Youichi Wada, president and CEO of video game giant Square Enix and regular Twitter user, tossed off a rather amusing language-related tweet yesterday. In response to some other Japanese companies with international markets who’ve switched all internal communication from Japanese to English, he remarked (roughly):
“I’d switch internal communications to C before I’d switch to English!!”
As amusing as the image of Square Enix issuing all company memos in C++ is, one can see why the suggestion of forcing your Japanese staff to learn and use a second language even while at the home office might rub you the wrong way.
It’s also either mildly ironic or very appropriate that one of the first Japanese game companies to do high-quality international localization would stick to their native language at home, and certainly appropriate in light of their core business being not just RPGs, but J-RPGs.
Tags: language
TBS News is reporting that the town used as a model for the setting of Ponyo, Tomo no Ura, has managed to stop the destruction of part of the now world-famous bay. It seems that Hiroshima prefecture wanted to build a bridge across the bay and fill in a portion of the waterfront to create land for a parking lot and other amenities. Leaving the not-so-subtle irony of burying Ponyo’s bay for the sake of parking aside, the residents of Tomo no Ura were angry enough about the environmental destruction and associated eyesore that they sued the prefecture to stop the project. The court handed down a decision in favor of Tomo no Ura, so it looks like the bay will remain as pictured by Miyazaki for the foreseeable future.
Miyazaki said during a public appearance that he was pleased with the court’s decision.
Tags: environment
In case you’d missed the news, today was the official unveiling of Tokyo’s 1:1 scale Gundam model. Which is to say an 18 meter (59 foot) tall statue of an old-school Model RX-78-2 covered with lights and mist generators. In addition to marking the 30th anniversary of the Gundam franchise, it will also serve to plug Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games and an effort to increase greenery in the Tokyo area. Though the steel-framed fiberglass-and-plastic statue isn’t going to be doing much combat, its head does move and it’s pretty much the most awesome tribute to the original giant robot series possible. Well, short of starting a war in space, anyway.
Street Level has collected a bunch of pictures and a few videos of the statue, and there’s also a flickr set with some nice closeups and a short HD video of the light show in action.
For the next couple months the statue will be on display in Shiokaze Park in the Odaiba area of Tokyo, a popular recreational destination known for, among other things, the iconic Fuji TV building (often seen in anime), the Rainbow Bridge (Odaiba is an island), and one of the world’s largest ferris wheels. After that, it will be going to an as-yet undecided location elsewhere. It will no doubt become a pilgrimage destination for the truly devoted fan.
Tags: Gundam, real-life tie-ins
