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Every day on the way to work I walk by a fine establishment known as Yoshinoya (吉野家), Japan’s largest gyudon (牛丼) chain restaurant. For those of you whose lives have yet to be graced by gyudon, it’s a bowl of rice topped with beef and onions stewed in a sweet-savory soy-based sauce. Loving gyudon and being a cheapskate, I naturally noticed the recent 50 yen off gyudon promotion at Yoshinoya. The above photo is a photo of part of that sign.

Part of this sign, though, made me think about our new Ubiquity parser. In particular, it was the attachment ambiguity in the end date of the promotion. The text in the photo above literally is “April 15th (Wed.) 8PM until”. (Note that Japanese is a strongly head-final language, and that the “until” is a postposition.) There are two possible readings for this expression, as illustrated by the two composition trees below.

The first tree, on the left, represents the reading “until (April 15th 8PM)”, while the second represents two arguments: “on April 15th” and “until 8PM”. In other words, in the first reading, the promotion begins at some earlier date and extends until April 15th at 8PM while, in the second reading, the promotion is one day only, on April 15th, until 8pm. Such syntactic ambiguities are called “attachment ambiguities” in linguistics as it is an ambiguity of where different arguments “attach” in a tree representation.

This attachment ambiguity was possible because there was no clear marker on “April 15th,” which may have disambiguated it as “on April 15th”. In fact, in many languages this time position argument comes with no case marker or preposition, or it’s optional, making parsing for them difficult. If such a sentence is entered with spaces, the Ubiquity Parser: The Next Generation would try a parse where “8PM” is the “until” or goal argument and “April 15th” is an object argument, but it will only check its noun type, not put it in the correct semantic role (position). Perhaps this is something to think about in the future.

These types of situations will surely come up as we continue work on the Ubiquity parser, making it essential to look at different languages. Are there certain kinds of arguments in your language that do not have any word-external markers such as case or prepositions/postpositions?

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Softbank Mobile announced today to release 1-seg digital TV tuner device for iPhone in the middle of December. The 80-gram device provides the feature of TV over WiFi (converting TV signal received to IP-based data for iPhone) and doubles as a battery extender. Three hours continuous TV viewing is available.

I’ve seen a number of these ワンセグ (wansegu, 1seg) digital TV tuner-enabled phones around the office and in trains. I’m not a huge TV watcher, even in Japan,¹ but I have to say these phones are pretty cool. In the land of one-hour train commutes, there’s definitely both appeal and demand. I’ve sat on trains next to everyone from hip high schoolers to grandparents watching TV on these phones.

Frankly, however, I think the fact that it’s a separate device (even if it can be unwired) will still limit its attractiveness. I’ll be curious to see what the interface is like.

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The store down the street is called ichifuku (一福). Not only is it one of the closest restaurants to my house, it’s also been featured on a number of ramen restaurants and websites. The store is known for its delicious miso ramen but also for its more creative, Western-style arrangements. The female shopkeeper is often running everything by herself, gardening out front as well as cooking and playing great music.

Here are some pictures of the great food they serve:

If you ever come by the Hatsudai area, I highly recommend a visit. The address is: 東京都渋谷区本町６−６−４.

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I’ve been a fan of the SNL Digital Shorts since Lazy Sunday, but this is absolutely something else. It’s a brilliant piece of cross-cultural parody. Many on the associated Hulu page had some questions, however, so I decided to write up a little explanation of what’s actually going on in this short, and why I love it so.¹

The Digital Short begins with the Japanese version of the intro sequence, including a shrine, a 700 series bullet train, and the Scranton city sign now showing Amagasaki (尼崎市), a similarly industrial city near Osaka. Dwight shredding paper with Japanese text and Jim eating noodles are nice touches. All the names, in case you were wondering, are possible Japanese names (modulo Jim’s actor’s name being in katakana, and thus exclusively foreign). After Michael Scott with extra black hair readjusts his lucky cat (manekineko, 招き猫), we get to the brilliant title card.

As Japanese lacks definite and indefinite articles, the word “The” is replaced with 「その」 sono, the demonstrative ‘that’, making the title literally “That Office.” Lacking a straightforward replacement for “The,” however, I feel that this is a very cute artifact of overly-faithful translation.

The short itself runs through the Japanese versions of a few key scenes from the first episode of The Office. In the first, Pam is answering the phone and Michael interrupts her in his signature way, repeating her name (or, the Japanese equivalent of “Pam”, pamu パム) and then dropping -san, a personal name suffix—the equivalent of Mister or Miss—and smiling into the camera, content with his own cleverness. Pam says something indiscernible to Michael, referring to him as Tanaka-san (the “Mr. Smith” of Japan—even though his name plate accurately said “Michael Scott” マイケル・スコット), to which Michael mumbles 「そういうことです」, a phrase meaning “and that’s that,” or “and that is the case.” My guess is that this was the attempted translation of “that’s what she said.”

