Loek van Kooten, MA

17h

The 乗 on your train ticket, 乗車券 (jōshaken), has nothing to do with trains: it is a man, 大, putting his foot on a wooden block, 木, to climb into a chariot three thousand years ago. Every time you pass the ticket gate, you are doing what a Chinese king did.

17h

For a king, that block was made of stone. The Zhou ritual code has a rule for it: 王行洗乘石, 'when the king rides out, someone washes the mounting stone.'

A Japanese gaming blog played the Prospice: Anomalous Logistics demo and ended its write-up with this line: 今回プレイしたデモ版にはすでに質の高い日本語訳が収録されていました 'The demo I played already includes a high-quality Japanese translation.' 🧵

Wishlists decide which games Steam shows people, so if you like it, wishlist it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4067370/ Localized into seven languages, with @gamesl10n.bsky.social (German) and @itranslategames.bsky.social (Russian) on the team.

The GOGJ playlog (Japanese): https://gogj.tokyo/2026/10/24/demo-prospice-anomalous-logistics-playlog/

The Japanese is by Rumi Tasaki. One of her choices: 'another helicopter in the dirt' became 案の定、またヘリが墜落して, 'and sure enough, another helicopter went down'. The 'sure enough' carries the speaker's sigh.

The game: off-road deliveries across a strange island, MudRunner meets SCP. Made by @whynotartdump.bsky.social and Code Wakers, published by @forkliftgames.bsky.social (hi @podopriguez.bsky.social). Free demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4590670/

Why that line matters. Japanese quality thinking has a word for it: 当たり前品質, 'taken-for-granted quality'. A flawless translation is expected, so nobody praises it. Praise is saved for 魅力的品質, 'attractive quality': the part that beats expectations. That is where this one landed.

23h

Beijing's top economic planners descended on Taiyuan on 16 October with a direct order: get Shanxi's idle coal mines working again. The stakes are high because China's biggest coal province saw production plummet by 31.3% in September compared to the previous year.

23h

Meanwhile, in Japan, a data leak at a Tokyo email firm has spiraled to 51.62 million records.

23h

The details on coal emerge from a single domestic source, the business daily Yicai. Everything changed on 22 May when a gas blast at a Shanxi mine forced the province to shut down operations for safety checks.

Your textbook files 扱う (atsukau) under 'to handle,' right next to parcels and power tools, so every Japanese teenager who storms off yelling 子供扱いしないで! is, word for word, filing a complaint about their handling: 'stop handling me as a child.'

Whatever noun you put in front is what you have just been promoted or demoted to, and only one of them has ever been requested on purpose.

Utamaro drew Kintarō, the strongest boy in Japanese folklore, pulling a face at himself in a hand mirror while his mother does her hair, and nobody who does that has ever won a 子供扱い argument.

That is the whole trick of 扱い (atsukai), handling or treatment.

Glue it to the back of any noun and you get 'treated as': 子供扱い (kodomo-atsukai), treated like a kid; 犯人扱い (hannin-atsukai), treated like the culprit; 邪魔者扱い (jamamono-atsukai), treated like a nuisance; 特別扱い (tokubetsu-atsukai), special treatment.

Beijing Daily just revived a ghost from 1943 to mark 25 October, eighty-one years after Japan's 1945 defeat ended five decades of rule over Taiwan. The target could be Tokyo's history, but it may just as easily be Washington's vocabulary.

Diplomat Wang Chonghui refused, stating: "If the wording really is this vague, the conference communiqué will be meaningless, and will lose its value entirely." The original wording stayed.

Everything hinges on one verb: 归还 guīhuán ("return", to a previous sovereign) versus 放弃 fàngqì ("give up"). As the paper explains, land Japan merely gives up becomes ownerless and its fate remains open, whereas land that is returned goes back to its prior owner.

The tension centers on the drafting of the Cairo Declaration. Early drafts stated that territories Japan had taken from China, including Taiwan, should be returned to China. A British amendment sought to change this to "must be renounced by Japan."

Japan just allowed a senior official from Chongryon, the pro-Pyongyang association of Koreans in Japan, to return home after a trip to North Korea that ended on 12 September, Asahi reported on 25 October. This revelation arrived exactly as Kim Jong Un crossed a new bridge into China.

On 4 September in Pyongyang, Kim shook each delegate's hand and asked them to raise "more capable talent." This marks only the second exemption this year, following a Chongryon-linked business federation head in April.

A government official told Asahi "there may have been shortcomings in procedures or in communication between ministries." Asahi describes this policy gap as a sogo, a mismatch. By framing it as procedural shortcomings, the ministry could be positioning itself to blame paperwork.

The man took over as Chongryon's education chief in May. Under Tokyo's own sanctions, members of its top committee are barred "in principle" from returning to Japan after visiting the North, and Asahi says his post is covered.

Unitree's shares surged 20% to 624 yuan on 23 October, potentially the largest single day gain for a share there, as a broader robot rally took hold after an American AI watercolor demo captured the world's attention.

Investors were captivated by a specific scene. On 22 October, founder Wang Xingxing shared a video showing OpenAI's new GPT-6 Astra model controlling one of his robots without any prior training. The robot painted, and it even rinsed its brush in a bowl of water whenever it changed colors.

Wang claimed that physical AI shows early signs of being "击穿" by general AI models. Because the term can mean an electrical breakdown or a barrier giving way, it may be harsher than the English "break through. "

Meanwhile, Japan's new imperial succession law takes effect today, and one Tokyo daily is demanding that the fight over a female empress finally end.

Halloween in Japan means 仮装 (kasō), dressing up in costume, yet the kanji at the heart of that word started out with nothing to wear at all: 装 was a bundle tied up in cloth for the road, and the most famous one in Chinese history was worth a thousand pieces of gold.

Look at the parts. At the bottom sits 衣 (koromo), a jacket with a collar and sleeves. On top sits 壮: a bed, 丬, and a warrior with a battle-ax, 士. A warrior leaping out of bed, ax in hand, should be the star of the show. Here bed and warrior mostly supply the sound.