After our fruitless search for Habu-shu on the last trip, my sister and I were seriously contemplating a short jaunt to Okinawa to buy the stuff (and see a bit of Okinawa for a day or two, but really, snake-booze run). Yesterday morning, as we were chatting about the other major change to our trip, I whimsically searched Amazon Japan for ハブ酒.

By golly, you can get all sorts of the stuff shipped anywhere in the country, from tiny 50ml bottles up to 5-liter jugs (with a correspondingly large snake inside). We could still choose to take a jaunt to Okinawa, but it’s no longer the least-frustration method of acquiring the goods.

The reason we may not go is the other change to the trip: Interplanet Janet has flown so much on United that she’s graduated to an even higher class of membership, which granted her free business-class tickets for our parents. Now we are four; fear our shopping prowess!

To ice the cake, a few hours after we conferenced with them and went over the basics, we discovered that a new room block had opened up in the hotel we liked so much last trip, the Citadines Kyoto. The place we originally booked was only three blocks away, so we knew the area, but everything about the Citadines worked for us: quality service, comfortable room with free internet and a kitchenette, major subway line 50 feet away, dry cleaners and grocery store a block away, 7-11 across the street, all sorts of shopping, food, temples, and shrines within walking distance, etc, etc. Also less expensive than the other hotel.

I think the first night we’re there, we’ll take the folks down to the House of Grilled Meat. One of the nice things about learning to read kanji is that when you see a large neon sign reading 焼肉屋, you know that you need to investigate. An all-you-can-eat yakiniku joint with touchscreen ordering and a grill in the middle of the table is a Very Good Thing to find.

Makoto Ogawa’s Bagel Navigator.

I tend to toss my Japanese spam into a folder and then try to read it when I’m feeling bored. I’ve commented in the past about trends where 90% of the stuff all falls into the same category for a while, but I recently noticed one particular subject line that’s been showing up at least twice a month for the past six months:

人妻と秘密な関係を作りませんか？

The SYSTRANS-based Apple translation widget’s English is amusing, but quite wrong: “The human wife and secret isn’t relation made?”. Google and Bing produce the exact same slightly-wrong translation: “You do not make a secret relationship with married woman?”

The thing that G&B missed is that this sort of negative question means “wouldn’t you like to”, and neither one of them lets me flag the error. Google has a very clever UI for suggesting corrections, but it’s quite shallow, limited to rearranging and selecting alternate interpretations for individual words; you can’t select between different grammar patterns. Worse, you can only flag the translation as good, bad, or inappropriate; there’s no “right words, wrong meaning” button, suggesting that literal conversion is valued over accuracy.

Anyway, back to the spam. The sender and contents that go with this subject line aren’t always identical, but being spam, there are only a few variations. Because G&B got so close on the subject line, I decided to see what one of them could do with the rest, and the results were so entertaining I think I’ll leave them as-is.

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If you search Expedia for a round-trip flight from Osaka to Naha, the cheapest is $895. If you search JAL’s site, $335. In other words, while it’s fine to use sites like Expedia for your international flights, they’re (coughcough) “suboptimal” for domestic.

And, before you ask, the purpose of this tentative side trip is not to search for busty alien catgirls, but if any show up, I’ll be sure to get pictures.

My sister and I have managed to align our schedules for another trip to Japan. Bad news: four months from now. Good news: four months from now, which means cherry blossoms.

Dear Hello!Project, I regret to inform you that the MomokoBot went a bit Westworld last night, carving a bloody path across Tokyo. She was last seen entering the H!P Wardrobe Dungeon, where we can only hope that she slaughtered every stylist in possession of a rhinestone or feather.

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In Frank Sinatra’s 1985 Tokyo concert at Budokan, the very first time he sings the title line of “Luck Be A Lady”, he clearly sings it as “ruck be a rady”.

My Japanese spam email has shifted tone again. The eager runaways have apparently all been rescued from their Internet cafés, and now we’ve moved on to lonely wives who’d like to run away. She thinks her husband doesn’t want her any more and she’s lonely. Sure, he’s busy at work, but her body just aches… She wouldn’t mind making a clean break with him, so will I play with her? Of course this obasan will be quite grateful for a partner. If I’m interested, please send her mail from this (thoroughly-randomized) site.

But, what exactly does “sapo-ari” mean? The only common use of the katakana サポ is as an abbreviation of サポート, “support”. And 有り means “existence”. Which means that this lonely wife’s gratitude doesn’t come for free…

Subject: サポ有りで私と遊びませんか？

主人もなかなか相手にしてくれなくて寂しい思いしてます。仕事が忙しいのはわかっていますがそれでも私の体は疼くばかりで...どうか良ければ割り切りの関係でかまいませんので私と遊んでくれませんか？もちろんこんなオバサンの相手をしてもらうのでお礼も出します。
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