{"id":31517,"date":"2013-08-19T21:18:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T01:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=31517"},"modified":"2013-08-19T21:31:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T01:31:50","slug":"wit-life-246-of-employment-and-emoji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2013\/08\/19\/wit-life-246-of-employment-and-emoji\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #246: Of employment and emoji"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es some of the interesting tidbits and <\/strong><\/em>t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends along with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There were two interesting Japan-related articles in the NYT recently, about divergent topics that both reflect the country’s modernization.\u00a0 The first<\/a> discusses Japan’s historical lifetime employment system, and how this is no longer sustainable in today’s economy, even at a traditional company like Sony.\u00a0 So in typical Japanese style, instead of addressing the problem it is being worked around.\u00a0 These unneeded workers are being placed in \u8ffd\u3044\u51fa\u3057\u90e8\u5c4b (oidashibeya<\/em>) or “chasing-out rooms,” where there is no work to do and they must fight their boredom, making it a test of wills.\u00a0 When the economy was faltering in the 1990’s, a similar concept of \u7a93\u969b\u65cf (madogiwazoku) or “window seat tribe” emerged, as the unnecessary workers who couldn’t be downsized were left with nothing to do but stare out the window.\u00a0 As corporations that want to remain profitable are increasingly relying on temporary workers, this has the potential to bring about a sea change in Japanese business practices over time.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The first line of “Emoji Dick,” the story of Moby Dick told entirely in emoji.<\/p><\/div>\n

The second article<\/a> discusses how Japanese emoji have been adopted here in the States, though their interpretation is sometimes different than the original intended meaning.\u00a0 It starts with a humorous anecdote about an American couple in a long distance relationship, who initially have some misunderstandings due to emoji misuse.\u00a0 I was amused to find out about the existence of \u201cEmoji Dick<\/a>,\u201d a recreation of the Herman Melville\u2019s classic novel \u201cMoby Dick\u201d told entirely in emoji.\u00a0 Happy reading!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03).\u00a0 She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. There were two interesting Japan-related articles in the NYT recently, about divergent topics that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-8cl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31517"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31528,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31517\/revisions\/31528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}