I’m not sure if there’s any good solution for this out there, but I cooked up my own. Each language translation has its strings in a text file formatted like an ini file with id keys and localized strings separated by an equals sign. You can view the English and Japanese raw text files if you like. These are read into a PHP array (i.e. dictionary), after first looking at what language is specified by the URL (/en for English, /ja for Japanese or any other code), and if that is not specified then looking at what languages the browser is set to prefer via the Accept-Language HTTP header. If the requested language is not available then default to English.

To get the html output localized, the php script that reads through and configures the app (the plain html file itself is set up to run offline for debugging purposes only) looks for string ids enclosed in percent signs, i.e. like %strings id%. These are then replaced with the localized strings from the dictionary. The php-generated content is trivially changed to look up strings from the dictionary. On the JavaScript side, I wanted access to the same string dictionary that I had on the php side, so this is inserted into a <script> block of the generated html output as a JavaScript object (i.e. dictionary). String id lookups can then be done on this object from the JavaScript code just like on the php side. In other words, the php string dictionary is converted into JSON, which is used from the JavaScript side.

あれ何語？ What Language Is This? in 日本語

It all works pretty well and meets my goals. The only downside is that it relies on the server to do some processing, so when I develop on the offline version the strings aren’t available, instead I get to see the raw string ids, which can be useful too, but you have to rely on imagination to envision the end result. Isn’t programming always like that anyway, though?

The first translated version of What Language Is This? is of course Japanese, done by myself and my wife (初めての共同作業? lol), not just because it’s easy for me to do, but also because when looking at the AddThis stats, Japan is the top ranking country, and also as you know the average English skills in Japan are pretty bad, so I suspect there is a demand for a Japanese translation. Looking at the access stats, and discounting those with good English skills (India, Netherlands, Scandinavia, for example), next in line would most likely be Spanish, French, and German, in that order. Anyone feel like helping? Please drop me a comment in that case. I can offer proper credit and a link back from the site in return.

I’ve been living in Japan for more than 4½ years now and tried many times to get one, always to be turned down. This especially includes applying for ones from my bank, Shinsei Bank, that I’ve used exclusively for all my time in Japan, and where I now have “platinum” status, meaning that I have many million yen entrusted at their bank, a significant part of which is in risky assests where they make a lot of profit. So they clearly rank me as one of their best customers, and I’m clearly bound to keep significant assets in their bank for the immediate future (so I cannot just “escape”), but still turn me down every time I apply for a credit card. Why is that?

Being turned down for a VISA credit card by my Japanese bank

When I visited one of Shinsei’s branch offices recently for a completely different, but somewhat time-consuming and complicated issue, I got to talk quite a lot with one of the staff there. As I have “platinum” status, they treat me quite well too, not hurriedly at all. This was one of the branches where a lot of foreigners visit, and she seemed quite used to working with foreigners, although we spoke only in Japanese. So at the end she asked if there was something else I’d like to inquire about, and I asked something along the lines of why do you turn my credit card applications down all the time, despite me being a “platinum” level customer and having millions of yen in your bank?. And surprisingly, she did have a good answer for that, not just the usual appologies.

The reason, it seems, why Shinsei Bank (which is, by the way, founded by a foreigner based on foreign capital) systematically turns down foreigners’ credit card applications is that the company that is contracted to handle credit cards for the bank doesn’t have any support line in English. Since we’d just been having a conversation about quite complicated banking matters in Japanese for half an hour, that reason obviously seemed very silly at that point. Still, that’s why. And since Japan doesn’t have any laws against racial discrimination, systematically turning down anyone with a foreign-sounding name (they don’t actually check your nationality) is just fine here.

Anyhow, at long last I went to Citibank to beg for a credit card there, since I’ve heard they’re more open to foreigners’ business. Considering the bank would have gone bankrupt if it hadn’t been bailed out by the US government, it’s not exactly my primary choice for doing banking, but anyway. And they gave me a credit card within less than a week, with a 1 million yen limit, which I think is very high. And unlike Shinsei Bank where I have the highest available “platinum” status, that was the first time I walked in to a Citibank office. I have no prior history with them at all. And they still gave me a pretty sweet credit card.

Finally got a Japanese credit card.

