"Your English is weird"

said a Japanese co-worker....to me !
Honestly, that sentence was a blast. Being told your English is weird....by a Japanese !
You have no idea.
For those who don't know, most Japanese people suck at foreign languages. They know Japanese and....that's it.
Even after spending like 10+ years at school learning it, they can't, for most of them, make a simple sentence correctly, not to mention the complex ones...
I know that we, the French, are famous for our lack of skills in English yet we are able to make sentences correctly and pronounce the words without chopping off most of the syllabes.
Because they have this hell of an accent, which is in my opinion dictated by the "alphabet" they use for foreign words : "katakana".

Here's an example: the word "elevator", the kind of word you see everywhere here, is written　エレベーター and is pronounced "erebeta" (because that's exactly how it's written in its katakana form).
The first time you hear it and without anyone telling you what it means, you spend like 2 hours looking for its meaning.

Anyway, that will teach me to make things easier for them to understand.
I was purposely speaking slowly, using simple words, making simple sentences and lowering myself to use their horrible accent when speaking English, up to the point that recently I found it quite difficult to use English as I used to in the "old days".
But no more. I will make sure they are flooded from now on and we will see who's the weirdest of the two.

PS : if you want to see English in its full nature, as seen by Japan (and more generally, asian countries) be sure to check http://www.engrish.com.

And here he is !

Yeeeaaaaahhh that's him ! Please applause ! *applauses*
As many of you were wondering, this blog is not dead. The lack of updates was only due to the lack of will from the blogger. What a lazy-bone !
Anyway, my last post was my coming back to France. Now is my coming back to Japan.
In fact, I've been back for one month already and will probably stay here for a much longer time, at least one full year.
My visa is currently under process and everything seems to be going smoothly.
So, what can I say ? This blog should be about video games and whatever topic about Japan I can think of.
Let's start with my work, which is if you don't remember or if it's your first time here, game developer.
We're still working on Way of the Samurai 3 for PS3. It's going pretty well I guess. I've been trying to get more and more involved in the project, and not just sitting around coding my own parts. That's quite a task, considering one important fact: I'm not fluent in Japanese (and far from it). That means a lot yet I'm doing my best (of course). I'm impressed at how much I've improved in fact, honestly. There's still a long way to go though. Wish me good luck.
As for the game itself, since many of you surely want to know more, I don't know if I can "leak" some information but I will ask about it and possibly, post few artworks.

Something related to my work but not entirely work itself, that's my being graduate. I've finally been through ALL the necessary steps required to get my diploma and I am proud to announce that I am finally done with studies. (*switching to a more general context*)
When I take a look back, that was quite a long way till where I stand right now; not only the 5 years of computer engineering but the 24 years behind me. I've spent most of my time at home at my parents' or at school studying. Now I'm living by myself at the other side of the planet, one of the furthest place on Earth from home.
Though I was mentally prepared a long time ago, to think that I ACTUALLY made it; I mean, as far as I remember, I've always wanted to work in the video games industry. After all these years of useful/useless studies (depending on your own opinion), 24 years of life spent living with your parents, a few years less living for your own dream and when you actually make it through...I wish everyone to live their dream :)

Well, that post was a small coming back so my ideas were a little widespread but next time, I promise to focus on more precise topics and subjects, as anyone would expect from a good blog (nearly all the cool blogs I read about here and there from time to time focus on precise topics in each of their posts, I'll try to do the same).

See you next time !