It's All About the 不可説不可説転円札 (or, Archive of Sino-Japanese Buddhist Hyper-Astronomical Numbers)

Despite the fact that even historically, I don't know of anyone who has read this blog other than myself, perhaps it is because of that that I have a reason to make a post after 5 years for an expected audience of one.

For context, one of the main focuses of my early education was in mathematics, and though my career has departed into the semi-related field of computer science, not much has changed about my familiarity and interest in numerical curiosities. As well as that, my university studies led me down the paths of linguistical intrigue, Japanese didacticism, and East Asian studies. So anything that is at the intersection of the Venn diagram of all four topics would certainly call my attention.

I don't know exactly when I first encountered this particular topic, but perhaps it was semi-contemporaneous with my long-ago post on Japanese ten-power numbers in relation to intuition about currency-conversion and various culturo-economic touchstones for how much 一兆円 can get you (answer: probably still a 新幹線 line but I haven't bothered doing any additional research to account for inflation or the like). But in any case, there are certainly much bigger numbers than (一兆 = 一(万万万) = (10 000)³ = 1 0000 0000 0000 = 1,000,000,000,000). For the sake of convenience going forward, I will probably adopt a neutral convention of using direct 10^x notation to avoid the need to list both thousand-scale and myriad-scale (fun fact: though used generically to refer to a large quantity and often an assortment, the term 'myriad' specifically indicates 一万 or 10⁴) versions of every large number, especially since we have a long ways to go.

Since I am not wikipedia, I won't go into the full details which, assuming that the ravages of time leave the page unscathed, ought to remain on the relevant page for long enough that future-me doesn't have to reiterate the basics.

This post will be a partial translation, partial exploration, and partial archival post for a resource that has, at some point, become inaccessible due to the impermanence of all things (which is oddly on-topic, and though there probably isn't a notion of the internet in historical Buddhism, is true especially on the internet). The resource in question was hosted at this now-dead URL: http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/largenumber.html, but which, thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, can still be found here. Even though 100% of my known audience can read Japanese, that same 100% is a native English-speaker and so might prefer that I (viz. they) encapsulate some of the details in a more direct fashion to avoid a language barrier.

I don't know much about the original author 高杉親知 (which, based on Rikai-tan's assessment, is probably read as Chikatomo TAKASUGI), and my interest is not so much in the writer as it is in the post itself, which introduced me to a list of etymologically Buddho-centric Japanese astronomical numbers I had not previously encountered. Since my ability to read through large troves of Japanese is limited severely due to my inexposure and inexperience to such tasks, and my generally stagnant Japanese skills not having been necessarily strong enough even at their peak to read through archaic sources on esoteric topics, I won't really try to claim that I can be sure that the information I am re-presenting is authentic and unbiased, and because the names that we call any given numeral quantity are as much a social construct as most other linguistic conventions (though I do not wish to denigrate any historical significance or importance of the influential origins on words in a languge or from a culture I have no direct personal grounding in), even a misrepresentation of what sequence of characters, what reading thereof, and what etymology they derive from, ought to be relatively innocuous and uncontentious when applied solely to numbers, which are rarely ever victims (except in the case of the famous incident where nine was mercilessly eaten by seven).

Of course, even without the blog-post I am parroting, everyone probably knows by now that the Japanese counting and number-system uses explicit place-markers in the form of fixed-ten-powers as post-positional unit suffixes for any digital scalar (being 1-9, leaving 0 out). In other words, the notation for a number greater than 9 is always the concatenation of each of its significant place-values in highest-to-lowest sequence, additionally omitting the leading 一 (1*) for explicit (i.e. not the unrendered 10⁰) tens-power units up to 千=10³. Though there is no direct way of adapting this notion to the standard western conventions in using arabic numerals with purely positional implicit tens-power units, using 0 to fill in the gaps between non-consecutive tens-powers, it is somewhat close to the way that spoken English treats large numbers. "Ten thousand and four" being the way we convey the idea that is rendered orthographically as 10004, rather than reading each digit by itself in sequence like 'one zero zero zero four' (though for pure number-sequences not meant to have place-value associations, like phone-numbers and other pure digit-strings, both Japanese and English fall back on reading the numbers verbatim in sequence without attaching place-value to them, in either respective convention; with some exceptions, of course, most notably that of the emergency phone number in Japan, 110, being referred to in common speech as １１０番 (ひゃくとおばん) which literally means 'hundred-and-ten (phone) number').

I would also like to note for those who either lack the patience or ability (due either to issues relating to the Internet or the task of reading Japanese being difficult or impossible) to read the original post, that the relevant 'values' of large tens-powers are by no means a diachronic immutable, and have had different attributions either between their modern and historical usage, or between multiple 'historical' sources using the same effective kanji-sequence to denote differing tens-power-values. As with many linguistic conventions, especially those that are notational and highly abstract, how big a 'stride' one takes to get from one place-value to the next is entirely a subjective choice when taking an agreed-upon succession of ascending scale to mean a very precise thing, especially when the consequences of making a different choice than someone else are virtually nonexistant, and any choice that at least orders the symbols in the same ascending pattern in an internally consistent and logically sound fashion is basically as 'correct' as any other. So while there are multiple tables even in the one blog-post I am rehashing, with multiple columns denoting sources and the names used for the varying scales, I will try my best to show what is the 'modern accepted' version if multiple interpretations exist, and leave any further digging to whomever reads this and finds it inadequately detailed.

For those tens-power-units that are noted in 'common' usage (though their frequency is almost certainly diminishing the higher one goes up the scale, for understandable reasons), virtually all beyond 万 are effectively raised-powers of 万=10⁴ itself.

