Japanese Culture

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Watched this on Netflix last night. It's leaving Netflix this month, so I've been meaning to check it out.

I've dabbled in making sushi before, so it was fun to see how a professional does it. But what makes this documentary truly fascinating is to see what a perfectionist is like in motion. The guy thinks sushi, he lives sushi. He'll be making sushi until he dies, then one of his sons can fight over who takes over the restaurant.

If you've ever tried to make something before, I'm sure you'll see a bit of the process in Jirou's work. The gradual improvement of the process. The frustrations and disappointments in your work in the beginning. The self discipline that you force upon yourself. The sacrifices you make for your work.

I guess sacrifice is the big theme in Jirou's Dream. He makes some of the best sushi in Japan (three stars from Michelin), but he does so at the sacrifice of every other aspect of his life. He even admits that he was a crummy dad who rarely saw his kids growing up. We never find out what happens to his wife. It's just not an important aspect to the documentary or his life.

If you just like food, you'll get to see the crazy sea market in Japan. The militaristicly run cooking process. One apprentice cooked egg sushi for two months before getting one approved (about 200 failures). He cried when he finally got it right. But at the same time, it's cool to see how the food is prepared. I don't know how to cook well, so it's fun to see other people do it on such an advanced level.

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I wrote an article about Japanese gestures:

http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/List_of_Japanese_Gestures

Hope you guys find it interesting.

If you have any questions or know of one that I missed, let me know.

Post it in this thread here or send me an e-mail about it.

So I was listening to episode 146 of the Video Games Hotdog podcast and Zack was musing about why Japanese seem to affix a letter grade to everything. In this situation, he noticed that weapons in Dark Souls and Bravely Default would have a letter grade to indicate how good it is. And I'm sure we've all played a Japanese game where you got a letter grade that goes all the way up to S ranking.

Even Lock Seeds in Gaim have a D to S ranking.

Anyone know why this came to be or where it came from?

Thanks to the person who pointed this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sashimono

Apparently samurai of all ranks could wear these back mounted flags. The symbol on them could vary, but typically was of the daimyo's crest for easy identification during battles.

An elite samurai (wow, that's an awesome term) would sometimes have a more personalized symbol on his sashimono.

Japan is a very pink country. See that red and white? Mix it and you get pink!

But why is pink so symbolic in Japan? Well, let's start by talking about the word pink in Japanese. Momoiro is literally "the color of peaches". Nowadays, it's probably just easier to say the word Pink in English though.

This site talks about how pink is a symbolism of youth and freshness:

http://www.three-musketeers.net/mike/colors.html#pink

Sakura are also pink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom#Symbolism

As well as the flower Yamato Nadeshiko, the symbol of the ideal Japanese lady:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_nadeshiko