Wonderful Clocks

Today, I'm going to show you some wonderful clocks. I've never seen such clocks with fantastic idea!

"half an hour"

A clock with the half dial plate.

"ON-TIME"

A clock with a bent hand. You won't be late any more.

"Crazy Hours"

The numbers are put randomly. But we can still see what time it is. This watch shows that the numbers on a dial plate are nothing more than ornament.

"Chalkboard Pop Quiz Clock"

The numbers are expressed as numerical formula.

"A dot for every second in the day"

We can't see the actual time, but can see how long it passed in a day.

"Melting Clock"

This is the famous clock painted by Salvador Dalí: "The Persistence of Memory" It popped out from  2D and became 3D!

How was today's article? I wanted to show you more clocks, but it's time to go.... see you next time!

12-hour clock / 24-hour clock

There are two expressing ways of the time: 12-hour and 24-hour. The former is regarding a day as "2 times 12 hours", and the latter is just "24 hours". Let's see the features of each expression.


*12-hour*
This is popularly used in conversations. I think it because the less syllable is used compared with the 24-hour expression, in short, this way is easier to say. But confusion could be exist. For example, we have no way to know what "2 o'clock" means; in other words, we can't know whether it means "2 o'clock in night" or "2 o'clock in daytime". To avoid confusion, we use "a.m." or "p.m.". The former means "from 12 o'clock in night to 12o'clock in daytime" and the latter means "from 12o'clock in daytime to 12 o'clock in night". 


*24-hour*
This is popularly used in business. For example, the time tables of trains, buses,TV programs, business hour of a shop, and so on. We don't mistake "2 o'clock in daytime" for "2 o'clock in night" as we express it as "14:00". However, it is strange that we see information like "24:30~27:00". The writer just emphasize that it is MIDNIGHT though. And, some people feel difficulty to distinguish "17:00" from "7:00 p.m." as they are similar.


By the way, I found a fantastic clock!

It seems that it shows 10:10, but it shows 20:10 actually. This clock expresses 24 hours by one round :) I've never seen 24-hour analog clock!!

Children's Songs Concerned With Clock

Today's theme is children's songs concerned with clocks. I'll introduce three songs below.


The first one is "Grand Father's Clock", 『大きな古時計』 in Japanese. There are some differences between the original poem and Japanese poem and what I found most interesting is that the age of the grandfather. In the original one, the grand father is ninety years old but in Japanese one, he is one hundred years old. This is just because the sound, or the rhythm, of "ninety years" sounds unpleasant when it is pronounced in Japanese one. Also, this song became more popular since 2002 because Ken Hirai, a famous Japanese singer sang it and about 900000 CDs were sold.

Ken Hirai ver.

mito feat. Mayuko Kishi ver. (I like this one better.)

The second one is "Clock's Song", 『とけいのうた』in Japanese. In this poem, the minute hand is used as a metaphor of an adult, and the hour hand is for a child. As the time passes, an adult and a child meet and part again and again on the dial plate. So cute poem!! 

"Clock's Song"

The last one is "A Whale's Clock", 『くじらのとけい』in Japanese. A whale is "kujira" in Japanese, and "kuji" means nine o'clock. So, in this song, whenever a whale is asked "what time is it?", the whale has no way other than to answer "It's nine." 

Drunk people are singing, so, little bit difficult to listen...(-_-)

But they really sounds happy!!