The blog post begins with the line

子供の頃、算数の教科書で大きい数の単位を知って感動した。日本語は素晴らしいと思ったが、実はこれらは全て中国から来たものだと後に知った。以下は日本語の数の表である。

Which I am, as a rank amateur, choosing to translate as:

As a child, I was moved [tr. emotionally] upon learning the large number-units in an arithmetic textbook. [At the time] I had thought 'Japanese is wonderful', but I later learned that, in fact, these were all Chinese in origin. Below is a table of Japanese numbers.

I am adapting the actual table that follows that opening line into a more compact form, leaving out the additional columns that specify the prefix-scale applied to yield intermediate ten-powers between one myriad-power and the next, and rather focusing on the myriadic powers themselves. I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that anyone reading this far is either familiar enough with 一十百千 to not need the additional explainer for these sub-myriad powers, or is in any case only concerned with the big numbers, not those 雑魚 (ざこ/zako). Also note that because all these powers are above 千, when they are actually being used productively to form a proper numeral quantity, a prefix of 一 would be used to denote 1*10^x.

(By 'adapting', I really mean translating/editing the original table, as an HTML entity. It's big enough that I would probably want to write a script to generate the HTML from scratch if I were going down that road, and the HTML structure itself is relatively hard to interpret as the IP of the author, since it is very formulaic and merely encapsulates existing facts rather than putting an authorial spin or creative interpretation on them. Not that I am saying 'steal from this person', I just believe that the table itself can't reasonably be designated as a creative opus and consitute what I am doing below as plagiarism. Even the adaptation of the HTML is being done by hand rather than script or, worse-yet, via AI, and is rather painstaking as-is, so I would argue that even if the original is IP, my version is a transformative product.)

Kanji	Value
万（まん）	104
億（おく）	108
兆（ちょう）	1012
京（けい）	1016
垓（がい）	1020
𥝱（じょ）*	1024
穣（じょう）	1028
溝（こう）	1032
澗（かん）	1036
正（せい）	1040
載（さい）	1044
極（ごく）	1048
恒河沙（ごうがしゃ）	1052
阿僧祇（あそうぎ）	1056
那由他（なゆた）	1060
不可思議（ふかしぎ）	1064
無量大数（むりょうたいすう）	1068

^*: There are multiple notes on this particular entry. The first is that, perhaps due to font or unicode-related issues, the orignal blog-post by Takasugi-shi used a now-dead image link for this character, which I have done my best to find the corresponding Unicode glyph to replicate. The other is that there is an extended aside in the body of the blog itself, that explains that the value of 10²⁴ was originally (and properly, according to Takasugi-shi) designated by the character 「秭（し）」, which [the author alleges] was, in the mid-17th century, mistakenly rendered as the slightly-similar-looking 「𥝱（じょ）」, which has by the modern day become the de-facto tens-power-unit kanji for 10²⁴. While I can't comment on whether this explanation is historically accurate, I have no particular reason to fact-check the source that I am only attempting to preserve, not audit, and so will leave the Internet Archive link and its accompanying list of reference-links as the place to go to figure out what is really going on here. Another source linked to by the blog post in question, which can only be found in an even earlier wayback machine snapshot, corroborates this story, though it is unclear if this is the same source that Takasugi-shi is drawing on or whether this is one of multiple sources for this claim.

Now, onto the main point of interest I had in first finding this page, which, like young Takasugi-shi, I was moved upon finding.

無量大数 (muryoutaisuu, lit 'immeasurable large number), at 10⁶⁸ (or 10⁸⁸ depending on which system you are employing or what source you are treating as authoritative), is already pretty darn big, I would say. There aren't a lot of things you can reasonably count that high within practical reason, though unlike numbers such as one googol (10¹⁰⁰) which are effectively 'monolithic' large numbers without any nearby ten-powers you can ease yourself down to without referencing googol itself, it is just the last turtle in the chain of myriads-of-myriads. But it is by no means the end of the story, and we can go even deeper.

The end of the blog post has a huge ringer in the form of a list of numbers from a Buddhist source that grow unbelievably fast and which quickly outstrip the number of atoms in the observable universe and any other quantity that forms a basic upper-bound on how large a number you would ever need to worry about if you were purely a pragmatist. With the exception of the first number listed in the table that follows, 洛叉（らくしゃ） as 10⁵, the progression is based on 10^7(2x). In other words, instead of scaling by our basic myriad (which in this case, the base-case is 10⁷ rather than 10⁴ but it hardly matters by the end due to the sheer magnitude of the numbers being presented), we square each one to get the next. In comparison, if we were doing this the whole time in our basic set of numbers, 無量大数 being our base myriad multiplied by itself an additional 16 times, we would instead have our base myriad squared 16 times, or 10^4x216 = 10²¹⁸ = 10²⁶²¹⁴⁴. If you could write one zero per second without any breaks or interruptions, that would take slightly over 3 days to write down in Arabic numerals (and though it's begging the question, would take only four characters and 40 total strokes to write in Kanji if that were the actual value of 無量大数).

I might later do a deeper dive into the significance or origins of the names of the numbers given below, which for time constraints, I will merely leave as kanji with hiragana ruby annotations and not transliterate the whole list quite yet (though I might go back and edit this post later for the sake of finishing it more quickly but not leaving it an incomplete product). The majority I believe to be derived from Sanskrit terms with significance rooted in Buddhism, rendered into either Japanese Kanji or Chinese Hanzi (which I may, if I do compile a follow-up post to this one, explore further).

