領は、会議を開始した。

back in to see its Japanese translated into English meaning

The president began the meeting.

If it was close enough I moved on. One point when I had President written, going back from the Japanese came up with “Bush.” I do not think this was a very effective way to do the translation, but given my time constraints and needing to finish the project it worked for me.

Friday night after Judo practice I went to meet up with some friends at Yakko – one of the best dinner/drinks places in town, if a little expensive. I was tired and they could tell, but it was alright. At one point was having a nice conversation with a couple of the daugthers of the owner. They are fellow Judo team members – one is in nursery school, while the other is a junior high schooler – the nursery schooler asked me to pick her up as she often does as high as I can, and then I throw her up and catch her.

On previous visits she’d asked me to come to their home on the 2nd floor and play. Master – her father – had put the X on that, so I was a little doubtful. I thought one throw would be fine. I went in and she was smiling and all was good – then a friend yelled something about Michael Jackson and everyone started laughing. That sort of ruined the moment for me. I don’t think the junior high schooler quite got the joke, but she was asking why they were all talking about MJ. Soon afterwards I said my goodbyes and returned to the group of 12 men, not in a great mood.

A foreign friend said it was a “great joke.” I disagreed, I felt perhaps it would’ve been funny an hour or two later, but not in front of the children. He said it didn’t matter because “they didn’t get it” I disagreed. Odds are the junior high schooler is aware of that part of MJ’s past, and even if not how was I to explain in Japanese with my level why everyone was laughing about MJ.

In any event, it ended what was a far more fun conversation than the one I was having with the drunk old dudes, and put me in a bad mood for a bit.

Closed the night out at Karaoke with one of the most unique playlists I’ve ever had:

• David Bowie – Space Oddity
• Tom Jones – It’s Not Unusual
• Hot Chocolate – You Sexy Thing
• Backstreet Boys – The song that starts with “Am I your fire”  – By request.

Eventually left around 2:15. Party was still going and rarely do I leave those things early, but I really was no longer feeling the scene largely because I was tired and had some things I wanted to do today. As I left that night’s star a dude I hadn’t met before who didn’t work with us, was wearing posh-punk clothing, drinking hot tea and screaming his way through songs was entertaining everyone.

Photo of me at the Karaoke スーナク where we were last night. Taken last fall by artist unknown.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention how as I was doing the translation I did some research on Japanese dictionaries and I came across Jim Breen. He’s the creator of the WWWJDIC: Online Japanese Dictionary Service which seems awesome, although I don’t understand it now. What interested me more was his incredible “Japanese Page” section of his personal homepage. It’s not pretty, but it’s effective, contains lots of information in an easy to find manner and has been maintained for years. It’s a great example of what a little time spent on a hobby consistently can lead to … sort of like what I hope to accomplish with this blog and everything I do online. Update finished July 4th, 2009 at 14:24