EA Games' "Middle-earth: the third age" will be out in Japan soon. Video game magazines have began to feature it. One magazine had a list of legendary weapons in the game, such as Merry's dagger and Hadhafang(Arwen's sword, film original, …

http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/1/1092672479 His voice act of Gollum in BBC dramatization impressed many Japanese LOTR fans, when the drama had been broadcasted online one episode a week, just before the release of the FOTR film in…

A while ago, The Onion reported that Klingon speakers outnumbered Navajo ones. Sometimes a fictitious language attracts certain kind of geeks and they go nuts over it. The most prominent nut ever is, doubtlessly, Prof. J.R.R.Tolkien. Now t…

An interesting discussion on the discrepancies between the book and the film in the Japanese BBS "2ch": http://book.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/sf/1078558932/l50 An anonymous poster claims that, while Tolkien's english "translation" of LOTR is b…

Although I'm a Tolkien nut, I'm sober enough not to cite LOTR or Hobbit in my paper on physics. But there seems to be some authors who do it.LOTR citation in the epigraph: cond-mat/0012141 hep-ph/0101105 astro-ph/0210061 astro-ph/0402228 A…

The material properties of The One Ring Department of Metallurgy, University of Eregion Celebrimbor 要約：滅びの亀裂には金とサウロンの血の混合を一つの指輪に変換する反応の触媒が存在すると仮定することで様々な現象を説明できる。It is said that…

Here is a list of book-quotes in the ROTK movie, now complete with the name of the chapter from which the quote is taken: id:ita:00010102 The bracketted lines are the movie's script, followed by the corresponding text of the original. The …

Here is a list of book-quotes in FOTR-EE which I posted to rec.arts.books.tolkien. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=b72f7635.0402232329.b6629d7%40posting.google.com I included not only full quotes but also phrases longer than five word…

The Japanese subtitle to the Aragorn's song after his coronation reads "<そして歌った>", which means "And I sang" with bracket to indicate it is elvish. But the open bracket has the same shape as a Japanese letter "く", so it also reads "…

"That's as far as you can go, you evil fellowship!" Fellowship: "Who are you!?" "Wrainger 1, Nazgul Black!" "Wrainger 2, Nazgul Black!" "Wrainger 3, Nazgul Black!" "Wrainger 4, Nazgul Black!" "Wrainger 5, Nazgul Black!" "Wrainger 6, Nazgul…

Japanese Tolkien fans have long been familiar with the illustrations by Ryuichi Terashima in The Hobbit and LOTR. Tolkien himself once had a look at the Japanese translation of "The Hobbit", and said that although he couldn't read Japanese…

From a thread entitled "Let's role-play Middle Earth", in Japanese LOTR BBS http://jbbs.shitaraba.com/bbs/read.cgi/movie/469/1067830177/ Probably the originator meant "Let's role-play the inhabitants of Middle Earth", but every poster is j…

Pachinko is sort of a cross between slot machine and pinball. (see http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2065.html for more detail) Recently a pachinko manufacturer Sankyo released LOTR-themed pachinko machine: http://www.sankyo-fever.co.jp/new/ne…

If you have Japanese font installed in your PC, you could see the Kanji character above: a Kanji for "bundle". What does it look like? Doesn't it look like the JRRT monogram? This is a jargon commonly used among Japanese Tolkien geeks to r…

Last night, LOTR:FOTR was broadcasted by FUJI TV. Today I went to a park and heard a kid asking his parent excitedly, "You have my sword, And my bow, and what was the another one?". A very promissing fan he is.

Nine days to the release of ROTK in Japan.Last night I went to a special preview of ROTK held by EA-Games Japan. This was a preview for the customers who had bought EA's ROTK game. I'd bought the game and applied for the preview, and been …

Kaiyodo is a Japanese company of models and miniatures, famous among geeks and otakus. Kaiyodo's managing director S.Miyawaki is a big LOTR fan. In his colmn "Strangelove of managing director" in a magazine "TV-BROS", he reports the Tokyo …

Weekly Shonen-Magazine today's issue features LOTR: http://www.shonenmagazine.com/magazine_10/index.html Inside it is a report of NZ premiere by a manga-writer, Hiro Masima. Several critical spoilers are included!

A special interview to Andy Serkis and Y.Nagashima, the voice actor who played the part of Gollum in the Japanese-dubbed LOTR films: http://movie.goo.ne.jp/special/lotr/special.html Some transcript follows: AS: Konichiwa. (E:Hello) YN: Kon…

"The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare" ISBN:0618390995 is now the No.1 selling foreign book at amazon.co.jp. WOW! It's partly because of the 30%-OFF campaign being held now, which started just after I ordered the book! OMG :-

プライバシー保護のため、GNASKにて画像を処理してあります「離せ！サダム。」と、ジョージはいいました。「これはトマホークだぞ。お前は昔これを見たことがあるだろう。離せ、さもないと今度はこれがお前に触れるぞ！」 その時ジョージには過去からの声が…