Without any further ado, here is the insane table, this time ripped mostly one-for-one from the revivified blog-page of Takasugi-shi (with the column-headers translated but otherwise unaltered).

Numerical Value	Lexical Form
105	洛叉（らくしゃ）
107	倶胝（くてい）
107×2 = 1014	阿庾多（あゆた）
107×22 = 1028	那由他（なゆた）
107×23 = 1056	頻波羅（びんばら）
107×24 = 10112	矜羯羅（こんがら）
107×25 = 10224	阿伽羅（あから）
107×26 = 10448	最勝（さいしょう）
107×27 = 10896	摩婆羅（まばら）
107×28 = 101792	阿婆羅（あばら）
107×29 = 103584	多婆羅（たばら）
107×210 = 107168	界分（かいぶん）
107×211 = 1014336	普摩（ふま）
107×212 = 1028672	禰摩（ねま）
107×213 = 1057344	阿婆鈐（あばけん）
107×214 = 10114688	弥伽婆（みかば）
107×215 = 10229376	毘攞伽（びらか）
107×216 = 10458752	毘伽婆（びかば）
107×217 = 10917504	僧羯邏摩（そうがらま）
107×218 = 101835008	毘薩羅（びさら）
107×219 = 103670016	毘贍婆（びせんば）
107×220 = 107340032	毘盛伽（びじょうが）
107×221 = 1014680064	毘素陀（びすだ）
107×222 = 1029360128	毘婆訶（びばか）
107×223 = 1058720256	毘薄底（びばてい）
107×224 = 10117440512	毘佉擔（びきゃたん）
107×225 = 10234881024	称量（しょうりょう）
107×226 = 10469762048	一持（いちじ）
107×227 = 10939524096	異路（いろ）
107×228 = 101879048192	顛倒（てんどう）
107×229 = 103758096384	三末耶（さんまや）
107×230 = 107516192768	毘睹羅（びとら）
107×231 = 1015032385536	奚婆羅（けいばら）
107×232 = 1030064771072	伺察（しさつ）
107×233 = 1060129542144	周広（しゅうこう）
107×234 = 10120259084288	高出（こうしゅつ）
107×235 = 10240518168576	最妙（さいみょう）
107×236 = 10481036337152	泥羅婆（ないらば）
107×237 = 10962072674304	訶理婆（かりば）
107×238 = 101924145348608	一動（いちどう）
107×239 = 103848290697216	訶理蒲（かりぼ）
107×240 = 107696581394432	訶理三（かりさん）
107×241 = 1015393162788864	奚魯伽（けいろか）
107×242 = 1030786325577728	達攞歩陀（たつらほだ）
107×243 = 1061572651155456	訶魯那（かろな）
107×244 = 10123145302310912	摩魯陀（まろだ）
107×245 = 10246290604621824	懺慕陀（ざんぼだ）
107×246 = 10492581209243648	瑿攞陀（えいらだ）
107×247 = 10985162418487296	摩魯摩（まろま）
107×248 = 101970324836974592	調伏（ちょうぶく）
107×249 = 103940649673949184	離憍慢（りきょうまん）
107×250 = 107881299347898368	不動（ふどう）
107×251 = 1015762598695796736	極量（ごくりょう）
107×252 = 1031525197391593472	阿麼怛羅（あまたら）
107×253 = 1063050394783186944	勃麼怛羅（ぼまたら）
107×254 = 10126100789566373888	伽麼怛羅（がまたら）
107×255 = 10252201579132747776	那麼怛羅（なまたら）
107×256 = 10504403158265495552	奚麼怛羅（けいまたら）
107×257 = 101008806316530991104	鞞麼怛羅（べいまたら）
107×258 = 102017612633061982208	鉢羅麼怛羅（はらまたら）
107×259 = 104035225266123964416	尸婆麼怛羅（しばまたら）
107×260 = 108070450532247928832	翳羅（えいら）
107×261 = 1016140901064495857664	薜羅（べいら）
107×262 = 1032281802128991715328	諦羅（たいら）
107×263 = 1064563604257983430656	偈羅（げら）
107×264 = 10129127208515966861312	窣歩羅（そほら）
107×265 = 10258254417031933722624	泥羅（ないら）
107×266 = 10516508834063867445248	計羅（けいら）
107×267 = 101033017668127734890496	細羅（さいら）
107×268 = 102066035336255469780992	睥羅（へいら）
107×269 = 104132070672510939561984	謎羅（めいら）
107×270 = 108264141345021879123968	娑攞荼（しゃらだ）
107×271 = 1016528282690043758247936	謎魯陀（めいろだ）
107×272 = 1033056565380087516495872	契魯陀（けいろだ）
107×273 = 1066113130760175032991744	摩睹羅（まとら）
107×274 = 10132226261520350065983488	娑母羅（しゃもら）
107×275 = 10264452523040700131966976	阿野娑（あやしゃ）
107×276 = 10528905046081400263933952	迦麼羅（かまら）
107×277 = 101057810092162800527867904	摩伽婆（まかば）
107×278 = 102115620184325601055735808	阿怛羅（あたら）
107×279 = 104231240368651202111471616	醯魯耶（けいろや）
107×280 = 108462480737302404222943232	薜魯婆（べいろば）
107×281 = 1016924961474604808445886464	羯羅波（からは）
107×282 = 1033849922949209616891772928	訶婆婆（かばば）
107×283 = 1067699845898419233783545856	毘婆羅（びばら）
107×284 = 10135399691796838467567091712	那婆羅（なばら）
107×285 = 10270799383593676935134183424	摩攞羅（まらら）
107×286 = 10541598767187353870268366848	娑婆羅（しゃばら）
107×287 = 101083197534374707740536733696	迷攞普（めいらふ）
107×288 = 102166395068749415481073467392	者麼羅（しゃまら）
107×289 = 104332790137498830962146934784	駄麼羅（だまら）
107×290 = 108665580274997661924293869568	鉢攞麼陀（はらまだ）
107×291 = 1017331160549995323848587739136	毘迦摩（びかま）
107×292 = 1034662321099990647697175478272	烏波跋多（うはばた）
107×293 = 1069324642199981295394350956544	演説（えんぜつ）
107×294 = 10138649284399962590788701913088	無尽（むじん）
107×295 = 10277298568799925181577403826176	出生（しゅっしょう）
107×296 = 10554597137599850363154807652352	無我（むが）
107×297 = 101109194275199700726309615304704	阿畔多（あばんた）
107×298 = 102218388550399401452619230609408	青蓮華（しょうれんげ）
107×299 = 104436777100798802905238461218816	鉢頭摩（はどま）
107×2100 = 108873554201597605810476922437632	僧祇（そうぎ）
107×2101 = 1017747108403195211620953844875264	趣（しゅ）
107×2102 = 1035494216806390423241907689750528	至（し）
107×2103 = 1070988433612780846483815379501056	阿僧祇（あそうぎ）
107×2104 = 10141976867225561692967630759002112	阿僧祇転（あそうぎてん）
107×2105 = 10283953734451123385935261518004224	無量（むりょう）
107×2106 = 10567907468902246771870523036008448	無量転（むりょうてん）
107×2107 = 101135814937804493543741046072016896	無辺（むへん）
107×2108 = 102271629875608987087482092144033792	無辺転（むへんてん）
107×2109 = 104543259751217974174964184288067584	無等（むとう）
107×2110 = 109086519502435948349928368576135168	無等転（むとうてん）
107×2111 = 1018173039004871896699856737152270336	不可数（ふかすう）
107×2112 = 1036346078009743793399713474304540672	不可数転（ふかすうてん）
107×2113 = 1072692156019487586799426948609081344	不可称（ふかしょう）
107×2114 = 10145384312038975173598853897218162688	不可称転（ふかしょうてん）
107×2115 = 10290768624077950347197707794436325376	不可思（ふかし）
107×2116 = 10581537248155900694395415588872650752	不可思転（ふかしてん）
107×2117 = 101163074496311801388790831177745301504	不可量（ふかりょう）
107×2118 = 102326148992623602777581662355490603008	不可量転（ふかりょうてん）
107×2119 = 104652297985247205555163324710981206016	不可説（ふかせつ）
107×2120 = 109304595970494411110326649421962412032	不可説転（ふかせつてん）
107×2121 = 1018609191940988822220653298843924824064	不可説不可説（ふかせつふかせつ）
107×2122 = 1037218383881977644441306597687849648128	不可説不可説転（ふかせつふかせつてん）

