1.Our MC Goes Out Into the Field
On the October 11th episode of Sekai e Hasshin! SNS Eigojutsu on NHK E-Tele, our theme was “Would you share your social media with me?" Instead of focusing on a particular trending or noteworthy hashtag as we usually do, we looked at how expats and tourists in Japan use social media.
Our MC Ryoga Haruhi-san went down the Nakamise shopping street by Kaminari-mon in Asakusa and went up to people on the street “Why Did You Come to Japan?" style. She asked foreign tourists to show her their social media on their phones, and back in the studio we took a closer look at some of the more noteworthy hashtags and themes.
Two tourists from Norway showed her photos of the great Norwegian outdoors posted to their Instagram. Included in the captions was #NatureAddict; for the two outdoorsmen, communing with nature was rejuvenating and fulfilling. We used that as a jumping off point to look at #YogaAddict and #VideoGameAddict, and other kinds of “addicts" you can find on social media.
Haruhi-san also talked to a woman from the U.K. who had posted photos of herself in makeup and in costume for Halloween in years past. We looked at #Halloween and dipped our toes ever so slightly into the deep, colorful world of cosplay and makeup artists on social media.
A woman from the U.S. showed pictures of various pizzas she’d posted to Instagram, including Chicago-style deep-dish pizza—which is baked in a deep pan that gives the pizza a high, pie-like crust. As a native Californian I’ve had more than my fair share of pizzas—but deep-dish pizza is something else. We also looked at a healthy broccoli pizzetta and a heart attack-inducing pepperoni pizza smothered in slices of salami.
Back in the studio, Haruhi-san was all smiles from start to finish—as always—but she also voiced her frustration with her own English level. She expressed her desire to go beyond just memorizing a few lines and hold full-fledged conversations. Easier said than done, certainly, but now that our resident English teachers on the show sit at the main table along with the rest of us (up until recently the teachers sat in a separate room modeled after an overseas resort), I hope to take advantage of opportunities to initiate English conversations on the spot.
2.Addictions and Obsessions
At first glance the hashtags we talked about on this episode may seem unrelated to each other, but there is a common theme: addictiveness. Whether it be the outdoors, yoga, video games, Halloween, cosplay, or pizza, netizens like to go in all the way—they like to dive deep into their interests, and the very nature of the internet and social media facilitate their fixations.
Someone who’s hooked on dressing up in costumes might admit that they were a #CosplayAddict, while someone who would order the aforementioned pepperoni-with-crust pizza is undeniably a #PepperoniAddict.
We also looked at foreigners tweeting about their love for Japanese TV shows like the reality show Terrace House on Netflix, and the 1980s serialized morning drama Oshin. In the age of streaming television it has become easier than ever to find a show to become addicted to, and prestige TV has made many of us proud TV addicts. (Side note, foreigners who have gotten hooked on Japanese anime and video games are called Japanophiles.
In the first half of the show, we talked about how the word “addict” is used to mean something similar to the Japanese concept of “otaku”. (Some of the above hashtags are clear examples.) The word is increasingly tossed around casually, and often with a sort of self-deprecating pride. As a translator by profession, I’m compelled to say that when I translate the concept of “otaku” into English, the word I most often use is not “addictive” but “obsessive”. Although similar, an “obsession” and an “addiction” are two different things, and it is important to distinguish between the two.
An obsession is “a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling” (Merriam-Webster) similar to the Japanese phrase kokoro wo ubawareru (心を奪われる, to have one’s heart stolen). An otaku is someone who is obsessive about the things that interest them—particularly subcultures like anime and manga. As with any obsession, when your focus becomes too narrow-minded, you lose sight of the bigger picture, to the detriment of your day-to-day life as a member of society. Your awareness and knowledge of other fields diminishes, and your social skills suffer. For an otaku, their obsession is their life.
Addiction, on the other hand, is “a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity” (Merriam-Webster). Abstaining from an addiction causes symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, and tremors. Someone who is addicted to alcohol consistently turns to the bottle in order to relax; someone addicted to tobacco smokes to relieve stress. A nature addict needs to experience nature to have clear presence of mind, while a yoga addict might be unable to start up or wind down their day without spending some time on their mat.
All of this is to say that a video game addict is distinct from a video game otaku. (Although the two are certainly not mutually exclusive.) When characterizing your own passions and fixations, it’s important to consider the difference between an addiction and an obsession.
3.Drug-Related English Idioms
As we’ve seen so far, the word addict is not just used for drug addiction but used for addiction of all kinds. It should come as no surprise that there are many drug-related expressions in American English that are used casually in everyday conversation. (Perhaps that says more about Americans than it does about the English language.) Here are a few examples:
●junkie
A junkie is an addict—a slang word for a person with a dependency on drugs. In the 1920s, junk came to be used as slang for heroin, but today junkie can refer to addicts of all kinds. There are chocolate junkies, travel junkies, action movie junkies, baseball junkies, etc.
●high
Words like sugar high (シュガー・ハイ) and runner’s high (ランナーズ・ハイ) have become part of the Japanese lexicon. What most Japanese people don’t know is that the word high on its own usually refers to recreational drug use. The fact that you have to add the word natural to make it “clean” speaks to the nature of the word.
●feed it into my veins
Introducing a drug into the bloodstream via injection, or “shooting up", is the most effective and efficient way of taking drugs, but it is also extremely dangerous because only a small dose can be incredibly potent. “Feed it into my veins" is a phrase people use today to refer to something—usually food or a TV show—that they love so much they want to get it into their system as efficiently as possible. Picture a zombie on the couch staring blankly at the screen of their computer, TV, or digital device.
●kick the habit
Kick the habit refers to overcoming or giving up a harmful habit, most often smoking or drinking. The phrase is also used by those trying to cut back on sweet snacks and junk food. I guess the idea is that unless you can punt that habit out of arm’s reach, you’re liable to reach out and pick it back up.
4.The Swamp and the Rabbit Hole
Our resident commentator Sasaki Toshinao-san pointed out that the structure of this episode—jumping from hashtag to hashtag—reflected the way all of us use social media and the internet. When we surf the web or scroll through our social media feed, we go from page to page, keyword to keyword, our course determined by wherever our interests lead us.
Sasaki-san also introduced the Japanese slang verb numaru (沼る) as being a rough Japanese equivalent of addict or addictive behavior on the internet. Numa means swamp or bog, which is extremely fitting when you picture someone stepping into a muddy marsh and getting stuck. However, through some post-taping research I learned that the term carries discriminatory connotations: numa (沼) is short for chishou (池沼), a phonetic equivalent of 知障, which is short for 知的障害者 (chiteki-shougai-sha), people with intellectual disabilities. Words are not to be used lightly in any language.
To take an extreme view, social media is where you can lose yourself in your own interests, pursuing them with abandon, all the while encountering and rallying like-minded “junkies" along the way. Exploring a subject in depth can be very rewarding, but take it too far and you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole you can’t climb out of.
We’ve all had experiences where we’ve been surfing the net or scrolling through our social media feeds for hours and hours, and are later unable to wrap our heads around the distortion of time. In English this is called going down the rabbit hole, a reference to the Lewis Caroll novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
It’s worth pointing out that this idiom also refers to “tripping out" after taking hallucinogenic drugs. There are a lot of drug-related expressions in English, and it’s significant that so many of those terms also apply to social media.
5.My Wardrobe for This Episode
Red button-down shirt by Shibuya Seibu