So what is the conclusion from all this? Go to Citibank. It seems Shinsei Bank and Citibank are the two somewhat modern banks in Japan, with Shinsei being about 10 years behind the average Swedish bank instead of the Japanese average of 50 years behind. Citibanks seems just as (comparatively) moderen. Shinsei seemed very foreigner-friendly when I opened an account there, but in the end they certainly do practice discrimination against foreigners, so I must say that I regret my decision – I should have gone with Citibank instead. That is the best advice I can give to anyone non-Japanese who’s getting a bank account and/or credit card in Japan.

However, as things have changed I have now decided to move all my web activities over to the humongous and well known DreamHost hosting service. Moving it all has been extraordinarily boring, but at least it’s finished now so I can concentrate on making new, fun stuff for the web instead of worrying about my hosting, since I’ve known for about a month that I had to make this move. This three day weekend provided a good opportunity to move things over in stages to prevent a total meltdown of all my sites at the same time (which happened quite a lot when I hosted with Binero). That last remark brings me to why I’m changing to DreamHost. These are the reasons:

1. A more stable hosting service. Binero used to be very good and all, but at some point they just started sucking. This peaked last month when I found all my sites being broken due to changes made by Binero (without informing me in advance) three times in one month. That is just a bit too often for me to tolerate. I’ve had my sites broken by Binero in the past too, but not that often. And once it took them two weeks to fix a simple problem introduced by one of their changes, by which time I had of course already worked around the it.

Binero’s tech support has always been very quick to respond, but usually had some snide, unnecessary remark in the response as well, and usually blamed me for problems caused by them randomly changing stuff. I’ve been a customer with them for a long time, so even if they’ve been telling new customers how to set things up correctly for the last five years, that doesn’t mean I know it automatically without them telling me about it. It’s not good when being a loyal customer is used against you. So I definitely can’t recommend Binero to anyone who’s thinking about getting web hosting somewhere.

Lately they’ve started hyping a new system they call Binero 2.0, which is exactly what I don’t want – even more changes, bound to break stuff if I know Binero correctly. On the other hand, the sysadmin at work has had sites running at DreamHost for many years without any breakage or changes. That kind of stability is what I want. I also like DreamHost’s attitude that you can essentially do whatever you want as long as it’s not a security risk or malicious. Binero on the other hand disabled sftp (encrypted) access, allowing only ftp (unencrypted) access for security reasons, according to their tech support. That is about as stupid as it gets. Besides, they also disabled ssh shell access (of course, unannounced), which is a pain in the ass when you need to fix something quickly, besides being just silly.

2. Better located hosting for faster response times. When I started making web sites I lived in Sweden and most people who accessed the sites were in that area as well, so it made sense to use Sweden-based hosting. Now, however, I live in Japan and most of the people accessing my sites (whatlanguageisthis.com is by far the most accessed one now) are in North America, Japan, or India, as well as from all over Europe with no country in particular standing out. My ping time to my sites on Binero’s servers was 300 ms, but DreamHost has 125 ms ping, which is a very noticeable improvement. DreamHost’s servers are located in California, which is the center of the physical Internet, unlike Sweden, which is about as far out on the fringe as you can get except Russia and Africa. (For example, Internet traffic from Japan to Sweden goes via the US, not via Russia, and all Asian countries are connected via the US west coast.)

3. Get away from Sweden due to FRA. If you don’t know what FRA (“National Defence Radio Establishment”) is, would you believe me if I said that the Swedish government/military intercepts all Internet traffic crossing the border? Hopefully you wouldn’t, since you’re thinking that Sweden is a nice, modern, democratic society that doesn’t need to spy on its citizens nor the Russians, since the Cold War is over by now. Unfortunately, that’s what they’re doing, and Sweden seems to be moving in the wrong direction in many other ways too now when it comes to information privacy. Not nice. Since I’m in Japan, and stupid Binero didn’t allow encrypted access, that meant the FRA could intercept anything I uploaded to my sites. Not that I would upload something sensitive without encrypting it first, but still, it’s just silly. The US is a better place to host web sites, so score one more for DreamHost.

Anyway, that’s the end of this rant. Finally the move is over, and I’m looking forward to not having to wake up and find my sites being broken much often any more. I’ll also be writing more interesting stuff on this blog now that I’ve finished both the moves to a better blogging platform (WordPress instead of Blogger) and hosting service (DreamHost instead of Binero). No need to procrastinate any further now that the boring stuff is done.

