High (or Low) Technology; Blurring Naked Man

I saw "Naked and Afraid" on Discovery channel, which is adventuring TV program. People who are completely naked try to survive in a jungle in Colombia with only one civilized tool, for example a knife, being given to each participant.

They took off their clothing and left all their belongings behind when they entered the jungle. 

I was astonished by their survival skills. It freaked me out to imagine crawling nakedly in a bush that could have allergen inducing leaves or poisonous insects.

However, there's one more thing that surprised me. 

Due to the graphic nature of this program, it cannot be broadcasted without censoring graphic parts of the participants body. It amazed me how advanced their censoringship is.

As far as I know, this kind of censoring is very simple, a blur is put onto a specific part of the image.

Surprisingly, in the program, only the part of participant's body is censored, occasionally along with an object surrounding their body, such as branches or leaves. Their hands are always left uncensored.

I'm really curios how they process shadings on footage. It's easy to do that for a picture, but I'm not sure for a video.

Do they censor every single slide of the video?

Maybe there is software that processes it automatically?

It would likely be the latter one. It does seem to be manual operation, since some scenes have very rough blurs rather than smooth ones. 

It's unlikely that they would manually do it, but I cannot find another probable explanation.

Maybe it relies on outsourcing overseas.

Thanks to Laurel's revision.

Candylipz: Way to Make Your Lips Bigger

Candylipz.

It looks questionable but the development of these kind of beauty instruments never ends.

A lady put a squishy rubber apple-like stuff on her lip, and squashed it to absorb it into her lips. Afterwaiting a minute, voila! Her lips became plump and more attractive.

I found this interesting product, Candylipz, by chance.

I watched a demo video on Instagram and first thought "what's the difference?" but maybe it's just because I'm a guy who is not particular about lips. I could tell the difference by comparing between before and after. 

The application is simple and easy. I have no idea how popular it is, but it seems it was a hit in 2015. I didn't see it in Canada last year, though.

The appearance is neat enough to sell (perhaps) but I'm guessing it will be hard for it to become a big hit in Japan due to the difference in the sense of beauty in regards to lips.

It's interesting that this simple product is created after people invented lip injection to plump. It should be the opposite but I know sometimes it's tougher to create simple stuff. The simpler you make a product, the tougher it is to invent.

According to the official web page, lips will stay plumped for up to 2 hours. Users might use before going out...but how do they do after 2 hours?

Is her lip going to shrink while hanging out?

Anyway, I was somewhat impressed that there is still possibility to develop such a simple product.

Thanks to Dillon and CthuluFett's correction.

Hey guys, Do you polish rice?

I'll write about rice again, but this time the topic is more about rice itself.
Yesterday, I did rice polishing.
It occurred to me later that I didn't know whether or not this procedure existed abroad. Actually, I'm not sure what do they do about rice in other area of Japan, not to mention abroad.
In which condition do you buy rice, polished or unpolished? Furthermore, do people even know if rice needs polishing before you wash and cook it?
Oh no, doubts beget more doubts, I'm way too skeptical.
I know rice is everywhere and unpolished rice is not edible, so, for this reason, people polish rice everywhere. I shall not doubt.

Anyway, I went to a rice polishing facility with 30kg of rice. There are dozens of facilities like this in rural towns.

When you pour unpolished rice into a hopper and insert coins in the slot, rice is then sucked into a machine and polished automatically. After waiting several minutes, polished white rice comes from an outlet port. Then you have to bring 30kg of rice back home. 

It's laborious.

What is interesting is that you may not be able to find that such a normal thing exists, or doesn't exist, if you live in a different region. For example I couldn't imagine that people didn't have to polish rice.

Thanks to Dylan and Brian's correction.

You’ll succeed on the third attempt

There are only two ways to plug in, true or false.

But you'll succeed on the third attempt.

                                                  ―――――USB

Don't give up until your third try.

Recently I had to make a graduation speech in front of students at my ESL school's graduation ceremony.

At the end of the speech, I wanted to prepare something smart and funny but I was reluctant to cite others' aphorism so I decided to coin my own proverb-like saying.

