Remeet Liberal Japonicus, New ObWi Front Pager, Longtime Presence

Posted by Gary Farber, introductory guest post written by Liberal Japonicus.

Hello. (image of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes)

 

I'm liberal japonicus and my name has suddenly appeared on the sidebar. I'm still trying to figure out what this may mean, but one thing that it seems to suggest is that it is necessary to post something in the way of an introduction.

I'd note that in Japan, where I reside and where half of my genes are from, it is called a jiko shoukai ('self-introduction') and if you go to almost any small group meeting in Japan, you'll find a portion of it devoted to going around the table and doing said jiko shoukai.

Even if you are practically positive that you know everyone in the room, on the off chance that there is one newbie present, or someone has been struck with retrograde amnesia in the past 24 hours, everyone has to stand up, introduce themselves, not forgetting to add a little tidbit of new information that really isn't important, but allows those assembled to feel like they know you a bit better.

So a few quick facts.

My handle is a tribute to Roadrunner cartoons, so imagine me as a Wile E Coyote like figure, paused in mid-rhetorical post, with the subtitle of liberal japonicus below. I'm from the US, but have lived in Japan for almost half my life. I'm tenured at a small private university in Southern Japan. The rest will be saved for future jiko shoukai.

While I spend an inordinate amount of time reading blogs, bu the number of times I have commented on a blog other than ObWi can be counted on one hand. I have reasons for this, but for the moment, I'll just point out that that I was born at the end of the baby boom, and so have an inordinate fondness for irony to mask true commitment, so when I say that ObWi is my home blog, I feel compelled to add a video like the one below.

That's my home.

Precisely how this is going to play out, I'm not sure, but I'm sure y'all will be the first to know. That is all, until there is more.

Posted by Gary Farber, introductory guest post written by Liberal Japonicus.

Comments

[joel hanes]

Dozo yoroshiku

[McKinneyTexas]

Greetings LJ and welcome. Good to have you.

[hairshirthedonist]

Thanks for explaining the handle. In the spirit of jiko shoukai, I'd like to reciprocate by explaining mine, but it's a bit too obvious for that.

[liberal japonicus]

I just deleted a version of this post that I thought was only saved as a draft and there were no comments on it.

[nous]

LJ sucks and is (already) ruining this blog.

Or something.

[Tony P.]

LJ, good to see you on the front page.

I saw your draft post before you deleted it. At the end of it, you declared that an open thread. Same goes here?

--TP

[liberal japonicus]

Tony P.
Definitely!

I feel, because the two posts below this one deserve to be on the top of the blog, but as I wrote in the deleted post, I'm going to try and get an open thread up every Friday. I went with Friday nite my time, which is Friday morning for the bulk of the folks here, and I'll try to find the sweet spot in terms of time as we go along.

[liberal japonicus]

Whoops, too fast on the post button. I feel bad, because Fiddler's Egypt post and Jacob's post on HB Gary should be at the top.

[Catsy]

どうぞよろしくお願いします。僕は日本へ行くことがないけど、日本の留学生とデートしていた間から少しだけ日本語を習いました。

今、じつを言うと日本語のしゃべることがしゃべりますが、長居あいだに使ってないのでまだ覚えている単語がもうほとんとありません。

Good to see you here. I'd been wondering when the ObWi PTB were going to bring you on board.

[Catsy]

Apologies if any of that was impolite or sounded weird. Like I said, it's been a while. :)

[Catsy]

Ugh, ほとんど not ほとんと. But you probably figured that out.

[ral]

[reprise of my comment on the deleted post]

Hi, lj, and good to see you. More later.

[wonkie]

Congrats LJ!

[sapient]

Wish I had something Japanese to say!

[Gary Farber]

I'd like to reciprocate by explaining mine, but it's a bit too obvious for that.

Says hairshir the donist, I mean, hair shirt hedonist. :-)

LJ:

[...] I feel bad, because Fiddler's Egypt post and Jacob's post on HB Gary should be at the top.

Don't worry about that sort of thing. Posts go up as they're made. Unless it's something like the anniversary of Andy's death, that's just the way it works.

Really, don't think about it. We can't coordinate that sort of thing, and linearity is literally the only thing possible.

Incidentally, everyone, I'm traveling until at least Monday, and working with the Mac I can sort of barely use very slowly, and will be mostly offline, so don't expect to see me around ObWi much, if at all, for a few days.