Over time though I started hacking my own server-side features that inserted dynamic functionality into the static pages using comments in the html as hooks. Features such as the “related posts”, logging, ads (removed now, I was just interested in seeing how adsense worked in practice), etc. But even if php suddenly shut down, the static html pages would still display fine, just without these features.

Anyway, when Google announced the deprecation of the ftp publishing feature of Blogger, I realized something had to be done in order to keep my blog going. (And I am also getting a bit fed up with Google, so I’m going to try to move away from using so many of their services.) After evaluating the alternatives, I decided to set up a WordPress installation on the server. WordPress’s Blogger import tool worked well, although one post didn’t seem to make it. I don’t know why, nor which. I then created my own theme based on the default. I had to tweak the permalink “slugs” for many of the posts to correspond to the old naming scheme, and did some ModRewrite and php tricks to make sure all old urls are permanently redirected to the corresponding new ones (labels to tags, categories, archives, etc). Which means that all old urls should still work – let me know otherwise.

The old feed urls are also redirected, so this should show up in everyone’s feed readers, although I’m not sure that will work correctly. So let’s see…

You don’t have to be Jesus to walk on water when it’s frozen!

This year however awards us with a great cold and snowy winter. Yesterday morning when I was still up at my grandmother’s place in the village of Vittangi, outside Kiruna, a good couple of 150 km or so north of the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn’t rise for a month during the winter, we went for a walk with the dog in -29℃. My beard froze to ice from the water vapor in my breath, but the dog doesn’t mind the cold at all.

It’s been an eventful year for me, with some turbulence and good stuff, but also a lot of tiredness. In the end I find myself in a better position than a year ago, all things taken together. Tomorrow we’re getting on the plane home to Tokyo, via Amsterdam, including a 6 hour visit to Korea where we plan to stop to have some spicy barbecued meat and kimchi on the way.

Right now I’m in Uppsala, the old university town north of Stockholm – also, conveniently, the city closest to Arlanda airport. We had sushi with miso soup for lunch today at Yukikos sushi, the new one in the market hall (Saluhallen) in the center of the city. Quite good, especially – as expected – the fresh salmon.

Swedish sushi.

The second, and more interesting, experiment in merging Swedish and Japanese culinary cultures today is this Ramlösa chūhai that I made as an apéritif before New Year’s dinner. Chūhai, for those not in the know, is a simple drink made by mixing barley shōchū (a Japanese spirit, not to be confused with rise wine) with soda and some fruit flavoring, usually some citrus fruit in a highball glass, on ice.

One thing that Sweden has right is the ubiquity of tasty carbonated water. These are often flavored in very imaginative ways. Since my mom happened to have a small bottle of Iichiko shōchū (one of the best when making chūhai) in the fridge (!), I bought some Ramlösa, the king of Swedish carbonated waters, with blåbär (“blueberry”, a delicious type of bilberry) flavor, and also one with pear and lemon balm flavor, and mixed these together with a slice of lime. Here’s to a happy 2010!

The ingredients.

Finished Ramlösa chūhai.

Surprisingly, the bilberry one tasted better than the pear and lemon balm one. Actually, the bilberry-lemon chūhai was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had. The contrasting tastes of bilberry and lemon complement each other superbly!

I noticed that lately many people find my blog with search queries such as “jlpt revised n3″, “text books for jlpt N3″, “prepare for N3 jlpt”, “jlpt n3 books”, etc. This makes a lot of sense, since the last of the old format JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) examinations was conducted last Sunday, the 6th of December, 2009.

Starting next year the JLPT will be replaced by the revised format, which is essentially the same as the old one, except that the first (vocabulary and characters) and third (reading and grammar) sections are merged into one big one (with no pause? that’ll be tough!). And, of course, the introduction of the new N3 level, which is between the old levels 2 (new level N2) and 3 (new level N4). The gap between the old levels 3 and 2 was indeed rather large, jumping from beginner’s book to serious hobby level with a 300% increase in vocabulary required, for instance.

