LOL! That was great. That made my morning as I'm going to bed now in tears...Az..You're the best.

Glad to see you back!
Here (in France), we also say "chin-chin", but I thought the English was "cheers", not "ching"...

I wonder why "Jesus" is pronounced so differently. Do you think they got it fom the Portuguese pronounciation?
(I don't know that the first time I heard "Jesus" in English, I had no idea what it meant. My mother, although French, swears in English because she learned her first swear words in the US. For the longest time, when she sais "Jesus Christ", I was sure she was talking about cheese. For your information, je French pronounciation is "Jay-zu"(without the d sound and the beginning, and the "u" being the French sound English people can't seem to make))

Anyway, Nice to hear from you and to see fun stuff keep happening to you :)

Before this I thought you might have a chance at purgatory, Az... But now it's straight to the locker.

Thanks for making me laugh before you go, tho!

Ha, ha...I remember that movie where Steven Seagal was in an F117 connecting to a Boeing...and not showing up for the rest of a movie. I agree that he was great in that (for the rest of the movie).

Maybe the Japanese for "Jesus" didn't come from its English analogue? (Roman/Latin Iesus?)

HE LIVES

It wouldn't be nearly so hilarious if they didn't know just enough English to get them in trouble.

You now owe it to us to give the other side of the story. I'm sure you've misused Japanese sometime in a hilarious-to-native-speaker situation. Maybe someone you know as well.

OMG!!! That was hilarious! "Jesus Gel, Now Sold All Over The American South!" I am so telling this to my southern baptist bible thumping mother! LMAO!! Keep the great tales coming Az!

Welcome back Az... Jesus gel for the win! Cracking up here as usual :p

"...I realize the potential for gut-busting kancho-
related humor here, but I just can't bring myself to
do it."

OK, then *I* will!

"So *that's* what Watson's up to these days!"

When you get to Hell, look me up. :)

I'm so glad you're back, Az. You've been missed around my house. It's kind of sad when my husband comes home and asks, "Az update today?" and my answer is "Well, not as of thirty minutes ago but lemme go check again!"

And some of us lame Americans still like Steven Seagal. OK, he makes totally crappy movies but I still love to watch 'em. Then again, I like to watch bad porn so I have an excuse to throw popcorn at the TV.

Man it's been a while glad to see you're back you should check your email Az. When are you getting married again?

Hahahahaha, funny shit. People think I'm retarded sitting here because I'm laughing in the middle of my college's computer lab.. oh well.

Az, I'm so glad that you are going to marry that woman. I pray that the sitcom your life is becoming continues to last.

Oh. My. God.

I just can't even begin to describe how hard I've been laughing at this. I had to physically look away from the screen a few times to keep from completely losing my shit and STILL failed.

*falls out of the chair, again*

Just ... wow ... that's awesome.

You have to stop calling her your girlfriend and start calling her your fiancée now.

OMG, that was so great. Jesus Gel. And the straight tone in which I read what they're saying... it's beautiful. ROFL!

i dont get it

Man, sounds like Japan is a fucking blast! I'm stoked about applying this year for JET :D

By the way, where do you live now and how did you/why did you get a job at that company you're at now? Do you still teach too?

ps - I've been told that my nick (UchuujinKaru) means Alien Hunter (since in English I use AlienHunt as my handle). Does that sound right?

HAHA! You and your girlfriend have the greatest conversations!!

Ah good to have a new editorial. But that's not what I'm here to say...

How in the world do most of your readers make comments? Each time I've come to this page (comments), if the title of the editorial is too long the URL to this page is truncated! I have to type the URL manually in. While that's fine for me, I'm surprised there are so many other people taht manage to get in this page somehow.

Man, reading these "darndest things" always makes me wonder what sort of darndest things are going to happen when I do my semester of study abroad in Kyoto in a couple of years...
Do you know if Japanese college students are as crazy as the young'ns and the business workers? Seriously, I'm beginning to doubt my sanity for wanting to do this :D
Oh well. At least I have a bit of warning beforehand, in the form of great entertainment!
PS, I didn't get a chance to post on the last update, but congrats on the engagement!

hehe this is hilarious

That was good. I just wonder how this is going to work when she finally meets your parents. I'd get on that English teaching really quick, unless you want her telling your father to fuck her harder with his big black cock.

Shouldn't you have written "my fiance" instead of "my girlfriend". Dude, one girl, rest of your life, musn't have hit you yet.

lol nice!
welcome back!
I was wondering when an update was coming

also, as a question from one brotha planning to visit japan...
...how do you get your haircut there?
i've always been curious about that...

(Az's Note: Simple answer - I don't.

I brought my own clippers and learned to do it myself. Although, I haven't cut my hair in almost a year now.)

My chair has a missing wheel on one of its legs (time can do that to old things), so it can go out of balance and tilt. If I'm not careful, the leg can give away completely and make the chair tip over with me in it.