I probably don't need to tell you how insane it is that, even if these numero-lexical entities themselves are even more obscure than the basically-unused 無量大数 (at least, I imagine that any usage it entertains is purely as 'the biggest number that exists' rather than the precise value of '1e68'), the fact they even existed at all, however historically, is definitely impressive.

If any of this stuff is interesting to even one person [other than myself], I'd say it was worth it to keep this list of numbers alive into a new era.

Stay tuned for the announcement of my upcoming incremental idle game where you win if your score reaches 不可説不可説転. /hj.

Shield Hero, So Far (Review-Rant)

It's no secret that I am an avid fan of anime and manga, and especially of the fantasy genre in general, as it is the genre of much of the literature and media I consumed in my youth and adolescence, as well as a good portion of the creative writing I did contemporaneously. The seasonal anime line-up of 2019 is a rather mixed bag, though I can't claim any expertise as I tend to only watch only a handful of shows (currently 9, but the number of seasonal shows is far larger now than it was even a decade ago).

So, with that said, let's talk about Shield Hero, also known by its full title Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (盾の勇者の成り上がり "The Rising of Shield Hero")

As a disclaimer, I haven't read either the original light novel or the manga adaptation, so I am basing this review-rant off of the 11 episodes of the 2-cour (25 episode) anime adaptation that have aired so far. Therefore, as long as you have watched the first 11 episodes, this review should prove spoiler-free as far as you are concerned. Otherwise, as I will be going over certain plot-points and characters that were introduced later on in the series, there may be a couple of spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen this show, or hasn't caught up to episode 11. Also, my impressions of the show aren't going to be holistic or representative of the overall narrative as it exists currently, as it is obviously behind the LN and manga in terms of story progression. So there may be some twist or reveal at some point later on that redeems certain aspects of the show that I find issue with, and some of my contentions might apply primarily or exclusively to the anime adaptation and may not translate into criticisms of the original work. For the most part, however, my discussions will be entirely rooted in the narrative, without any discussion of the technical aspects of show-running such as voice acting, VFX, SFX, CGI, animation quality, pacing, or other anime-specific concerns.

Without further ado, here we go.

