Where the hell is マットさん

So you guys know all about “Where in the world is Matt” right? If you don’t, watch the video, it’s kind of fun.

I was watching TV the other day (I forget which station). And I happened to catch the new VISA card TV ad. This ad has always featured long dead Japanese historical figures Natsume Soseki, Hideyo Noguchi and Fukuzawa Yukichi in modern day settings. This time however, they’re all with Matt himself doing “the Matt dance” all over the world. The ad finishes with Noguchi saying “By the way, who are you?” to Matt. As a foreigner aware of the dancing Matt thing I found this hilarious, but my guess is he’s not that famous in Japan – hell he isn’t really THAT famous outside of the Internet. Certainly Mayumi nor any of the guys at the office had a clue who he was.

Here’s the ad:

Seems a strange choice for the face of VISA if no one knows who he is or why he’s dancing like a fool. But there’s really no accounting for some of what happens on Japanese TV.

四字熟語#５

悪衣悪食　あくいあくしょく　shabby clothes and bad food

四字熟語＃４

医食同源　A good diet is as important as medicine for staying healthy.

四字熟語#３

栄枯盛衰　The ups and downs of life.

辞書マニア

There are a million and one options for J>E, E>J dictionaries out there in both online and offline formats, I’ve tried a fair number of them over the years in search of the perfect application and I’ve had a significant amount of success with the following three:

JBrute: A wonderful downloadable dictionary package, it’s by far the most versatile and useful program I’ve come across.

Pros:

• English and Japanese lookup
• Breaks down individual kanji to display their meanings and full array of readings
• thousands of example sentences.
• Operates offline

Cons:

• No word bank function
• Since 2.0 was released it costs $30USD to register (personally I paid it, I think it’s a decent investment)

Popjisyo: An online site translation and word lookup site with popup tool tips.

Pros:

• Word bank function
• English and Japanese lookup
• Tool tips display kanji meanings and readings
• Can act as a “browser” window to surf Japanese websites giving you the ability to hover over a word and have the tooltip pop up to translate it.

Cons:

• No example sentences

Rikaichan: A  J-E translation addon for firefox.

Pros:

• Tool tips display word readings and meanings on hover
• Can choose to display meanings and readings of individual kanji within a jukugo.
• Comes complete with lookup bar.

Cons:

• No English – Japanese translation
• No word bank (Although I here that the modified version peraperakun does include this function, I just seem to have trouble getting it work at the moment)

四字熟語＃２

鶏口牛後　Better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.

四字熟語＃１

美人薄命　Beauty and fortune seldom go together