Later on, when I was about to give it up before long and I was browsing 9GAG, I found something that hit the spot. Eureka!

That was the joke about USB. Then I added some encouraging words and remade it to pretend to be a real saying like above. I was supposed to be ready to say it.

Finally, when it came to mentioning the fake proverb in my graduation speech, I don't know whose fault it was, there was no laughter. They were so silent that I could hear their nods. It looked like that my sham saying was taken as a real maxim.

I really wondered whether I should let it pass as I pretended not to notice. However, I overcame the shame and tried to repeat it and explain it.

(I was seriously relieved that I didn't have to implement my aphorism, the third attempt.)

Luckily, some people laughed but if no one had laughed with even repetition, I wouldn't have gotten over the psychological shock.

Thanks to ReneeCole and CthuluFett’s revision.

Trouble is your business; Shazam for something else

What is troublesome for some is someone else's bread and butter. But that will make our life butter better.
Sometimes people need to know what fonts is used on a book, poster, or web page. It's not necessary for me but I feel it would certainly be fun if I could recognize what the font is. Of course it's not only fun, but efficient for designers, adpeople and the like.
That kind of service, like font-version of Shazam would probably be enjoyable.
I think it probably exists already, but I only found a service for the Roman Alphabet, no Japanese version. Here it is.

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator

If someone makes a portal for fonts that enables customers to search and get them, it would be beneficial for both the business and its customers. Maybe the needs are too specific so it's not worth the effort to make a font pattern recognition system.

Japanese letters are far more intricate than the Roman Alphabet but I hope that service will be introduced in Japan for the sake of some people.

In Canada...
My friend's jaw dropped when I said I have memorized about 3 thousand sorts of letters, Kanji. We were drunk, so we couldn't help laughing after saying "3000 seems too many, but you don't have to memorize such a number. You can read a newspaper if you know 1000 of them. 1000 is enough."
We had a laughing fit for "1000 is enough".
Compared to Alphabet, it's totally insane! Please reduce it to 26!

Reading and writing are far harder than speaking and listening Japanese.
Due to the enormous numbers of Kanji, searching for Kanji themselves is quite difficult for people who don't have knowledge of radicals or the numbers of strokes, not to mention how to read it. It would be useful if there was a Kanji-version of Shazam.

Oops there already is.

https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/kanji-scan/id418823916

Kanji-scan

Rikai-chan 

Thanks to CthuluFett and Raw64life's correction.

Memento Mori; I will die (an artwork)

I will die. Don't worry about me, it's not what I said.

People from different countries, of different ages and sex say "I will die(私は死にます)" one after another in the video installation on the wall.

I saw the installation art in Osaka national museum several years ago.
The artist asked people to say "I will die" and recorded how they were saying it.
The people uniformly had confused facial expressions and it seemed they didn't know how to intonate the words.

I will die, obviously.
Everyone knows death is inevitable for all.

The contemporary artwork forces us to face the fact which is concealed or that we avoid inadvertently thinking about it in daily life. We go through our day without thinking that we are going to die.
Indeed, this motif has been expressed repeatedly in art history such as so called Memento Mori, Danse Macabre in Europe, Rikudo-e, and Kusou-zu in Japan.
Although we know we will die, there is a difference between our notions of death. In other words, death of someone else, and death of one's self is like the difference between seeing thunder and being struck by thunder.
That difference was clarified in the art by the perplexity of people when they talk about death with the subject, I.
Death doesn't exist in our daily life so it sound truly awkward if it comes up there.

The artwork just showed their perplexity and put into the notion of death in a daily life but didn't criticize whether it is good or bad.
It's free what you might feel.
The audience might think about what is important is in life, or that everything is vanity, or now is the time to drink. I no longer remember what I thought at that time.

One more interesting thing.
In the video, only a baby didn't say anything. Only babies don't know we will die. Thus, an innocent baby sometimes appears more enlightened than men who are scheduled to die.
But there's nothing wrong with dying and knowing about death.

Thanks to Chibi-lang's correction.