I'll pop in a bit if time allows, but otherwise, have fun, and play nice.

And I'm most pleased to see LJ join us, as will all of you, I think, if you aren't already. He's most wise and sensible, as anyone around ObWi for many years knows.

LJ, remind us, just when was it you first started commenting? Normally I'd google and tell you. :-) But not this weekend. :-)

Welcome, though I've kinda already said this a bunch of times in private. :-)

[liberal japonicus]

Latter half of 2004, though not sure about which month. I had just started commenting because I realized that my ability to formulate English sentences was becoming one of those bimodal distributions, with the ability to write for Japanese EFL students and the ability to write for academic publication, with nothing in the middle. I commented on one or two blogs, and on the other blogs, no one seemed to notice, but here, Edward immediately replied with something like 'Yes, exactly!' (or at least that is how I remember it) which had me stay here.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Good choice. Welcome LJ.

I'm looking forward to reading your posts.

[sekaijin]

本当にオブシディアンウイングズがどうもありがとうございます！

いつでも、リベラル・ジャポニカスのコメントのことがすごっく知能の高い。

LJはフロントページのコメンテーターの選択がいいんです。

[liberal japonicus]

Geez, maybe I should start posting in Japanese...

[Catsy]

LJ: I suspect that would have a very limited audience here. :) I don't know sekaijin's level of fluency, but I'd probably have to spend a fair amount of time hitting the dictionary--I can still sight-read kana and my grammar is fair, but it's been ten years since I used the language with any regularity, and the vocabulary I have on tap and the kanji I can read have badly dwindled over time.

I just thought it'd be nice to engage in this little jiko shoukai that way, and I'll take any excuse to scrub the rust off of my skills.

[sekaijin]

My apologies...I was jubilating at the prospect of ObWi getting yet another new, inspiring voice in the proceedings, and I let myself get carried away.

でも本当におめでとうございます・・・

Congrats again, LJ.

[sekaijin]

Catsy - I still have to think before I write, and it's still not second-hand to me - LJ I believe is probably near-native-level in Japanese - but I write a fair bit of email with a little web-based stuff, and I thought, in a moment of suspension of disbelief - that I was writing an email to some friends and associates.

Allow me to crawl into a hole for awhile. My apologies to all, and this isn't a Japanese forum.

[liberal japonicus]

Oh no! Don't do that sekaijin. Having the comment in Japanese was a nice reminder of how not everything is in English. (if you want to translate what was said, you can drop it into this page and get a rough and ready translation.)

It's also a good reminder to me of not to get carried away with the Japanese stuff.

I should come clean about my language ability. Speaking and listening are pretty good, Reading is ok, but my reading speed in English is so much faster that I really get bored if there's not some potential big payoff. My writing is atrocious. First of all, while I can recognize characters, the active memory required to produce them is not there. And even with the computer, what I write is so obviously non-native that I get writer's block when I have to write anything longer than a paragraph.

One of the reasons I said yes to front page duties is that I hope that I can read more from the vernacular and bring it here, though I am worried that I am simply going to find things that confirm my own biases. I'll probably wait until after the school year starts to do this, but SteveOC mentioned that he sometimes comes across something in Japan that sounds bizarre, which seems like a good way forward. However, I dread being asked questions about things like the money supply or qualitative easing in Japan, cause I still don't understand that crap in English...

[bc]

Great addition!

[sekaijin]

Well, LJ, I think there's more than just a touch of modesty in your words, but thank you anyway.

As far as my Japanese goes, my speaking is good, though I still have to search for vocabulary and I get irritated with myself at key moments when a really juicy word I need isn't there.

My listening is ever-evolving, thanks to the quirky movies and manzai (stand-up comedy) shows I love, my wife's friends and family members who don't speak English, and a realization over time that across languages, ability and enjoyment transference occurs not only from my own observations as a TEFL instructor but also from personal experience as a language learner (I admit it: I love the Tora-san movie series for the same sustained, bizarre character study I love in the Pink Panther movies, even though in both it's pretty much the same story reprised every time out).

But I do not want this to become a two-way exchange between myself and LJ, as this is a broader forum and most don't understand Japanese - hence, my apology. (Hartmut, who I believe is German, must certainly relate to the language experience we speak of - and his English is awesome BTW).

Once again, congrats to you for a great and bold voice added to ObWi.

[someotherdude]

dude, congrats...r u on FB.