And with the introduction of the N3 level, a whole new market for textbooks and study aids specifically targeting JLPT N3 opens up, and you’d expect the publishers to rejoice and then hurry to be the first one to the market with such a book, wouldn’t you? So last time I went by the big Kinokuniya book store in Yoyogi, out of curiosity of just how difficult/easy the new level n3 was I had a look at the old JLPT bookshelf (where I used to hang out, before I graduated from the JLPT). And lo and behold there were none! None study books targeting JLPT N3, that is! Lots of books and flash cards and stuff targeting the other, old levels, still though. A search on Amazon has the same result: no JLPT n3 books.

The bookshelf with textbooks for JLPT level N3.

So where are these books? Did the book writers/publishers not realize that there was going to be a guaranteed demand for them? Or are they hoping people will buy the remaining old format JLPT books before they introduce new once to the market? Because surely the demand for old ones will drop significantly once new ones are introduced, especially for the old levels 2 and 3, I would presume. Anyway, as soon as they’re out and I’ve had some time to evaluate them, I’ll update my Best Books for Learning Japanese page with recommendations on JLPT N3 books as well.

• Practice more simple sentences and basic vocabulary. The kind of stuff people usually start off with. I have a tendency to go for more advanced grammar and vocabulary immediately, which isn’t bad in itself but leaves a big hole where elementary expressions and vocabulary should have gone. It’s hard to do conversation when you can’t even introduce yourself…

• Pinyin is essentially bad – so reduce the reliance on pinyin and look at the characters and memorize their pronunciations by itself (by listening to a tape or the teacher, for example). I thought pinyin was a fairly good way of writing Chinese, but I now realize that down to the monkey’s balls it’s essentially the same as romaji is for Japanese – i.e. an unnatural way of expressing the language. Not an incorrect way, but very sub-optimal.
  Kobe Chinatown. Bruce Lee has nothing to do with the content of this post.

• Study hanzi characters and their readings one by one (or short compound words) – starting with simple, frequent characters and moving on from there. Hanzi is how Chinese is written, and as with Japanese, literacy is essential. I have a tendency here too to go for the hard stuff too early, so I need to start over a little and learn from the beginning.

So considering that, the following constitutes my current Chinese study method:

• Using Anki (a spaced repetition system application), I study elementary characters, short words, and simple phrases. With Anki you can download “decks” (sets of “flash cards”) made by other people and provided for free. I found one called Chinese Characters (Level 1 and Level 2) apparently based on the book New Practical Chinese Reader. I don’t use that book but the deck is very useful in itself. The quality is a bit variable though, but I’m adding and changing things as I go along. Considering it’s free and doing it all yourself would take significant time, it’s really good value for time.

• Practice writing hanzi, using some Chinese character writing sheets I found online provided by the University of Vermont (the ones called Practical Chinese Readers Book I and Book II). These are very useful. Again, the quality could be better (readings and stroke orders would be nice, for instance) but for a price of zero, they’re extremely good value. I just write and write the character all over many times, and do the same sheets multiple times. It’s not the most fun activity nor the most fancy kind of study method out there – but actually when I come home from work and I’m tired, that kind of activity is just about what I am able to manage. And I am certainly seeing good progress!
  
  As an aside: I can read about 2,500 Japanese kanji, so most of the elementary/intermediate Chinese is readable for me already, but I never learned to write kanji by hand… I can only write maybe 100-200 characters. Which isn’t a big deal but it’s not very good either. So I’ve decided to use this as an opportunity to learn how to write the simplified Chinese characters, since that will be useful for writing Japanese too (with some exceptions). Since I’m lazy I really prefer the simplified characters. I mean compare 认识 with 認識… I know which one I want to write 100 times on the blackboard.

• Using the books I bought before, keep studying grammar using the grammar book and vocabulary and pronunciation primarily using the other book. Fairly standard. I study grammar before going to sleep (well it makes me go to sleep), and pronunciation/vocabulary some times in the evenings. I am also hoping to use the vocabulary book at the Chinese conversation lessons, since that book has nice, big illustrations accompanying simple words, it should be suitable for learning the correct Mandarin pronunciation.

It’s going well, and it’s fun. It’s great to be able to apply my experience and knowledge of learning from 5+ years of Japanese studies to Chinese. My study methods are incredibly much more efficient now. I will soon have to set some intermediate goal (the current final goal is to be able to read a book in Chinese within two years), such as passing a particular HSK level next year. I’ll have to discuss that with the Chinese school teacher.

