If I may branch for a moment since you said, sarcasm,

It has come to my attention that Japanese do not "get" sarcasm. Is this true or am I crazy? I adore sarcasm but I do my best to keep it within reason. Tis one of my primary form of funnies.

Actually - Hotei is from China, and the fat image is indeed Hotei in China too. (Although I forget his Chinese name.)

The Chinese Buddha is NOT fat. In all the imagery I can find of Buddhas from China, the depiction is pretty much the same as in Japan - a thin guy.

Basically, if I am recalling correctly, the "fat" depiction being mistaken for a Buddha comes basically from a lack of research and poor translation. Early imports of the figure in statues, etc labeled him as "god of luck" or... "buddha of luck". The "buddha" being used as an all purpose word to refer to a god. In Japanese and Chinese Buddhism there are a ton of "buddha", it`s used pretty liberally to refer to gods that have gotten mixed in over time.

No matter how you research it, the guy just isn`t Buddha. :D He`s Hotei.

You're only saying you haven't read much in Japanese (books, magazines, etc.) or conversed with Japanese in advanced Japanese. I don't know if you're crazy or not but I do know that you're grossly over-generalizing. Not that I didn't know it about you, though.

So....they do?

*facepalm*

Anyway, I have another question?

I've been playing Street Fighter 4 online (as always) and I've noticed that the vast majority of Japanese players have really bad internet connections? Like, 1 bar out of a possible 5? Could that be due to the distance from England or does Japan generally have slow internet?

My connection isn't fast.. 2mb/s (my PS3 is wired to the router though) and I get 3/5 for mine?

Whats your connection speed, Nyororin?

It`s due to the distance. It`s measuring how long it takes for a ping to get from you to them and back - distance has a huge effect on that.

I am guessing it rates your connection to the matching server to get that number - connection speed shouldn`t have a huge effect as long as it`s not incredibly slow.

I have a fairly normal connection for Japan - 100Mbps FTTH.

Ahh, thanks for your help!　：）

Th.. Tha.. Thats.. NORMAL?! *drools* The internet is no waiting game for you then, eh?

Unless thats from your PC to the Router.. cuz thats always 100mb/s.. Then I don't feel so inadequet..

It's not the length of the connection, it's what you do with it that counts.

Street Fighter online? Yeesh, when SF2 came out way back in the mists of time, multiplayer was "the guy on the second set of controls"...

I am not that stupid. :D And besides, my PC to router link (wired) is 1000Mbps. :mtongue:

The 100Mbps is actual connection - although in reality I only get between 50 and 70Mbps. But usually it`s the server side that limits it - especially if the server is far. I don`t think I`ve ever gotten over 40Mbps to a site in the US.

But yes, it`s a fairly standard connection. 3800yen/month. :vsign:

Thats like.. 3 times what I pay for internet per month.. but like.. so much faster!!

I can't belive your complaining at getting 40mbps!!!

England SUCKS for internet!