Reading this editorial made this certain situation happen, somewhere around the "jizz/Jesus" part. I'd say these stories are some of your funniest. XD

Thank you for the post. That was very hilarious!

The reason Jesus is pronounced so differently is because they're taking it from Greek. The English version has a long history of mangling.

If you were to get it directly from Hebrew/Aramaic, you'd end up with Yeshua, which isn't so different than the modern name Joshua (they're very close).

Instead, we first had it in Greek (Iesu), then Latin (have to add 'us' to the end because it's a man's name) Iesus. Then the letter J was invented and split off from I. That's right, the letter J didn't exist until much later. So we end up with Jesus. The whole process isn't so different from how you have to butcher words to transliterate them into kana; after you have to go through enough languages, you might as well be playing telephone.

I don't know what route the Japanese got the name of Jesus, but it probably wasn't from English. And [ye][shi][chisai-yu][a] would've been a perfectly good way to get it from Hebrew, so no idea why they didn't do that, though you might be right that Iesu is both rather close and a famous name.

Of course, this leads me to my final theory. Az's fiance must have learned Jesus not as a name but as an ephitet.

In other words, repent now, man! If you get your priest to plea bargain for you, maybe you can get a few years off purgatory for "time served" in those kancho-happy schoolrooms. It sure beats eternity with no parole!

You know that scene in one of the Aliens movies, where the big Alien opens its mouth, and a smaller Alien comes out? That's approximately how my _________ felt at that precise moment.

I'm applying this everywhere possible. Lol...

Well, about the way they pronounced "Jesus" as "Yesu", I think that's how they pronounce other names as well like "Yoshua" for "Joshua" or "Yosefu" for "Joseph". I dunno, maybe such pronunciation is limited to biblical names?

I think Steven Seagal is cool. Maybe because he is not as flashy as other popular actors, giving him a "humble" impression, at least to me (can't blame you if you think I have bad taste. I seldom watch movies anyway).

As for your GF hearing jizz as "Jesus", maybe its because there's a slang term for "Jesus" (as in "sh*t" or "damn") called "jeez". So maybe your GF has talent for understanding English, that it would easy for you to teach her (in time).

plz write more, do you have any idea how many
decent blogs are on the internet?
There is this and there is Maddox and
that
is
all.
I saw that there is some spin-off of maddox, but
I couldn't enjoy reading it, the whole time I
could only think "hard out copy cat phoney fake"
... :(
ANYWAY, if you can't give us links to other
things to read, then keep writing, please?

Listen to Angels and Airwaves because they're awesome. Oh, and I haven't had my hair cut in nearly 2 years now. But I'm a white dude with curly brown hair that drops in huge curls that are almost reminiscent of dreads. It's pretty cool. Good to see a new update bro. Keep safe and sound.

ahahahaah the jezuuuuz one was priceless

I always laugh out loud when reading your posts. I wish you'd post more.

Haha, I remember when I made a comment in another post quite a while ago saying how you made me laugh so hard that I accidentally spit out the Cheerios I was eating onto my keyboard........well this time it was Alphabets. Yeah, lesson learned.

Anyways, awesome editorial, glad to see a new update at all. That whole Jesus jizz part was absolutely hysterical.

I just have to know, Az, was the following story posted by you? It was an anonymous comment to a completely different site.

_____________________________

I'm a frequent flyer, and fly around the world. By far, and I really mean by a far far way, the U.S. has the WORST experience you can ever have in an airport, and it's not just the security. I've been stuck in Dhaka Bangladesh without being told what was going on, and didn't feel as screwed as I sometimes feel in the U.S. (Full disclosure, I'm an American living in Japan, I might think twice about pulling off the same thing in the U.S. I did this in Japan.)

Long story short, I got really fed up with the way they handled my carry on, and insist on going through my personal belongings. I fly out of a local airport, and I KNOW that they know me (they see me once a week) and I know them. One day when I had time to spare, I went to the airport early on, and had sweet revenge. I had a laptop in my carry on... along with 3 rather vigorous vibrators, rigged to turn on at full speed when they opened the bag. Inside the bag I also had a homosexual porno magazine, along with a few tubes of personal lubricant, condoms, and latex gloves. Apparently dildo vibrators do not show up in that exact shape on the X-Ray machine, but the motors, wires and controllers, along with the batteries, sure do.

Security: "Can we open your bag?"
Me: "As if I have an option?"
Security: "Sir, this is security. We must open your bag for security purposes."
Me: "Like I said, I don't have a choice now do I. Just make sure you put it all back in place."

The following expression of the officer, along with his mixed reactions as to what to do next, were pure Kodak moments. I really, really would have paid good money to get a copy of the surveillance camera video!! He first tried to close it and just return it to me, then he realized that he better check it out since he was the one that said it had to be done. I think he took about 0.8 seconds of a "thorough" inspection, then closed the bag. However, that wouldn't turn the dildos off, and they were still buzzing away, quite audibly. I gave him the "turn them off. All of them." look, and he fumbled again attempting to get all 3 turned off. Next Monday I fly out again. I can't wait to see what they'll do this time.
_____________________________

Someone posted right after that the probable answer to what they'll do this time, too: ask you for a date :-)

Airforce One

Harrison Ford says "Get the hell off my plane"

But sadly at the wrong moment.

