BillyClark

One of the things that’s generally effective when I feel nausea is to wipe my face with a cool cloth. I imagine that spraying water on your face might do similar.

I must not be that old because the docs always tell me to alternate heat packs and ice packs.

Although I speak some Japanese, I am not an expert in Japanese. I have never heard anybody say nii-kun. It’s a common failing of people in my situation to think that because they personally haven’t heard it, that it doesn’t exist, so I’m not going to say that, but even if it does exist, I don’t think -kun would be used.

“-kun” like you said indicates closeness and familiarity, but it also is commonly used for a business subordinate. Like, if you were at work, your boss might refer to you as “pivot-kun”, even if you weren’t that close. I don’t think Big Brother could ever be seen as a subordinate.

With my limited knowledge, if they wanted to use a Japanese word and not an English loanword, I think they’d use aniki or maybe ani-ue (although I’ve only heard these words in anime, I think people might actually still use aniki? It sounds like a Yakuza sort of word to me). These convey a respect that I think would be necessary for the mental image of Big Brother.

The primary reason that I’d put forward is that Japanese people place a lot of importance on social hierarchy, to the point that even between twins, it’s important to know which is the older sibling. Because it’s used in everyday conversation and in referring to one another (although not quite as much with twins, I just brought that up for emphasis).

The point is that the Japanese version of these words are used a lot more and have a lot of extra meaning compared to the English phrase “Big Brother”. So, it’s actually a worse fit. Japanese people use enough English loanwords that they probably understand the English phrase, anyways. So, the meaning gets through without the extra unintended baggage from the translation.

It’s one of the many pitfalls of translation. Often, there are words that mean “the same thing”, but they still aren’t the right words because either the extra connotations in the original language or the extra connotations in the target language can throw off the translation.

I think the Japanese translation is fortunate that, in this case, the Japanese language already has so many English loanwords… although I’m not sure whether that was exactly the same case when the book was first translated. It was published in 1948, I think. My recollection is that the English loanword boom started after WW2, so that would be somewhat contemporary.

The King excels at short thrusting motions.

If anything, even what the King does would be too much, as it is enough to kill the person next to him.

On second thought, maybe I don’t want tastebuds just inside my asshole.

Especially the American military personnel stationed there always crashing helicopters.

“-chan” is a diminutive suffix that indicates affection when used. These two factors mean it would never be used in the context of Big Brother.

Even with little knowledge, you should at least come up with alternatives like nii-san, onii-san, onii, nii-sama, etc. Those still wouldn’t work well. I’d think that a lot of people would also think of aniki, which is getting closer. But it’s definitely the best option to just to what they actually did and just use the English “big brother” like a loan word.

When I lived in Japan, apparently, somebody revved their motorcycle engine too much at night, and it was covered on the local TV news the next day. I guess they didn’t have any other sorts of local crime to present.

There are a lot of vegans and vegetarians who don’t make it their raison d’etre, so I’m sure there have been some who climbed Everest in the past, even if we don’t know about it.

I suspect that humans evolved to pick partners based on beauty because beauty is an indicator of health.

To me, what you’re describing is a rather strict budget.

It’s similar to the old style of budgeting where you pay for everything in cash out of envelopes. So, you have a “rent” envelope and a “food” envelope, and etc, and you cash your paycheck, and put specific amounts into each envelope, and that’s all you can spend on that until the next paycheck.

Only in your case, it’s like you only have one envelope labeled “absolute necessities”, and almost everything went in there.

By the way, when you’re poor, it’s probably important to be able to spend any extra money like you did. It’s one of the traps of being poor, but it’s very difficult and unrewarding to live a life of complete deprivation.

My biggest takeaway is that this guy was already in high school and still didn’t know how to budget money. From the story, since it got up to $600, it seems likely that his parents don’t know much about budgets, either, so that’s probably where he learned it.

Japan is a shoes-off country, but they often have slippers that they wear indoors. They just change their shoes like Mr. Rogers, but with less singing.

His wife is still very attractive, but what if she wasn’t? It wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing, would it?

Beauty may be the reason why you are attracted to a person in the first place, but it’s not at the top of the list of reasons why you stay with a person.

It’s hard for me to even imagine being that shallow.

Great, now I’m asleep.

My memory was that she had bad reception, but that the call wasn’t cut, and when she hung up, she thought she had done a good job until corrected by Jerry. But I haven’t seen this episode in over two decades probably, so my memory isn’t going to be exactly right.

Seinfeld had an episode about cell phones, though.

I don’t remember the exact plot, but I think it was Elaine called somebody about something serious, like expressing condolences for a death or something, and she called from a cell phone while she was out and about, instead of calling from a land line at home. This was seen as a faux pas.

As a kid, my parents seemed to have friends, but they didn’t invite them over ever. They spent all of their spare time at home and only occasionally went on social visits.

As an adult, whenever I talked with my parents, they talked about how often they went to social events and church events and interacted with their neighbors.

It wasn’t until they were elderly and I was actively taking care of them that the truth became obvious. Outside of family, my father had very few friends, and my mother had no friends.

“After seeing you enjoy good food as it was intended, I don’t think I want to continue this. Everyone knows food must only be eaten after you upload pictures of it to Instagram and get a certain number of interactions.”