The other day I was talking with my wife and daughter about an article I'd seen, which said the film Space Pocahontas Avatar had earned an unprecedented 2 billion dollars in ticket sales. "How much money is that?" my daughter asked, so I tried to tell her...then fell flat on my face. Numbers are notoriously difficult to work with in Japanese, since instead of the Arabic system that's based on the unit 1,000 they use the Chinese system which uses 10,000 (mahn) as a base unit, followed by oku which has a value of 100 million. Numbers themselves are exactly the same, of course, and a Japanese math book would have the same written formulas that a Western one would; it's the act of verbally expressing large numbers that's such a challenge. In the end, it took the three of us several minutes of intense discussion to figure how to express the number $2,000,000,000 properly in Japanese yen.
Which works better for you? I think I like the Disney-animated one best.
9 comments:
Thats interesting! Also i think i agree with you on the Pocahontas thing there. So has Avatar been a big deal over in Japan?
Big I guess, but not as much. Mostly just overflow hype from the U.S. A lot of theatres are showing it in 2D, how lame is that?
2D Avatar sounds really lame. I've noticed that, at least in Tokyo, theaters are somewhat antiquated, and small. Makes you really appreciate the stadium seating, digital projectors, and giant screens.
Speaking of large sums of money... One of my classmate's brother is going on a trip to Japan through Boy Scouts. I asked his brother how much it costs and he told me that the Japanese government pays for most of it! I have to ask you, Peter. Do you know if that's true? It made me mad because Japan needs to use their money for their own country not on us!
I have heard the comparison to Pocahontas but I think Avatar is better described as a cross between Fern Gully and Terminator.
Interesting. There are a lot of programs the government spends to do things like support students from China and elsewhere to come to Japan and study, and they're increasing it lately. I guess "come to Japan, see that's pretty clean and nice and stay here" is one approach to the birth rate issue.
Amber, that's funny. It was a good movie of course, I enjoyed it both times I saw it. Really it's closer to a re-make of his previous movies Titanic+Aliens than other, external films.
I haven't seen "Avatar" and I have absolutely no desire to see it. The story reminded me of a futuristic "Dances with Wolves", but "Pocahontas" is a good one too.
I think James Cameron is a douche bag, excuse my french lol.
Actually, I realized earlier that it was basically Princess Mononoke in space, but without the depth.
If Cameron weren't swimming in his piles of money right now your opinion might matter to him AdrianD. But it doesn't so kindly shut up.
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