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    Thread: kindle voyager
Post: RE: kindle voyager

I got a 1st gen 2013 Paperwhite, it takes about 2 seconds for the definition to appear. And that is because a short touch is a turn page (Paperwhite doesn't have physical turn page buttons), so it re...
visualsense General discussion 16 1,342 2016-02-17, 10:50 pm
    Thread: Japanese "politeness levels"
Post: RE: Japanese "politeness levels"

I want to add that the people who eschew Keigo are the "Big Shots" (bosses talking with employees, veteran talking with newbs, etc.), so when you talk without using Keigo you are NOT sounding "informa...
visualsense General discussion 52 4,365 2016-02-09, 3:58 pm
    Thread: Japanese "politeness levels"
Post: RE: Japanese "politeness levels"

(2016-02-07, 8:35 pm)Digix Wrote: I am getting feeling that grammar is just plain wrong and  it is not about politeness at all but about intimacy/feelings. and it should be labeled as "levels of int...
visualsense General discussion 52 4,365 2016-02-08, 7:53 pm
    Thread: Life in Japan and bubbles
Post: RE: Life in Japan and bubbles

What you guys are calling "gaijin aura", is probably what would just be called "tourist aura" or "tourist vibe" in other languages.
visualsense General discussion 47 5,896 2016-01-15, 6:35 pm
    Thread: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)
Post: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)

Well, romanization doesn't even depend of a top-down "national agenda" to start with, advocates could start making websites and printing books in romaji on their own, and it is not like people will si...
visualsense The Japanese language 121 12,104 2015-11-12, 10:00 pm
    Thread: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)
Post: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)

From the abstract: "supporters have made a case for its adoption on varying grounds, most notably those of education, democracy and office automation. Although such advocates have included influential...
visualsense The Japanese language 121 12,104 2015-11-12, 2:47 pm
    Thread: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)
Post: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)

Korean is not even easy to learn for monolingual English speakers, pretty much the same level as Japanese. Killing kanji would make no difference for Japanese learning English as well, Korea ranks ab...
visualsense The Japanese language 121 12,104 2015-10-29, 6:36 pm
    Thread: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)
Post: Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論)

Kanji is easier to read in MANY situations. With katakana in particular is hard to tell apart シ ツ ソ ン  " The idea of abandoning kanji has been floated by Japanese people since at least the 18th cen...
visualsense The Japanese language 121 12,104 2015-10-28, 3:30 pm
    Thread: Tokyo without ads: Japan's capital stripped bare
Post: Tokyo without ads: Japan's capital stripped bare

Not a fan of ads and billboards, but the pics look more like "Tokyo without Typography". Dude just deleted EVERYTHING.
visualsense Off topic 7 926 2015-10-11, 6:53 pm
    Thread: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon - please help
Post: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon -...

BTW, hard to notice from the US, but this is the same reason Netflix, Hulu, etc. are EXTREMELY anemic in many (most?) countries, offering a tiiiiiny fraction of the movies and TV offered in the US: lo...
visualsense Learning resources 30 3,474 2015-08-31, 11:09 pm
    Thread: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon - please help
Post: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon -...

Japanese publishers (and Amazon, and etc.) have no problem selling to foreigners, as long as they have a Japanese IP (and a Japanese address, not sure) logged in their system with the purchase. I gues...
visualsense Learning resources 30 3,474 2015-08-31, 11:03 pm
    Thread: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon - please help
Post: Copyright issue with eBooks from Japanese Amazon -...

Probably exclusive international rights for JP stuff being bought with contracts that prevent JP companies from selling directly to their markets. The reverse happens as well, with Amazon US not selli...
visualsense Learning resources 30 3,474 2015-08-30, 8:32 pm
    Thread: satire in Japan
Post: satire in Japan

I don't have any online forum to recommend, by writing I meant there is a lot of public debate in print and that Japanese still read a lot of dead tree stuff. To be honest, I think most people in we...
visualsense Off topic 54 7,321 2015-05-14, 3:22 pm
    Thread: satire in Japan
Post: satire in Japan

One of the reasons you don't see so much political satire is that Japanese political dialogue takes place a lot through newspapers, books and magazines, that is, through writing. For example, magazin...
visualsense Off topic 54 7,321 2015-05-14, 2:13 am
    Thread: Any way to block chinese search results on google?
Post: Any way to block chinese search results on google?