That doesn’t really work out well for Chinese, though. I think the main reason for that is that – compared to Japanese – pronunciation is very difficult. I don’t know about you but I can’t remember a word that I can’t pronounce. Or rather I can remember it as a (hanzi) character, but I can’t connect that to a sound, which makes it semi useless. Of course it would be possible to learn Chinese completely as a written language without ever learning how to pronounce things, but besides that being sub-optimal (it would certainly be very valuable for a deaf person, for instance, though) I also think it would take even longer than it takes to learn Chinese while learning both reading/writing and listening/speaking at the same time (for a non-deaf person).

So what I’m trying to say is that I finally realized that me going all in on hanzi and all out on pronouncing the damned thing was not going to work (obviously!), which is where Chinese Future comes in.

Chinese Future happens to be the portending name of a Chinese language school conveniently located between my office and my home, slightly cheaper than the competitor across the road, and with a name that I think really captures the essence of why learning Chinese is not only a fun activity but also highly rational for anyone with a remaining life expectancy of over 20 years – in a very non-subtle manner!

So yeah, I signed up as a customer-student there and had my first lesson yesterday. It seems like in Japan everyone’s going to language schools all the time – it’s really the hip thing to do. No one ever seems to learn any language though. In practice that usually means Japanese people going to “learn” English at one of the English conversation “school” chains, which never seems to produce any result. Considering not being able to speak any foreign language being a point of pride for many Japanese individuals, that is hardly surprising.

So color me full of skepticism (as always!) when I went there. But the first lesson is free, after all, so not much to lose anyway. The following 8 lessons are just 3,000 yen a piece – a considerable amount, but not too large to give it a shot. So well, that is my plan at the moment: Try those (in total) nine lessons and see whether or not language conversation school is really the thing for me. I’ve already got some good conclusions from the first lesson, which I’ll summarize in the next blog post. Stay tuned.

It’s been two years since I left my first repressive employer, Opera Software, which means that I am finally free of all non-competitive agreements as of today. Of course, disclosing that fact might in itself be against said (or non-said) agreement. So I’m not saying it’s the case, just that it might be. Anyway, it’s cause for celebration.

I was young and free, still enrolled at university, and eager to put my l33t coding skillz to use so what was I to do? No, looking back I realize – thank Providence – it was a good decision. It kick-started my career and set me off on an an interesting path.

But let me tell you kids: non-competitive agreements and the like are bad. Stay away from them and stay away from companies that will only offer you employment after signing one. I was lucky, but I don’t think most people are. Of course, whether or not they’re enforceable is another matter, especially when the nationality of the parties and the country where work is carried out are all different. But it smells of bad employment practices.

I was actually contacted a little more than a year ago about an interesting employment opportunity that I would definitely have been interested in if it weren’t for said (or non-said) agreement, so it’s not just all hypothetical. And regardless of the probability of such an unmentionable agreement being upholdable in court, I am a man of my word when signed in triplicate under witness and after review by lawyers. And specific knowledge of the Opera source code wouldn’t have been an advantage either – so it’s all just self-flattering from the oppressive party’s part.

Not coincidentally, today is also two years since I joined my second repressive employer, Picsel Technologies (also known as Picsel Research, Picsel Malta, Lescip, Picsel Holdings, Lescip H, Picsel Trustees, Lescip Seetrust, not to mention the Geurnsey-based Picsel Group Holdings, and a number of other names). Picsel was fun in many ways. If I get the salary they still owe me it’ll seem even funnier. But at least they didn’t require me to sign anything oppressive.

If you’re interested in understanding what happened to Picsel, a seemingly flourishing mobile software technology company, there’s a site for that. Highly recommended reading.

Anyway I’m better off now, thanks largely to these two repressive employers. Happy independence day!

Also this service is very good at identifying indic languages (where as many other services fail to understand).

Well, thanks. And yes, I have been making sure that the languages of the Indian subcontinent and its surrounding areas are thoroughly supported for identification.

But two notable languages have been missing, and I finally got around to adding them. Namely the two Dravidian languages Malayalam (not to be confused with Malay, to which it is unrelated) and Kannada (not to be confused with Canada, to which it is unrelated).

Together with the already supported Tamil and Telugu, this means that all four literary Dravidian languages are supported now! I hope this will be of use to many, and I’d like to thank the Dravidian-speaking bloggers for their support in the form of writing about the site.