Japanese Civilization

#japaneseculture #japanesehistory #ancientcivilizations #ancientworld #worldhistory #LearnHistory #historylovers #InformativeContent #EducationalGraphics #historicaltexts #knowledgesharing #JustKnowledge

I bought some new watercolour paints. They come in a beautiful cardbord box, lime green embossed in gold with the characters 顔彩耽美. On the inside of the lid is a colour card in Japanese with blank squares, they idea is that you paint it in yourself.

I am always interested in the origin of words, and particularly for colours. One of the colours in the box is called "horizon blue". But in Japanese it is called 勿忘草 "wasurenagusa". This translates as "forget-me-not" and is in fact a direct Japanese translation of the English name of the flower. In the Meiji era (1868-1912), horticulturists imported a variant (Alpine forget-me-not, myosotis alpestris) into the country for use in European-style gardens and the name dates from then.

The forget-me-not (myosotis sylvatica) is native to Japan but only in the northern region, which used to be called Ezo. The Ezo, also known as Emishi or Ebisu and were the non-Yamato peoples in northern Japan. The character Ashitaka in the Miyazaki anime Princess Mononoke is Emishi.

The flower is called 蝦夷紫 "ezomurasaki" meaning "Ezo purple". The "purple" is not because of the colour of the flowers but because a purple dye can me made from the roots of the plant.

#Japanese #JapaneseCulture

Cool posters from Hifana on this page. #hifana #poster #hiphop #japaneseCulture

https://spincoaster.com/news/hifana-share-new-song-tejime-short-ver

Angelic Layer Episode 15

I’ve already watched this series plenty of times, so there will be no surprises for me, but this will be my first time reviewing the whole series episode by episode. And I’m sure there will be some fine details that I’ve forgotten or never noticed in the first place. It has been a few years since I’ve seen this anime, so maybe it will be a little different from what I remember.

A quick run down of the series. This is a slightly futuristic anime by Clamp, the creators of Card Captor Sakura, XXXHolic, and Magic Knight Ray Earth. The story begins with a country bumpkin moving to the big city to go to middle school. The main character sees a robot fight on TV and immediately becomes a fan and buys her own robot to join the battle competitions too. So, this is a fighting robot anime like Metabots or Gundam Build Fighters, only with a Clamp flare.

Last Time on Angelic Layer

We get a back story of Sai. The episode begins with Sai and Katie first meeting in middle school. Sai is sitting under the cherry blossoms and Katie realizes that Sai is crying. It ends up that Sai has a little sister in the hospital and it hints that she might be dead in the present. After that, back at the tournament, Sai faces off with Hatoko. The two veteran fighters size each other up, and in a burst of speed they strike at the same time. After the computers add up the data, Sai’s Angle Shirahime is the winner! Hatoko is very up set after this and Misaki, like a great friend is there to comfort her.

Episode 15

In this episode Misaki’s opponent is Sai! We start off the story with a little more background on Sai’s past, and it’s just as sad as what earlier episodes hinted at. Her little sister Ren was gravely ill and at the hospital when, she asked Sai to help her make a doll for Angelic Layer. Ren designed the costume and even decided how she wanted the stats of the Angel to be, but she couldn’t think of a good name. Sai suggested Shirahime for the name, because she kept having a worrying dream of her little sister sleeping in snow. It wasn’t much after that Ren’s health took a turn for the worse and she didn’t recover. So, now Sai fights with the Angel they made together in memory of Ren.

In the next scene we swing right into the battle and the mystery of what is Hikaru’s big weakness that Sai warned Misaki about earlier. The terrain for this battle will be the beach. Everything seems to be going okay for Hikaru at first, she zips around and lands plenty of blows, but Misaki notices all the hits don’t seem to be doing anything to Shirahime. Misaki decided to close in for a one hit knock out and pulls out Rolling Thunder, but it doesn’t do anything. Shirahime loses a few hit points, but that’s it! She doesn’t get knocked out of the ring like all the other fights had been.

The battle continues and things look worse and worse for Hikaru. Finally Misaki realizes that Hikaru is just too light. Shirahima is a big, tall, curvy girl that sinks down into the sand, and Hikaru is a skinny little feather weight, so the sand of the beach makes it even harder to knock Shirahime over. Thinking on her feet, Misaki gets Hikaru over onto the shore rocks and ends up vaulting Shirahime into the water where Hikaru has the advantage, after that the fight was over in just a couple hits.

I kind of think the fight was over too soon. It felt like Shirahime, the unstoppable “Ice Machine” should have put up more of a fight in the water, even if she was at a disadvantage. I totally would have liked to seen this go into a tie breaker match or something. And I did feel a little bad for Sai when she lost.