Michael then goes on to say 「日本で一番面白いボスです」 (nihon-de ichiban omoshiroi bosu desu, ‘[I am] the most interesting (=funniest) boss in Japan’). Steve Carell’s snicker halfway through that line, in response to his trying really hard at producing it, is very cute. The mug itself says 「世界中で一番面白い社長」(“world’s funniest company president”). This reminds me of my dad when he speaks Japanese, in the best way possible. ^^

Next is of course the jello scene. Dwight picks up the phone with the phone-appropriate 「もしもし」 (moshimoshi) and Jim asks where the stapler is. Dwight yells back 「バカ！」 (baka, ‘stupid!’) and Pam laughs, though in the stereotypical Japanese female’s high pitch manner, appropriately covering her mouth (though Pam also actually does this in the original). Michael walks in and they all apologize, 「ごめんなさい」 gomennasai. Although the bowing is a bit excessive in a classical SNL parody way, the traditionally hierarchical status quo of Japanese offices is very succinctly reflected here.

The next scene is also from the first episode of The Office, where Michael introduces himself, 「僕は君たちのリージョナル・マネージャ」 (boku-wa kimitachi-no regional manager, ‘I am your Regional Manager’). Dwight states that he is the “Assistant Regional Manager” (アシスタント・リージョナル・マネージャ) and then is corrected, 「リージョナル・マネージャのアシスタントです」 (regional manager-no assistant desu, ‘[you are] Assistant to the Regional Manager’). It’s very cool to see how this back and forth translates beautifully, and to see these actors execute it with the right timing and effect in a foreign language. Michael asks 「どうしてここにいるのだ」 (doushite koko-ni irunoda, ‘why are [you] here?’) and leads them in the radio exercises (ラジオ体操), saying 「じゃ、ラジオ体操をしましょう」 (jya, rajio taisou-wo shimashou, ‘well then, let’s do the radio exercises’).

Here’s another beautiful cultural point. These “radio exercises” are real, as every Mori no Ike villager knows, broadcasted over public radio and TV every morning, and are often done en masse at schools and some businesses. Pam’s then notes 「田中さんはみんなの健康を心配しています」 (Tanaka-san-wa minna-no kenkou-wo shinpai-shite-imasu, ‘Mr. Tanaka (=Michael) is concerned for everyone’s health’) in a conference-room reflection, and we see Stanley doing the crossword again.

After hurting his shoulder and cooling it with some oolong tea—the same bottle that was on Pam’s counter in the first scene—Michael reflects:

「今日はいい日でした。」 (kyou-ha ii hi deshita, ‘Today was a good day.’)
「いい仕事をした。」 (ii shigoto-wo shita, ‘[I] did good work.’)
「そう思う…かな？ はいはいはい！」 (sou omou… kana? hai hai hai!, ‘I think this way…? Yes yes yes!’)

The last line there is beautifully translated, capturing the essence of Michael in Japanese. As Japanese is a verb-final language, you literally say “blah blah blah I think” to mean “I think blah blah blah”, which may help explain the last phrase, 「そう思う」. Finally, the 「かな」 thrown in at the end turns the entire sentence, which was declarative up till then, into a question, which the bobble-head then answers. Brilliant!

In the final scene, Michael’s singing karaoke and Dwight yells 「かんぱい！」 (kanpai!, ‘bottoms up!’). The final credits list Sarah Sawyer and Hanna(h) Sawyer as producers… I wonder if they were actually involved with this Short or if they are also made up as well.

The details in the Short are great: the little Hello Kitties and origami, orchid plant on the reception desk (Japanese love orchids—or wait, maybe that’s just my grandfather), and all the copy paper that had 「コピー用紙」 (kopii-youshi, ‘copy paper’) pasted on. There’s a bonsai tree on Jim’s desk and his spoon is replaced with chopsticks.

If you want to get picky, of course, there are many rough edges… the incorrect use of 「ステープラー」 (how you would say “stapler” in Japanese) in lieu of 「ホッチキス」,² some text being poorly typeset, etc. But overall, this SNL Digital Short was obviously written by someone with a solid (albeit stereotypical) understanding of Japanese culture and strong intermediate Japanese skills. If the goal was simply only to play off of Japanese stereotypes, accurate Japanese wouldn’t have even been necessary, and so I really appreciate the effort that went into this. In addition, Steve Carell et al’s delivery in a language they don’t speak, in my opinion, is commendable.

“It’s funny because it’s racist,” in the best way possible. Bravo!

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Here’s one to get you started:

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