If you enjoy games like Myst and Riven, take a crack at
Cageling. It's a good thing your prison is a luxurious rococo palazzo, because you'll probably be there for a while.
[more inside]
posted by Quietgal
on Dec 3, 2010 -
26 comments
Unlike many cinematic exports,
the Disney canon of films distinguishes itself with an impressive dedication to
dubbing.
Through an in-house service called
Disney Character Voices International, not just dialogue but songs, too, are
skillfully re-recorded, echoing the voice acting, rhythm, and rhyme scheme of the original work to
an uncanny degree (while still leaving plenty of room for
lyrical reinvention).
The breadth of the effort is surprising, as well -- everything from
Arabic to
Icelandic to
Zulu gets its own dub, and their latest project,
The Princess and the Frog, debuted in
more than forty tongues.
Luckily for polyglots everywhere, the exhaustiveness of Disney's translations is thoroughly documented online in
multilanguage mixes and
one-line comparisons, linguistic kaleidoscopes that cast new light on old standards.
Highlights:
"One Jump Ahead," "Prince Ali," and
"A Whole New World" (
Aladdin) -
"Circle of Life," "Hakuna Matata," and
"Luau!" (
The Lion King) -
"Under the Sea" and
"Poor Unfortunate Souls" (
The Little Mermaid) -
"Belle" and
"Be Our Guest" (
Beauty and the Beast) -
"Just Around the Riverbend" (
Pocahontas) -
"One Song" and
"Heigh-Ho" (
Snow White) -
"Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" (
Cinderella) -
Medley (
Pinocchio) -
"When She Loved Me" (
Toy Story 2) -
Intro (
Monsters, Inc.)
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 12, 2010 -
31 comments
"The Japanese Tradition" was a series of nine short, parody "How To" videos that gently mocked the formality of Japanese culture, from comedy duo
Rahmens (
ラーメンズ) and Japan Culture Lab. They're
available on DVD, but nearly all of them can be seen on YouTube, including
Sushi and
Ocha (tea).
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 25, 2010 -
54 comments
A lion stalks the plains. It spots an antelope. His lunch, it would seem, is assured, except for one thing. This antelope... can
TRANSFORM!
It's another incredibly bizarre and awesome EYEZMAZE game. Click on the various parts of the antelope to make things happen, until he's safe from the predator's attack. [more inside]
posted by JHarris
on May 21, 2010 -
42 comments
The
Soroban is recognisable to most in the West as an Abacus. Despite the prevalence of electronic calculators, the Soroban is still incredibly popular in Japan, with parents oft paying for private tutors to teach their children. The remarkable phenomenon of
Flash Anzan is observed after a few years of practice, when users no longer need a real Soroban and can work off an imaginary one.
posted by Biru
on May 6, 2010 -
38 comments
Japanese Balloon Bombs — "In 1944, during World War II, Japan launched a top secret project, nearly two years in the making, to send thousands of "balloon bombs" (called Fu-Go Weapons) to the United States. The goal of the attack was to create panic, forest fires, and show the United States that it could be attacked from afar. Each of the more than 9,000 balloon bombs launched towards the United States, over the course of several months, carried a 15 kilogram bomb that would detach from the balloon and explode on impact with the ground."
On a Wind and a Prayer.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 2, 2009 -
39 comments
Cooking with Dog is a fantastic Japanese cooking show on YouTube - but don't worry, they don't actually cook dogs. It's just that in Japan, an internet cooking show comprised of short videos of simple Japanese recipes just wouldn't be interesting unless it was narrated by a talking poodle.
Katsudon /
Oden /
Gyudon
posted by billysumday
on Apr 12, 2009 -
26 comments
Nihongodict is an AJAXy online Japanese-English dictionary. The list of matches auto-updates as you type. You can enter (or paste in) romaji, Kanji or kana, and use character maps for hiragana and katakana. Results can be
bookmarked.
[more inside]
posted by kurumi
on Mar 26, 2009 -
36 comments
29 year old
Hiromi Uehara first mesmerized the jazz community with her 2003 Telarc debut, Another Mind. 4 albums later she continues to astonish and inspire. On February 3rd, she released the album
Duet, a collaboration with Chick Corea, having first played with Corea at age 17. A graduate of the
Berklee School of Music, Hiromi
tours relentlessly with her crack band. I defy your jaw not to drop at their performances
here,
here, and
here.
[more inside]
posted by Roach
on Feb 24, 2009 -
85 comments
Kure Kure Takora was a
Toho produced, short form children's television show from the Japan in the early 1970's.
Meet the Cast:
Kure Kure Takora, aka Gimme Gimme Octopus; his closest friend, the coin vomiting squash
Chonbo; jellyfish bully
Tororo;
Monro, the sexy walrus who gets around;
Debura,the grizzled and world-weary badger;
Biragon, lazy trust-fund iguana; and last but not least, the picked on,
Sea Cucumber Gang.
An exhaustive listing of videos for all 220 episodes, most with plot breakdowns. [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall
on Jan 5, 2009 -
18 comments
Phase — Mother Earth, a piece created by Mono-ha artist Nobuo Sekine in 1968, has been
re-created:
Consisting of a hole dug into the ground, 2.7 metres deep and 2.2 metres in diameter, with the excavated earth compacted into a cylinder of exactly the same dimensions, Phase — Mother Earth was instrumental in the early development of work by the Mono-ha artist group, and has been considered a landmark work in Japanese postwar art history.
More about Mono-ha inside.
[more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
on Dec 3, 2008 -
8 comments
Gizmine - "the world's largest Japanese gadgets and lifestyle design shop." Viewable by color, theme, price, popularity, or brand.
posted by Manhasset
on Nov 26, 2008 -
11 comments
"There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." -
Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. On this, the anniversary of Mishima's transformation into a headless god, a collection of video links.
[more inside]
posted by eccnineten
on Nov 25, 2008 -
11 comments
In a series of sixteen advertisements screened in Japan, Tommy Lee Jones plays extraterrestrial 'Alien Jones', who has taken the form of a man to check on the world of humans, all the while drinking a Japanese brand of coffee named
BOSS. I have no idea how Tommy Lee Jones got talked into doing these advertisements, or why. And after watching them for yourself (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16), you probably won't either.
posted by Effigy2000
on Nov 23, 2008 -
85 comments
The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a medieval Japanese account of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and has inspired many other works of art. Click on the chapters and scroll down to see
Heike illustrations (or start
here), see
more art or
figures inspired by the Heike. Would you rather read?
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Nov 16, 2008 -
10 comments
At
One Minute Languages you can learn greetings, talking about names, counting, and more in
Catalan,
Danish,
French,
German,
Irish,
Japanese,
Luxembourgish,
Mandarin,
Norwegian,
Polish,
Romanian, and
Russian.
posted by sveskemus
on Nov 11, 2008 -
25 comments