While the fantasy genre has recently been saturated (comparatively) with light-novels, manga, and anime featuring the isekai trope (異世界, literally "other world"), this is not necessarily a purely negative trend. Within the Pascal's Wager of good/bad isekai/non-isekai content (at least, in my subjective opinion), we have all four squares populated. (In this case, I am only considering fantasy as constituting shows with a form of magical or mystical power, in the sense that properties that have cryptids or mythological/fantastical creatures but no form of power system aside from the ability of those creatures to merely exist, would not count as fantasy in the sense in which I am using it)

	Good	Bad
Isekai	Overlord TenSura Log Horizon	Smartphone Ragnarok SAO
Non-Isekai	Ancient Magus Bride Little Witch Academia WorldEnd Seven Deadly Sins	Akashic Records

While there are plenty of entries that could be added to this list, I haven't heard of or read/watched enough mediocre content to fill this table properly.

By virtue of having spent more than half of my life doing creative writing as a hobby, I am now more or less convinced that in order for a story to be interesting or compelling, it must have interesting or compelling characters. Sure enough, that isn't the whole of it, but it is difficult to write a good story with bad characters, because without the characters there isn't really all that much of a story to speak of.

The isekai trope is perhaps as popular as it is because it allows for incremental world-building: the principal character with whom the audience is meant to identify or perceive events from the perspective of, is quite often thrust blindly into a strange new world, which might either be completely unfamiliar (KonoSuba, TenSura, Re:Zero), or familiar but uncanny (SAO, Log Horizon, Overlord). In either case, the writer neither needs to drop any "Concerning Hobbits" worldbuilding expo up-front in order to acclimate the audience to the peculiarities of the world the story takes place in for the most part, and also has the freedom to introduce new elements to drive the narrative without them appearing as hand-wavy as they might otherwise be. This is probably best exemplified by the case of the adpatation of the LN "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime," in which our non-Newtonian protagonist Rimuru Tempest has most questions about the workings of the world he was reborn into answered by a near-literal proxy Voice of God. However contrived this device might be, it definitely serves a distinct purpose of allowing our natural puzzlement of how the other-world works to be immediately answered whenever glaring issues or questions arise through the eyes of our protagonist, without having an actual character provide the exposition or some vague omniscient narrator fill in the gaps extra-diegetically. The information is provided only when needed, and is rarely excessive, and creates a good balance between wonderment and understanding. Not to say that having in-story characters fill in the gaps doesn't work if done well, mind you, but it can often come across as gimmicky or excessive (as I have heard some express about Meteora's role in Re:Creators, which I personally didn't find as much fault with). There is then the middling-tier, where there is no one to explain anything, but a good bit of information is already understood, as in "transported into a game world"-type isekai such as Overlord, Log Horizon, and Sword Art Online. In each of these cases, the protagonist is a relative veteran of the created world that they suddenly find reified, and at most conduct research in terms of experimenting what elements of the world they know about carry over, and what elements are mysterious or surprising.

The approach taken by Shield Hero is far from atypical, as VR-style HUDs in isekai fantasy shows are somewhat of a trope if not a staple, but the initial explanation of the world Naofumi is transported to is slightly skewed. The four summoned heroes are pretty willing to accept everything that has happened to them without any question, which is almost played for laughs rather than realism. No matter how many light novels you read, I guarantee that most people, even most otakus, would probably want to know quite a bit about what the hell just happened and where the hell they are before diving blindly into adventuring. At the very least, I guarantee that almost everyone in that situation would try to figure out the genre of world they are in, because there is a huge difference between how you would treat a Konosuba world and a Re:Zero world, for instance. While in principle it would be more or less natural to term Shield Hero a "dark fantasy," in practice it comes across as more "edgy" than anything else. While the recurring influx of unholy aberrations from another dimension, the "Waves" that the heroes are summoned under the pretense of fighting back against, would normally indicate a cosmic-level "rotten world" where the hardship faced by the protagonist's party and everyday folk come in the form of inherently evil monsters that have no motive but destruction (as, say, Goblin Slayer executed much better, even if not without comparable controversy to the first episode of when placed next to Shield Hero), but in actuality the main forces that are the source of the ongoing conflict for the protagonist are just various types of shitty people. These shits come in different shapes, sizes, and consistencies, but are unmistakably shit. While it is certainly possible that there is some upcoming explanation of just why everyone seems to hate the very idea of the "Shield Hero" from the outset, to the point where no one really seems to pay attention to anything about Naofumi other than the fact that he was given a shiny buckler before writing him off as a waste of space, in the absence of such an explanation this facet of the story seems rather contrived. This serves a purpose, whether intentionally or otherwise, of providing an in-universe reason why Naofumi was singled out as a no-goodnik from the get-go that didn't require his character to have any outward flaws: he could be as much of a well-mannered ikemen as the story needed him to be, by providing a reason extrinsic to who he is or was originally as to why people had their misgivings initially.

Then we get the "Royal Flush," in the form of the occulted machinations by various members of the court aristocracy and the in-house royalty, seemingly engineered by Princess Myne ("Shit-herezade") and perhaps orchestrated by the Shit Who Would Be King. The exact reasons for these machinations are not quite explained in full, save for the simple fact that Shit-herezade is a scheming fuck who doesn't care how many people she curbstomps into the gutter or bleeds dry in the pursuit of her ill-defined personal agenda (there is probably something Freud could say about how Myne's first instinct is to side with the summoned hero carrying the largest phallic symbol and how she targets the one hero who is carrying a non-phallus, but that isn't my place to argue and could easily become problematic). There is literally not a single redeeming quality to her character. She is so outrageously awful a person that it is safe to say that she singlehandedly burned every bit of vegetation she could find just to eliminate any possibility of turning over a new leaf. In all likelyhood, my best guess is that she is trying to accede to the throne ahead of her younger sister Melty by aligning herself with a marriage candidate (Motoyasu) who she makes every effort to elevate to Lord Adonis status by enlisting him to perform numerous "heroic" deeds that I would not be suprised were motivated solely by a desire to fuck over as many non-titled people as possible, Naofumi first and foremost. It would be a mistake to call her an "ojousama" or "hime-dere", because either moniker would imply that she has some depth to her character other than "irredeemable unrepentant clusterfuck of a shit human being." The king seems content with endorsing (either in advance or ex-post-facto, the exact nature is unclear) of every act of fuckery Myne is responsible for, either directly or through the proxy of Motoyasu.