I just add "jp" to any term I'm searching, when I want the results from JP sites only, usually it is enough. Add "site:jp" when you want to restrict even more.
visualsense Learning resources 4 1,112 2014-08-16, 6:06 pm
    Thread: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary
Post: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary

oh, great it worked I guess that parsing Nihongo without space between words is too hard to do it realtime on a kindle, they just code it on those files.
visualsense General discussion 7 1,984 2014-08-11, 1:08 pm
    Thread: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary
Post: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary

it was horizontal, a mobi I bought outside Amazon, the reason I sent it (a file that was already a mobi) was it had some crap formatting that made the characters super small, I was surprised when it f...
visualsense General discussion 7 1,984 2014-08-11, 12:56 pm
    Thread: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary
Post: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary

BTW, I noticed their conversion service on the "send to kindle" became very smart (recently?), it took a RPG book with page numbers and those repeating chapter titles in the top of every page, and str...
visualsense General discussion 7 1,984 2014-08-10, 11:23 pm
    Thread: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary
Post: Kindle Paperwhite and its jp dictionary

I had a similar problem, using amazon's "send to kindle" service solved it. I guess they have more powerful converters on their servers.
visualsense General discussion 7 1,984 2014-08-10, 7:26 pm
    Thread: Kindle books in Japanese...
Post: Kindle books in Japanese...

It is the publishers that restrict everything, most books are not even in digital format, and most that are in ebook format are only in those stores that use uber-restrictive DRM that only works in th...
visualsense Learning resources 52 14,755 2014-05-17, 1:23 pm
    Thread: Kindle books in Japanese...
Post: Kindle books in Japanese...

BTW, I'm outside Japan, first time I bought a buncha ebooks in the Amazon JP site it did give me a warning and locked my account (did not let buy anymore). Then I used a VPN to download the books (jus...
visualsense Learning resources 52 14,755 2014-05-15, 11:10 pm
    Thread: Kindle books in Japanese...
Post: Kindle books in Japanese...

Just a warning, some (well, one at least) kindle ebooks in the Amazon JP store may come as packed scans (like manga) instead of just text. Better check (file size or sending a sample) before buying an...
visualsense Learning resources 52 14,755 2014-05-15, 10:51 pm
    Thread: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?
Post: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?

yudantaiteki Wrote:qwertyytrewq Wrote:Japan should get rid of not only Kanji but katakana and hiragana as well and replace it with our Western letters. Agreed, but this is too long standing a debate t...
visualsense General discussion 48 7,006 2014-04-30, 2:13 pm
    Thread: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?
Post: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?

Also the dictionaries themselves (those that show older forms) would look pretty weird without those kanji, full of GIFs(yuck).
visualsense General discussion 48 7,006 2014-04-29, 4:08 pm
    Thread: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?
Post: What is the point of 12,800 kanji?

Businesses also love to pick strange kanji for their names, to differentiate themselves and to call attention. And like places, some companies are pretty old and predate the reforms.
visualsense General discussion 48 7,006 2014-04-29, 4:02 pm
    Thread: Does Japan have a crying culture?
Post: Does Japan have a crying culture?

It is the reverse, the problem is a sexist "culture" stereotyping people who cry as weak, or crying as "abnormal" or a "problem" that needs solving.
visualsense General discussion 13 4,177 2014-02-23, 8:38 pm
    Thread: using laptops mouse pad as a kanji recogniser
Post: using laptops mouse pad as a kanji recogniser

As a temporary crude solution you could open a online kanji recognition site, like: http://kanji.sljfaq.org/ then use your browser's "zoom" feature ("ctlr" + "+" on most windows browsers) to increase...
visualsense Learning resources 6 5,249 2013-05-26, 12:42 pm
    Thread: KanjiTomo - New OCR program for Japanese text
Post: KanjiTomo - New OCR program for Japanese text

Wow, reeaally cool. Great work! Amazing! It is like a 15+ years dream come true! obs1: It seems it is made with dark chars on clear background as default? It would be cool if you could press like...
visualsense Learning resources 139 56,471 2012-09-23, 8:31 pm
    Thread: This is not America
Post: This is not America

gdaxeman Wrote:Maybe that comes from the times when Europe was "the center of the world", figuratively speaking. Brasil is ex-european colony, dude.
visualsense Off topic 40 8,201 2012-09-23, 7:36 pm
    Thread: This is not America
Post: This is not America

undead_saif Wrote:What is more annoying is calling east-Asian people 'Asians', at least USA has America in its name, there's no country in Asia that has Asia in it's name O_O I would never get worked ...
visualsense Off topic 40 8,201 2012-09-23, 7:23 pm