Domo Obrigado, Rio. Image: Reuters/Yahoo www.rappler.com/technology/social-media/143810-viral-rio-2016-closing-shinzo-abe-super-marioThe 2016 Olympics wrapped last weekend, and of course, the show couldn’t be over without first shooting off a whole hell of a lot of fireworks and getting a lot of mileage out of that massive video display that had been installed on the floor of the Maracaná Stadium.
As is tradition at the Olympics, the closing also paid a hefty tribute to the next host city, Tokyo. Tokyo’s new mayor (technically a governor) Yuriko Koike, the city’s first female leader, was on stage along with Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes. But Koike wasn’t the highest ranking Japanese politician to attend the event – that honor went to prime minister Shinzo Abe, who made his entrance out of a giant green pipe in the center of the stadium, dressed as Mario from the Super Mario Brothers. But instead of bursting in with a chipper “It’s-a-me, Shinzo!”, Abe looked remarkably underwhelmed as he entered, almost saddened, with a look on his face that seemed to say that the only reason he had bothered with the pipe and Mario getup was to rack up shares on social media (by the way, mission accomplished). Perhaps he would have felt a bit peppier if he had grabbed a giant red mushroom before taking the stage. But for language nerds like myself, the highlight of the whole ordeal was right before Abe’s Mario moment, when the massive Maracaná display lit up with a message thanking its attendees. But in honor of both Rio and Tokyo, that message was put into both Portuguese and Japanese: “Obrigado”, “Arigato”. And in doing so, it perhaps prompted viewers to ask a question that has long perplexed many Japano-Brazilian polyglots: does the word “arigato” derive from “obrigado”? The short answer is that no, it doesn't. Though this theory has been bandied about by many would-be linguistic historians, it has been dismissed pretty decisively: see this link, or this link if you’re not yet convinced. Nevertheless, the idea that “arigato” is some distant cousin of “obrigado” is not as far fetched as you might think. The connection between Portuguese and Japanese actually goes way back, long before Japan had become the land of Mario and Murakami, to the time when Portuguese explorers dropped anchor off the shores of Shogun-dominated Japan. Wikipedia has a long list of Japanese words stemming from Portuguese; particularly notable are words like “irmao”, which means simply “brother” in Portuguese, but thanks to an influx of missionaries from Portugal, became “iruman” in Japanese, referring to a “missionary next in line to become a priest”. Presumably, Portuguese missionaries in Japan would call each other “irmao”; curious Japanese onlookers, who already had a word for “brother” but lacked a good word for a missionary in that very specific situation, eagerly adopted it into their own mother tongue. This is also good news for English speakers, since several of the words the Japanese adopted from Portuguese are directly related to their English equivalents. The word “alcohol”, for instance, is “alcool” in Portuguese and “arukoru” in Japanese. Nice to know for anyone looking to take in a swig of sake. The Olympics may be coming to a close, but anyone around the world curious about the origins of “arigato” and “obrigado” can be thankful to the event for shining a light on this frequently misunderstood linguistic coincidence. That's it for our special on language-related Olympics goings-on, but you can check out our earlier pieces, Part 1 on the history of "The Girl From Ipanema", and Part 2 on how bad behavior at the Olympics knows no language barrier. Check them out! "Nuclear Energy Is the Energy of a Bright Future": Haunting Photos from Fukushima's Exclusion Zone10/15/2015
"Nuclear Energy is the Energy of a Bright Future". Street sign in Futaba, Fukushima, Japan. All photos in this article by Arkadiusz Podniesinski, www. podniesinski.pl "Nuclear Energy is the Energy of a Bright Future". During the heyday of the Fukushima nuclear power plants, this street sign may have made sense. But after the devastating nuclear accident that rendered the area virtually uninhabitable, the irony of the sign could not be more palpable, or more cruel.
Located on a strip of coastline in Japan's Fukushima prefecture, roughly 150 miles north of Tokyo, the two nuclear power plants once stood as shining pillars of modernity and prosperity amid their more traditional, rural surroundings. The plants were located near the ocean to have access to ample supplies of water for cooling purposes - a common practice for nuclear power plants worldwide. But the plants' costal location would prove to be their achilles heel. In 2011, a devastating earthquake and the tsunami that followed damaged the plants and unleashed destructive and potentially deadly nuclear radiation on many of the nearby towns. In response, the Japanese government created an "exclusionary zone" around many of the cities, restricting locals' access to the cities and in some cases prohibiting it entirely. The exclusionary zone has created a virtual limbo for many of the area's residents. Though many still maintain property rights within the area, they can't make use of their property. And given the alarmingly elevated levels of radiation that remain, many would prefer not to. Last month, Polish photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski, known for his numerous photo essays of nuclear destruction in the Russian city of Chernobyl, was granted access to the exclusionary zone. He documented his experience in photos and in words, which were picked up by other websites and quickly went viral. We're going to run some of the photos here, the full set is definitely worth checking out. Podniesinski says that, after entering the zone, the first thing he was struck by were the rows and rows of trash bags filled with nuclear contaminated dirt. An aerial photo reveals these sacks filling up farm fields. In general, the area remains very rural; even before the nuclear plants' promise of a bright future was tragically broken back in 2011, many in the area preferred to stick to their agrarian roots. And some continued to stick to those roots even after the exclusionary zone was put in place. On his trip, Podniesinski met with Naoto Matsumura, a local farmer who still sneaks back in to care for cows and ostriches left stranded in the area. Unfortunately, Matsumura's efforts aren't enough; some abandoned cows in the area are becoming sick from the radiation, developing white spots on their coats. |
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