I have a question for people who speak Japanese...

What does the "tentou" in "tentou mushi" mean? I think this word is usually written in katakana, but there's a kanji version too. The "ten" is the same as in "tenki" (weather), but I don't know what it means combined with the other symbol, online dictionaries weren't very helpful...

The kanji is 天道 - It seems to refer merely to the sun, so the literal translation would be sun bug; the sun is apparently sometimes called お天道様 (otentou-sama). The Japanese wikipedia entry offers as etymology: 和名の由来は太 陽に向かって飛 んで行くことか ら、太陽神の天 道からとられた 。 I cannot accurately translate this but it's something about the tentoumushi flying towards/facing the sun, and therefore the name was taken from the sun god's "tentou" (sun/celestial realm?).
You can see the Japanese wikipedia entry here, the google translated version here, and a comment here from someone who seems to be know Japanese backing it up.

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世界のどこかに 必ず
キミの居場所が ある筈

Thanks! I thought it may be something like this, but online dictionaries kept giving me weird answers and I was confused. Thanks for the article too, it's quite interesting

I don't need to imagine it, i just need to call my dog house "the Void" so if get in there i will be in the Void, now the opposite of that would be outside the void which i'm going to call the "Novoid" because it sounds cool.

To be honest I don't have a dog, so either way is fine. :º)

I usually read the first chapter as a trial. If I can't get through it, I leave it for some time and pick it up again after a few months. If it fails the second time round I just leave it. Though some mangas pass the first round, none are safe until I've finished the fifth chapter

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subir fotos

okay, I was wondering.

People that work with scanlations groups. how many chapters cca is a cleaner supposed to clean in a week? Is 2 too much? Not how much time it takes, just what is a standard or so.

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if there is an option between "to do" and "not to do", I will always choose the latter.

"what kind of crazy, twisted conclusion is that...?" - banana bread no puding

It really does depend on the manga, how many pages per chapter and how difficult the redraws are.
2 is not bad, but I work on manga that has 20-40 pages and usually contain loads of redraws, so for me, I'd probably be a bit overwhelmed. If I had nothing else to do, I wouldn't mind cleaning 2 chapters a week, but I have Uni to worry about so I just can't dedicate my time to so much. Having said that, there are times where I've cleaned an entire 20+ page chapter in a day, but it had next to no redraws and the dodging and burning wasn't needed so badly.
There's also the case where some groups have the cleaners and the redrawers separate. In that sense, the cleans shouldn't take as long. I always find, personally, it's the complex redraws that takes a while rather than the actual 'cleaning'.
This is only a personal opinion on what I've experienced though. Others might say differently.

Recently, I tried a Japanese sweet called higashi (it is mostly sugar, compressed into a pretty shape, like a flower or leaf), and they were so good that I want to make my own. I did manage to make a batch, but they're not quite right. I've tried looking up various recipes to finds solutions to the problems I'm having, but the English ones didn't have any info about them and for most of the Japanese ones, the Japanese is too advanced for me to understand. If anyone has some advice or can refer me to a recipe either in English or very simple Japanese, that would be awesome.

Here are the problems I'm having:
1. When I add the water to the sugar, the sugar becomes a very thick paste and so when I add the flour, it's extremely hard to mix them. I end up with lots of little sugar-paste lumps in the mix. (I am using wheat flour instead of kambaiko, powdered confectioner's sugar instead of wasanbon, and corn syrup instead of mizuame, because those would be expensive to get shipped to where I live. Would using the correct ingredients fix this problem? Or are the proportions of ingredients wrong? (I used 20 g flour, 20 g granulated sugar, 40 g powdered sugar, and 5 mL corn syrup + 5 mL warm water.))
2. The higashi I tried were very hard, like a compressed-powder pill. But even though I pressed mine as hard as I could into the mold, when they came out they were only a little hard (they hold their shape, but still crumble easily when I bite into them). Is there a trick to compact them better?

Edit: Ignore number one now. I tried another recipe I saw, which does not use powdered sugar, and this problem went away. Still stuck on how to compact them though.

Last edited by lynira at 12:06 am, Apr 17 2013

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Manga Cover Database

Which recipe are you using? The hardness is due to the ingredients, I doubt you're doing anything wrong with the pressing part.

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Far-off places with sweet sounding names.

So it's because I'm not using the right ingredients? Darn. I was hoping there was a trick to pressing it, since it'll be a pain to find kanbaiko and wasanbon...
(Current recipe I am using: 1/4 cup wheat flour, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1 tsp. corn syrup, & 1 tsp. warm water).

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Manga Cover Database

Not all sugar reacts the same it shouldn't matter if it's not wasanbon.

The wheat flour could be a problem as rice flour does act differently. My sister once made some green sweets using wheat flour. Can't remember what else was in them. The last step was to put them into the fridge where they were supposed to harden. Well they did, so far so that it was inedible (too much flour if I remember correctly). Anyway I'll ask her the next time I'll see her but not sure when that's going to be.

Found this but to me it seems even more of a pain:


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Far-off places with sweet sounding names.

OK, I got my hands on some rice flour called "mochiko," but the sweets I made from the were even softer & more crumbly than the wheat flour ones (also they have this weird gritty texture now). I didn't know about putting them in the fridge at the end, so I did try that. I think it may have helped them harden a little bit...? I'll have to make another batch and not put them in the fridge to compare.

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What are the similarities between Bananas, Kiwis and Avocados? (Aside from them being fruits) Cause I think I'm allergic to whatever it is.

So far, starting last year eating these fruits causes my tongue and throat to itch and my lips to swell. And it's not a one time thing. I've experimented on different bananas and kiwis at different times and places bought. Incidentally, I've had no problems with fried bananas or fresh kiwis.

I have had no problem eating Pears, Pineapples, Oranges, Grapes, Blueberries, Melons and Pomelos

Latex allergy? Don't die on me, blak D:

...could also be tree-pollen allergy, according to Wikipedia >_>

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

Yeah gotta get a diagnosis sometime.