Motoyasu, the Spear Hero, for his part, seemingly oscillates between being a puppet of Myne and a fully autonomous dick. His initial behavior is mainly that of a moderately vain and arrogant beefcake, and his role in Myne's schemes are as yet unclear: he could equally be a confederate or a mark of the scheme, which is an important distinction; if he is merely swept up in the plans, his reaction is understandable, and he is more of a collateral asshole than a laser-guided shit. On the other hand, his behavior betrays more of a horrible attitude than mere preconception.

Naofumi. Oh boy. There is potential for some hidden depth to his character, such as "everyone fucking hates me so I will push everyone away so they don't get dragged down into the mud by the same forces that fucked me over horribly" or "I can't be a nice person or the people I truly care about will be harmed in order to deprive me of any shred of fulfillment." More than that, however, his status is a tentative "edgy misanthrope" or "jaded bastard" who doesn't really care how the people he deal with end up feeling about him because he is pretty much resigned to the fact that he is universally hated, not just by the royals who screwed him over but by the entire universe. Since he is put in a situation in which he is forced to fight without a say in the matter, but deprived of any means of fighting on his own and stripped of any reputation that could earn him any allies or sympathizers, enlisting the services of a slave-trader (in a world in which slavery of demi-humans is accepted) and transferring the young half-tanunki Raphtalia into servitude under him. This situation is perhaps understandable in context, but still deeply problematic, for reasons that I won't bother going into. Raphtalia, who has something approaching an actual characterization, ends up deciding (though not given much agency in the matter) to act as Naofumi's "sword" (calm down, Freud) regardless of the fact that she was sold to him as a slave and disciplined with the curse-equivalent of a shock-collar. I would even say that an alternative story told from Raphtalia's perspective, which starts out with Naofumi forcing her into a less oppressive slavery, but still a slavery, than the one she perhaps expected: beginning with him curing her untreatable illness, even if only to enable him to force her into combat scenarios. From her perspective, we would have very little idea of who Naofumi was and what happened to him, other than how everyone seems to be reacting negatively to his presence, and how his attitude is cold and somber. This would not be a harem story, but a complex story of liberation in many respects, both of Raphtalia physically and psychologically, and of Naofumi in both respects as well: he is hindered by his inability to fight offensively and his hatred of the world and resignation to the fact that the world hates him, while she is a literal slave, but one who is also unable to overcome her fear of fighting against monsters due to childhood trauma of her parents getting eaten. This would not be a pretty story, but it would at least be a story.

Let's get back to Motoyasu. This is the point at which I started losing the remaining sympathy I had allotted to Naofumi. While at the castle with the instantly-mature Raphtalia, Motoyasu tries to flirt with her, Myne spouts hate-rhetoric, and Motoyasu is convinced that she is being forced by Naofumi against her will (this is the only part that is debatable rather than true) to fight monsters. Motoyasu then denounces slavery. Bear in mind that he is in a party with the princess and on the best terms of any hero with the king, who is responsible for creation of the law of the land, and yet is much more concerned with liberating the one slave who happens to be allied with the man that the royals and Motoyasu threw in front of the Bus-kun for personal gain, rather than doing anything about the pervasive issue of legalized and generally accepted slavery of a dehumanized population that Myne (and probably the King) have no sympathy for. Pretty much no one in their right mind would accept the King's behavior as anything but a personal vendetta, though the peanut-gallery of sycophantic aristocrats have no problem acting like the king is a paragon of virtue. Motoyasu then challenges Naofumi to a one-sided duel which Naofumi stands to gain nothing in other than the marginally favorable (though unfavorable for the most part) status quo, with Motoyasu's victory resulting not in Raphtalia being freed and empowered to decide her own fate, but by the forcible separation from Naofumi after being abducted by the royal guards and used as an incentive to force Naofumi to fight. Bear in mind also that Naofumi is physically unable of using any weapons, while Motoyasu is aided from the sidelines by Myne's magical intervention (which only the Bow and Sword Hero actually testify to witnessing after the fact), at which point Naofumi falls into despair and believes that Raphtalia, who is berating Motoyasu for being such a colossal turd, has betrayed him. From this point on, everything Naofumi does is colored by his bitterness and callousness. While he accomplishes numerable meritorious deeds both during and after the first wave since they all arrive, Myne and Motoyasu go around with their Shit-Midas powers turning everything to shit, like imposing a crippling tax on a village that Naofumi saved during the Wave, sowing an alchemical abomination of a plant-monster sealed within ruins with a legible warning of its danger near a town that Naofumi then has to save, and in general being horrible people at every turn. The Bow and Sword hero are painted with a similar brush, doing notionally heroic deeds without regard for the real-world consequences they end up having, such as the overthrow of a tyrant that led to his former subjects either dying of starvation of becoming refugees without any remaining prospects for survival, or the rotten corpse of a dragon causing a pervasive plague in a nearby village. They are pretty much set up as benchmarks of how a typical person would perform, in order to demonstrate that Naofumi is not just better than the awful Motoyasu, but also is the best hero in general because his initial experiences shattered any illusion that the world they were adventuring in was like a video game.

