Short Japanese Culture Questions

Are we not above ground even when we are standing on the ground?

Only a flatlander can appreciate a floor that is precisely “on the ground”.

A mezzanine floor is an “and a half” floor, basically - it’s a raised floor built between two other floors (especially if said floors have high ceilings, such as in a warehouse). In my particular case, it was one-and-a-half (or two-and-a-half, for Leebo), though noone ever actually called it that.

At their most basic, they look something like this (though the one I worked in had walls and doors and separate rooms).

By, like, the thickness of the soles of your shoes?

Or an engineer. “It’s not the ground, but it’s near enough for practical purposes.”

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None of me is underground, that’s for sure.

Do British English speakers have another name for “above ground pool”? Like, is it “on the ground pool” if they imagine “above ground” means “completely off the ground”?

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My word, I ask one innocuous question and look what I’ve started!

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We don’t really have pools in the UK outside of public swimming baths, so we don’t really have a word for the different types.

Although I could imagine if I had to differentiate between a permanent, in the ground pool and a free standing ‘above ground one’. It would be a proper pool and not-proper pool. But I’m a commoner from the North East so what do I know about English?

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I already found out that I don’t speak English from another thread, so can’t help you much there :slight_smile:

That’s about all I know about them, but so far I only encountered them in hotels and the like (where the entrance hall is two storeys high but the rear part of the building is split into two horizontally) and there I think they were usually labeled something like “M” or so in the elevator. So I was curious to hear how they are numbered in the place you worked in.

Also thanks for sharing the picture! I’ve never seen an open floor like this before.

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I know this doesn’t pertain to the topic but I love your profile picture and would like to ask where is it from.

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Let’s just start labeling floors as how many meters they are above/below sea level.

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Where do we stand on the start of the current millennium? :grin:

  • 1 January, 2000
  • 1 January, 2001
0 voters

[Hee! One vote so far and it disagrees with Scientific American: When is the beginning of the new millennium? Some say it is January 1, 2000 and others January 1, 2001? Who is correct? | Scientific American]

I mean if you take a millennium to mean 1000 years there’s really only one answer. I wasn’t aware this was even a controversy.

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Depends on whether you start counting with year 0 or year 1, I’d say :wink:

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There is no controversy, just many people with a misconception. <laugh>

The current millennium started on 1/1/2001 because the first century in the Gregorian calendar ran from AD1 to AD100 by definition. There was no AD 0!

(see the Scientific American article linked in my original post. Note that Arthur C. Clarke also got it right.)

Both 0-based and 1-based are sensible; you just have to choose one standard or the other.

It can be tied to the the fact of whether you are counting discreet point, or counting the intervals between them instead.
Eg, what is a “floor” ? is it the geometrical plane (with zero depth) people walk on top of ? or is it the space between two such planes (or between floor and ceiling) ?

In first case, the logical counting will be -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, …
in the second case the logical counting will be -2, -1, 1, 2, 3,…

Years, months, weeks and days are spans; there is no “zero” counting for them.
Hours, minutes and seconds on the other hand are counted as “ticks”; it is “zero” until the first “tick” is reached.
It seems to be quite universal for those.
Floors however are in one category or the other depending on culture.

PS: what about 歳 BTW ?
I don’t know about Japanese; but I know some cultures consider a newborn is already a “1st year” baby; while others wait a full year before having a “1 year old” baby.

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Dates aren’t spans, though. Calendars provide a naming convention for discreet dates.

My poll wasn’t about a span of one millennium (1,000 years). The poll question was what date do we consider to be the first day of “the current millennium” (a name/identifier, not a span). The “current millennium” spans 1,000 years, from the date we call 1/1/2001 through and including the date we call 12/31/3000.

I suppose there could be (and probably are) calendars with a “year zero”. It’s just that the Gregorian calendar we use goes directly from BC1 to AD1 (there is no intervening year zero).

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Wow it’s been a week! What did I start? D:

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Random thought, since I’ve spend a lot of time playing board games during the Holidays, but what about Japan: are board games popular and what types of board games do Japanese people play?

To be a bit more specific: i’m not asking about shougi, go or chess or any professional board games here, I’m talking about Cluedo, Twister, and other family entertainment people do with their kids, friends and family.

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Fujii Shota Fever!

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I don’t have any personal experience with board games in Japan, but the Game of Life (or Bland-name knockoffs) seems to pop up in anime fairly frequently. Twister showed up in Bocchi the Rock as a once-off gag.

Though when you’re talking about anime, there’s After School Dice Club, which came out a few years ago, which is entirely about board games.

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かるた (card game) is popular around New Year‘s, not just 百人一首, but also varieties like 都道府県かるた, 国旗かるた, 食べ物かるた and whatnot.
The other thing coming to mind is 桃太郎電鉄. It’s a video game but it’s actually like a turn-based boardgame in the style of Mario Party / Monopoly. It’s also quite popular I think.

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