I think humour varies, with family and close friends then the more bawdy material is acceptable, with bosses and stranger then its completely no go. So you are unlikely to see comedians making bawdy / taboo jokes in a show or on TV because its considered a different social situation where different standards are required.

Also consider many jokes are steeped in cultural awareness so without having lived in a japanese culture there will be japanese jokes you just won’t get, they could be making jokes and you just don’t get them e.g. lots of stuff you watched as a kid had more meaning in it than you understood, watching it as an adult you understand more you see jokes or maybe adult innuendo you didn’t realise was there.

Ok hows this one, in cowboy bebop, one of the episodes they are after a data dog which has had a bunch of important stuff downloaded into its head, and it gets stolen. Look up dog in japanese, いぬ, It has three meanings, dog, snoop/spy, and useless.
In cowboy bebop, the dog is a useless spy dog. Did you get the play on words and meaning in this when you watched cowboy bebop? Also ironically that is not the case at all. So they can do irony as well. Its subtle though.

Another thing in Cowboy bebop is the Special Beef and Bell Peppers. “theres no beef in this!”, “Thats why its special” bingo we have sarcasm.

Its also hard to make generalisations because different areas of japan vary, along with different social statuses on what they find funny.

If you think dirty jokes /vulgarity doesn’t exist then try doing some research on kancho. I also heard that they love their fart scrolls too.

That said from a foreigners perspective it may as well not exist because you’d have to know someone really well before you start busting out your dirty jokes. As its hard enough avoiding social faux pas in Japanese for your typical foreigner, trying to be bawdy is like juggling Molotov Cocktails.

So i’d say Japanese humor is marked by subtlety and puns, but its still universal humor.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by  vlgi. Reason: Oh did I add like twice as much text in an edit?

Maybe koichi has been over-milked and his creative juices have run dry. Maybe we should be focussing on how we can continue to milk koichi whilst leaving enough juice so we can milk him later.

We could also think about how we could increase koichi’s juiciness and juice creation so we could milk him more often.

I know I’m super lousy at doing anything, so I guess maybe other people sometimes have problems. So how about trying to inspire koichi.

I can appreciate when you pay for something you expect to get it, it would be nice if you could carve a slot in koichi’s head and plop in a coin and he writes stuff. But in reality he’s a meat bag with complex chemical interactions in his brain that needs to be stroked occasionally to be stimulated.

Here’s a story about a boy, his name is Ichigo. (Who later grew up to become an astronaut). Before then however he worked in a lot of the worst jobs ever. One of his jobs was as phone support, the worst part of the job was his miserable co-workers who bitched and complained all day, they would bitch and complain saying things like, the office is too hot, its too cold, there isn’t enough oxygen in here. The bosses would listen and then do nothing because they were idiots, and the office building was shit, and seriously not enough oxygen WTF?. What a bunch of whiners thought the bosses. Anyway one day a new boss rode into town, he was super awesome and told people to just speak to him if they had any problems, but he also said I don’t wanna hear no jibba jabba you hear, you got a problem sure tell me about it but tell me how to solve it.

Naturally everyone ignores this because he’s a boss, seriously like i’m going to just walk your your office and talk to you, ha ha ha.

Until one day Ichigo is given a task, and he can’t complete it because something is wrong, and the people who usually deal with it are no help, the bosses of them are no help, and the further he goes up the more people can’t help, despite this being a problem that’s been around for over 6 months. But Ichigo has no choice he has to sort this shit out, or he gets fired, and he feel kinda like doing a good job is important.

So he thinks and he writes a long email to the new boss, it outlined the problem, the steps taken to resolve it, the problems in trying to resolve it that way, and it outlined solutions, and reasons why it should be done.

Ichigo fires off this email.

Anyway the long and short of it was within a week the issue was sorted, new tools were created to deal with this problem so it wouldn’t be a problem in the future, and also these tools solved other issues, and could be extended. Ichigo was thanked by the super big kahuna boss and the other super big kahuna boss who owned a baseball team, and the new boss in town guy too.

For once Ichigo felt that he could make a difference, that he could do some good work.

The moral of the story is that, bitching and complaining is pointless, it doesn’t help anyone. If I was someone who wrote an online text book for Japanese, it wouldn’t motivate me.

On the other hand someone who points out the problem, but then tells me what is needed to improve, what is required, gives me ideas, solutions and inspiration. Shows me that there are people who care more than just getting their monies worth, it would make me feel that maybe I’m wrong, maybe the world isn’t just a figment of my deranged godly imagination. Maybe one day I’ll get a hug, maybe from a girl, and I’d be all, hell yeah I’m going to write a lesson for TextFUGU.

Doing other projects can be a way for koichi to inspire himself, maybe he feels he’s not getting the inspiration to create more text fugu and so is exploring to find new inspirations and ideas.

Maybe its not working well, maybe its spreading his juices around even as it creates more. What can you do?

You need to stimulate the koichi, make him turn his juices towards textfugu, give him more reward for his work there, instead of making it a chore, make it a pleasure.

How to do this?

Well you could think about whats gone before whats coming now, and think up ideas for new lessons, look for new ways to learn stuff, and maybe create your own lessons for others, email them to koichi, post in the forums. It’ll help you, it’ll help the k-man, and others.

You could think “its work, and thats not why I pay for textfugu.”

Thats the way we would like things to work, aka coin slot in koichi’s head, but there is the way things actually work, meatbags need hugs and food and obscene things whispered into their ears at in-appropriate moments.

You could hope things will start to work the way we would like, but hope is the last bastion of the pathetic, nothing changes on its own, you can wait for someone else to change things (good luck, hope you’re patient), or you need to change things yourself.

So you, yes you, need to think about what you want, what you need what the next lesson is, hell write a review of the last chapter or something, give some good feedback and ideas, make him feel engaged with his audience, make him feel motivated and inspired to do text fugu and when his juices start to run freely, when he’s so stimulated that they won’t stop and they runneth over, the world will drown in his juices.

Alternatively you could just say something like, sometimes late at night I wake up and wish I could nibble on his nipples. That might make him smile, or he might grimace but he’s secretly smiling inside. And sometimes making someone smile is all it takes. (Best to do both though, sometimes you can’t over beat the horse.)

A pictar of koichi driving a nissan glide.

I think what kind of music you listen to is important. There is the quality of its obtrusiveness, most music with lyrics I find detrimental to concentration, so I usually try to keep those to a minimum, but some songs that I really like are nice, if a song makes me smile and feel happy then it gives me a break and it increases my enjoyment of what I’m doing.

Heres a link to a TED talk about positive psychology.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

So if listening to music relaxes you, and maybe makes you happy, ( You know every time strawberry pie by mini mini moni comes on you smile ) its improving your ability to learn.

There is also music that makes me want to dance, and have fun, its a good way to get into a good mood for learning, spend 15 minutes dancing and listening to something you love, before studying.

Other things is to exercise, we’re physiologically an active species, designed to run around a lot. We’re not designed to spend time thinking. Your body holds itself ready to run off and catch an antelope, holds itself in a state of tension, stores up all kinds of funky chemicals to pump into you when needed. If you never go catch an antelope it means you remain in a state of tension, the chemicals your body stores can’t be held continuously so they’re released slowly producing stress. So its good to metaphorically catch an antelope every so often, use up your bodies store of chemicals. If you can’t settle or concentrate try doing some exercise for 15 minutes so you use up your action chemicals you have stored, and you should find when you come back you can concentrate a lot better.