Maybe a fan directors cut will fix that one day.

you do realize everybody is now going to refresh enpornium page until an add of an asian girl taking it in the ass turns up ?

Jesus Gel... is that anything like Jesus Juice? ;)

Now you're giving me ideas for gag gifts for some of my southern Bible-thumping colleagues, I can just imagine some kind of gift basket with a line of various "Jesus" products: Jesus Gel, Jesus Juice, Cream of Jesus soup... the list can go on and on.

Ok, I think I've laughed enough to wake up my loudly snoring bf in the next room. Think I'm going to go back to studying and be a good student.

Keep up those great stories Az, they really give me that much needed dose of laughter :)

Asked by Kat: How in the world do most of your readers make comments? Each time I've come to this page (comments), if the title of the editorial is too long the URL to this page is truncated! I have to type the URL manually in. While that's fine for me, I'm surprised there are so many other people taht manage to get in this page somehow.

Kat- On the uppper right side of your screen where it says "Recent Entries", if you click on the entry from there it allows you leave comments without a hassle.

did you take the 1-kyuu again?

Az.. Get out of japan now!!!
Grab the fiancee and get yer ass home now!

Another brutha done messed with the child of another mutha and the japanese are ticked!

Or start wearing a "I'm an oreo" shirt and just explain in really good japanese "I'm white inside"

Damn man .. I hope you don't get flack for that shit I know the japanese are racist and you being a big bracku dude you might get more attention than usual.

Good luck bro.

Curtis 'Caged Penguin' Cage

I thought the movie was "Executive Decision" rather than "Air Force One." I'm pretty sure, 'cause I remember my brother and I watching it at some crappy $2 theatre when we were in the jr. high, and we both cheered when Seagal bit it after 10 minutes. I was worried that somehow, someway, he'd live through it, perhaps by grabbing the tail fin of the plane, punch a hole through the back, and kill everyone on board (with his acting).

John is exactly right: it's the English version of the name "Jesus" that's weird and mangled.

The J comes from medieval European pronunciation shifts, in exactly the same way as the J on Joshua. Several Latin letters had significant pronunciation shifts in the middle ages. The whole U/V/W thing is probably the most infamous, and accounts for why you see "Pvblic Library" over the doors on Carnegie-sponsored buildings, among other things. J also originally stood for a different sound, probably a glide, not altogether dissimilar from consonantal Y. (The current English pronunciation for J came along later and is actually a blend.)

The final s, as has been pointed out, is an artifact of the Latin noun case system. Incidentally, Joshua comes to English from the same Hebrew name as Jesus, via a different path. Jesus comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name; Joshua comes from the Latin transliteration of the Hebrew name, without going through Greek.

If I had to guess where the Japanese version came from, I'd say probably from the Greek, without going through Latin, but there might have been another Eastern language in there after the Greek, like Chinese for instance, I don't know.

If you leave out all the intermediate languages and go straight from Hebrew to English you would technically get something along the lines of Yehoshu'a, though that usually gets simplified to Yeshua. (Hebrew has something important in common with Japanese: the writing system, although phonetic, is not freeform like the Latin/English alphabet. You're locked into a pattern where every syllable has one consonant followed by one vowel, though in some cases the vowel may be silent. All letters are consonants. The technical term for this is "abjad". The vowels, when they're written at all, are mere diacritical marks.) The last consonant in this name, 'ayin, is a gutteral that's considered unpronounceable in most of the Indo-European world. I've represented it with an apostrophe for lack of a better option.

From "Yehoshu'a" it should be *relatively* easy to see where Joshua comes from, but for Jesus we have to look at Greek. Greek doesn't support H except at the beginning of words, so that's gone. I and Y are the same letter (iota, pronounced, roughly, "yota"). The gutteral 'ayin is also not available, so that gets dropped too, and the diacritical marks on it, which includes the vowel. Thus you get Iesu, three syllables, "Eee-aye-sue". Force that into classical Latin and roll forward a few centuries and you end up with Jesus.

I'm about 99% sure that the Japanese get Ii-eh-su from the Latin, due to the very Roman Catholic version of Christianity that got (nearly) stomped out when the Shogun closed Japan.

(To be fair, the foreigners were a helluva disturbing influence.)

There's an island off the western coast where a bunch of Japanese Christian exiles were sent in the 16th century, and a strange version of their beliefs has continued to exist all the way down to present day, though it's apparently on the edge of dying out due to city-migration of the young. :)

Clarification:
The Japanese pronunciate Jesus in a very german way. May have something to do with them cooperating with the nazis in WWII. The adopted some stuff from their culture and language.

Greetz
Minstrel