I could go on forever about how much I don't like Filo's character or her introduction into the story as a harem candidate despite being a literal infant and also a bird. I could also mention how fucked Naofumi is in the head for rejecting Melty out of hand without even hearing her out, just because she happens to be a princess, making her also the most likely and probably only person in the entire world who could help him regain some semblance of a dignified life.

I will not stop watching the show in all likelihood, but I certainly have my fair share of complaints about it. It isn't a bad show, but there is so much that could be done better that I could easily change my mind if it goes over the tipping point.

Ambiguity

I don't have much of an idea of what I want to post, and it has been a while, so here are some ambiguous sentences I came up with a couple of seconds ago.
こーりのかみをとけました

氷の神を溶けました

"I melted the ice-god"

コーリの髪を解けました

"I untangled Corey's hair"

きみはしたいけどわたしはしたくない

君はしたいけど、私はしたくない

"You want to do it, but I don't"

君は死体けど私は下苦無

"You are a corpse, but I am lower-kunai"

This one, I came up with a while ago (and it works surprisingly well)
きみのなわ

君の名は

"Your Name"

気味の縄

"The Rope of Sensations"

That's all for now.

ぜに and the Art of Currency Conversion

As an American, whenever I see a price listed in yen with Japanese orders of magnitude, especially once we get into powers of 10⁴ (万・億 ・等), I don't always have an immediate intuition for how much that is, in terms of dollars, or what kind of thing that is a reasonable price for. As such, I have decided to make a guide for the uninitiated, so 円 becomes as natural as Celsius. I have not done extensive research on this topic, so take my assessments with a grain of salt. For convenience, I have used colons to separate each group of 4 zeroes, and commas for every 3, in the Arabic equivalents of the japanese numerals (semicolon for every 12)

一円 （1）

~1 penny. Nowadays, you can't do much with it besides tip jars, shrines, or donations. There is a 1-yen stamp, but I don't know what you can really do with that.

十円 （10）

~10 cents. Useful for making change, paying at vending machines, tip jars. Small items might cost 20-50 yen, like this eraser (as of post, １５円 after 八割引き - 83% discount to be precise). Other small stationary supplies and odds-and-ends can easily cost under １００円. Which brings us to...

百円 （100）

~1 dollar. You can really start buying things with 100 yen, as there are ¥100 stores which are similar to dollar-stores in America. This amount can also buy you a drink at a vending machine, as well as many simple food items. These include things like コンビニ (convenience store) onigiri, small pastries, inexpensive fast food, and so on. A 2-liter bottle of water, aloe water, or unsweetened tea might also cost about this much. The eraser mentioned before, without discount, is 86 yen, and is the kind of thing you might find in a 100-yen store. Some cans of beer might also be 100-yen (though usually a bit more), for those to whom that kind of thing matters.

千円 （1,000）

~10 dollars. A lot of books you might find online or in bookstores are around this price, though single-volume manga is around 600 yen. Food-wise, this is about the cost of ramen, sushi (though this can be more expensive), or 定食 (lunch set). Bento tend to be cheaper than 1000 yen, but are often in the neighborhood of 600. High-quality stationery items like good mechanical pencils or pens might also be in this range. Around 3000 to 5000, you might get a regular MP3 player or the like.

一万円 （10,000）

~100 dollars. This runs you into the territory of fountain pens (the majority of the pens listed are in the 一万円 to 五万円 range (万年筆!? More like 万円筆!). Small personal electronics also enter this terrirtory, such as graphing calculators (regular calculators might be ５００円 to 二千円), electronic dictionaries, smart phones, etc. Guitars, violins, and the like also run in this range. Run-of-the-mill bicycles and low-end laptops are also about this price.

十万円 （10:0,000）

~1,000 dollars. This is where things get expensive. Electric-assist bicycles, single-lens reflex cameras, gaming PCs, Apple computers, and other professional products tend to lie in this range. You can also get a 50cc Suzuki motorcycle for 一三十万円 (100,000-300,000 yen). A wedding ring will cost about this much on average.

百万円 （1,00:0,000）

~10,000 dollars. Think: a 1000cc Suzuki motorcycle, a non-sports car, other heavy machinery. Luxury goods like jewelry and watches can also run into this range, though they may be even more expensive depending on the quality.

千万円 （10,00:0,000)

~100,000 dollars. This might be a motorboat, Tesla car, Tourbillon watch (price here), or loose diamond. Buying a house/apartment outright might also cost you this much, depending on property values.

一億円 (1:00,00:0,000)

~1,000,000 dollars. This is getting into very expensive territory, but we aren't done yet (from now on, I am using numbers from this very helpful if niche website). If you wanted to buy a 2LDK in Minato-Ku (ward of Tokyo) or a highest-quality Steinway Grand Piano, this is how much you would need. The Type 90 Kyuumaru tank used by the Ground Self Defense Force cost 八億円, and the production cost for the PS2 game 決戦 (Kessen) II was 七億円. Other than that, you could get some pretty nice real estate going. This is also the range for a private jet or private island.

十億円 (1,0:00,00:0,000)

~10,000,000 dollars. This can get you a Stradivarius violin, a Type 87 SDF Anti-Aircraft Gun, a 4-bed estate in Setagaya-Ku (Tokyo), or buy a cruise liner. Space Shuttle Endeavour cost 約二十億円 (approximately 200 million yen) to build.

百億円 (10,0:00,00:0,000)

~100,000,000 dollars. We need to start getting into things like private jets for this kind of price. If you want to buy a very expensive painting, launch a rocket into outer space, or get your hands on a Boeing 767 or F-15, don't expect to pay less than hyakuoku yen.

