On Beards, Car Parks and Towers

Well well. This sure is a lot of posts, deshou. Don't wanna be spoiling you now.

This post will probably not mean that much to many of you. But I for one do not give two fucks. Possibly one; definitely a third... but certainly not two.


髭 or hige, appears to be beard, but I keep encountering it in conjunction with other kanji. And that's just annoying and confusing and annoying.

鬚 or hige as well (nnghh) also seems to be beard

顎鬚 or agohige also appears to be beard as well. But the 'ago' part seems to specify the location of the jaw or the chin. Which to me seems unusually specific. Pogonolocality apparently needs defining here...


Car parks are fucking weird here. I remember my brother trying to explain them to me on like the first time we took a walk down Hirokoji dori. It seemed a bit too wacky and unreal at the time, but having only recently arrived here, everything was a bit like that.


So here is a video I found on youtube that seems to show exactly what was described (seeing it brought it all back), but it's kind of anti-intuitive, so it was easy to forget.




Methinks that you might like this a bit too much, ser.

One might think of it as 'intelligent design' if that phrase hadn't become so unadulteratedly a euphemism for RETARDED CUNT THINKING. Or 'Burn the witch !', etc.

I also got these pics of one. It's on Hirokoji dori, and it is the parking structure of that adjacent building. Swanky building. I know someone who lives on the top floor. Now that is status, bitches.

(And yes, I just went out and took these with the sole intention of putting them above.)

But on a more serious note, it is a very good way to deal with the vast amount of people in such a limited space.

Fucking cars, man. The one thing other than people you just can't get away from in an urban cityscape. That's one of the things I loved so much about the Isle of Arran. Hardly any cars (you could go for like a whole day without seeing one) and not so many people.

OK, this one's a bit epic...

立体駐車場 rittaichūshajō.  My definitions come out at 'multi-storey car park', 'parking structure', 'parking deck', 'parkade'.

I've never seen that last word before. To me it conjours up such wonderful images of the place I used to get pissed when I was twelve, incorporating coin-op SFII machines as far as the eye can see....

'Set-up (or rise) object stop-over car location' is a rough approximation of the deconstructed kanji meaning. Howzat for ze verfickte logic-desu ?  Deshou.


鉄塔 (tettou). This is 'pylon', or 'steel tower'. There are quite a lot of them here. All of them orange and white.

'Iron pagoda'. Deshou.

I have to say that those two are quality looking kanji. They look like actual Japanese kanji. A Japanese person would think that an incredibly strange statement, but as a foreigner (or bakka gaijin, desho) I can quite safely say that there are kanji that look FUCK ALL like what I would think kanji would look like.

Example: the kanji for 'craft' (the noun, I think) is thus: 工 (kō). It looks like a fucking capital letter 'I'. It is like why I was so pissed off when I learnt my name, which has to be in katakana, is リー. I do not have the words to describe to you how fucking robbed I felt when I saw that. Even as a child, I thought that Japanese writing was steeped in coolness and mystery. I've always loved words and calligraphy and suchwank, and to have that snatched away from you was a bit of a kick in the cunt.

No matter, I have recently been reminded (apparently I was told this when I was 11 oO), that because 'ri' is a syllable, there are actually kanji for it. 利 also means it. And is frankly much better.

I don't recognise the primitive element to the left, but the one to the right, which looks like an elongated リ is an element that means sword, specifically 'dancing sabre'. You're all entitled to make of that whatever the fuck you will. You would've anyway, desho.


Perhaps some of you might be wondering (if you noticed, that is) my repeated use of the word 'deshou' (shortened by the young to 'desho'). It's because I have very recently learnt that it means 'isn't it'. Or simply, and quite beautifully, 'innit'.  I don't think I need to explain further.


I am still working on the kanji for "All who work in marketing are pointless shitting fuckscum and must hang from the nearest pylon", but I'm getting there... We definitely now know that 鉄塔 will make an appearance. And bravo, ser.

So I need to find the verb 'to hang', and the verb for 'work', but I swear I know it already. I can't get the fucking word 'Arbeit' out of my head... Arschlochen.

Fuckscum, I can tell you now because it would be in katakana:  ファクスカム (fakusukamu). I think. I might have a few of the nuances wrong there. I don't think the words 'fuck' and 'scum' are oft transliterated into Nihongo...