千億円 (100,0:00,00:0,000)

~1,000,000,000 dollars. This is the cost of building an expressway or an airport, more or less. You can also get a B-2 Stealth Bomber for ２０００００００００００円 (二千億). There isn't much in this range besides infrastructure and serious aerospace vehicles.

一兆円 (1,000,0:00,00:0,000)

~10,000,000,000 dollars. This is probably where we will be leaving off, since this is getting into macroeconomic scales. Mostly, this is what you need to build 新幹線 lines.

まとめ

１円

１０円

１００円

１０００円

１万円

１０万円

１００万円

１０００万円

１億円

１０億円

１００億円

１０００億円

１兆円

‥

消しゴム

おにぎり

ラーメン

自転車

バイク

車

テスラ

上等ピアノ

上等バイオリン

飛行機

ステルス爆撃機

新幹線

裏目: Irregardless

Note: This post is in Japanese.

しばらくの休みの終わりと共に、「無関係無し」がやっと蘇りました。つまり、私はオーストラリアから帰国しました。その間、「PROGRESSI部」という英和言語交換グループに参加して、日本語の会話をしました。その会話で、日本語から英語の訳し方と、正しい英語の言い方などについて少し話しました。その結果を紹介したいと思うので、質問と答を発表しようと思います。

第一問：「しょうがない・仕方がない」
この表現は、多くの表現と同じように、英訳がたくさんあります。例えば、「It can't be helped」、「It's unavoidable」、「There's no other way」、「There's nothing you can do about it」がそのなかのいくつかだけです。でも、状況によって正しい表現が違うので、気をつけなければいけません。

第二問：成句（「おつかれさま」、「いただきます」、等）
このタイトルから少ししかわからないかもしれないけど、このグループは、ある状況で自然に言う表現を含めています。例えば、「お疲れ様」、「頂きます」、「ごちそうさまでした」、それに「お邪魔します」、「しつれいします」。最後の２つが会話に出なかったけど、同じような表現なので、述べるべきだと思いました。言った通り、英語ではそういう表現に当たる言葉がほとんどないけど、同じ状況で言える言葉はあります。例えば、「お疲れ様」→「Good job」、「ごちそうさまでした」→「That was delicious」。そう言っても、その表現を言う義務も必要も期待も習慣もないので、違う感じがします。

第三問：「遊びに行く」
これはちょっと大変でした。「今度・週末、遊びに行く？」の英語が多くあるし、場合によって当たります。英語で言おうとしたら、詳しくその「遊びに行く」という活動、行き先、予定を述べたほうがいいような気がします。別になんの予定もない場合、あるいは非特異的に言いたい場合には、「Want to hang out?」とか「Want to meet up/get together」は同じ感じがするので、正しい訳にもなれると思います。「Want to (go) play?」は、テニスなどの"play"に組み合わせる活動が文脈から察知できる以外に、ちょっと変に聞こえると思います。

第四問：お兄さん→「Elder Brother」か「Older Brother」？
両方も正しいです。でも、その言葉の感じといえば、違いがあります。お兄さんが一人しかないなら、「Older Brother」のほうが正しくなります。その一方、お兄さんだけでなく弟さんもいれば、「Elder Brother」が「弟とは別の兄弟という意味のお兄さん」という風に、区別を指すかもしれません。

第五問：「Take my shoes off」対「Take off my shoes」
英語では、「off」のような前置詞が普通に文末に出るまいという規範文法の規則があります。でも、ドイツ語の分離動詞のと違って、英語では句動詞は不思議で曖昧な文法規則があるものです。個人的な意見だけど、「I will take off my shoes」、「Let me take my shoes off」のほうが正しく見えます。つまり、「off」は普通に「shoes」の前にあるけど、その句動詞が助動詞、または 「let」のような「不定詞が目的語である」動詞のあとに現れれば、それは逆になります。

False Etymologies and Kanji: Day 1

I am excited to present my first installment of...

*drumroll*

...FE&K, also known as 無実語源と漢字 (if you want a translation, look at the title of this post ¯_(ツ)_/¯

This is going to be a semi-regular (read: whenever I think of any) feature with my legitimate mistaken etymologies and my humorous mistaken etymologies; namely, how I think a word I hear is written, or how I think a word should be written, along with the meaning that would come from that, the real writing, and the real meaning.


Let's begin:

事実ひらがな: The Word	無実書き方: False Writing	無実意味: False Meaning	事実書き方:True Writing	事実意味:True Meaning
みずから	水から	from water	自ら	(for) oneself
はなから	花から	from a flower	端から	from the beginning
てつや	鉄屋	iron store	徹夜	pulling an all-nighter
あいさつ/td>	愛殺	killing for love	あいさつ	greetings

If I think of any more, they are going to go into the next FE&K, so stay tuned. Don't touch that dial. No one knows what it does, but the last person who touched it was never seen again. In the sense that everyone else went blind.

New Blog: Mukankei-Nashi

So, I am starting a new blog.

...

I say "new" blog, despite the fact that I haven't posted to my humor/CS/math blog, From Cauchy-Schwartz to Groucho Marx, in over a year.

Nevertheless, as they say, 終わりよければすべてよし. Or, since this is intended to be an English-based bi-lingual Japanese blog, "All's well that ends well." Whatever that is supposed to mean in this context .

In case you haven't gathered already, this is going to be a humor/japanese blog, where I intend to post my experiences learning Japanese, my random musings, and occasionally my insane mnemonics.

お楽しみに \(^o^)/