This kanji is pronounced だいだい, and I bet you can figure out the meaning pretty easily if I give it to you in this set: 赤, 橙, 黄, 緑, 青, 藍, 紫.

Get it yet? No? Give those another quick look.

Yup, it’s the kanji for orange. You see it infrequently, almost always written. So yeah, supposedly it’s pronounced だいだい色(いろ), but I wonder if people just read it オレンジ. Can any native speakers confirm? 橙 is generally used as the color in the rainbow, but Wikipedia also tells me it came from the Chinese fruit the daidai…which looks like a mikan, except the English name is bitter orange? I’m keen to try one.

The other cool kanji in there that you might not know is 藍(あい), which is indigo. Wikipedia Japan says that Americans generally think the rainbow only has six colors, but I can personally confirm that is bogus. Clearly Wikipedia Japan hasn’t met Mr. Roy G. Biv – that’s the acronym I learned in elementary school to keep the colors straight.

This Japan Times piece about 第三ビール features none other than Chris Chuwy, the guy who runs the boozelist I’ve linked to several times. Chuwy is in fine form:

"Feels like I’ve just woken up and need to brush my teeth" (Chuwy on Reisei, a dai-san brewed from yellow-pea protein, 5 percent, ¥139)

And this non sequitur:

Chuwy opined that champagne was like a gassier version of Asahi’s Style Free (dai-san, 4 percent, ¥159), which he meant as a criticism, describing champagne as "unnecessary". 

Learned yesterday at work:

換える＝別の物におきかえる
替える＝別の新しいものにする

And I already knew this one:

蛙＝frog

Pulls on hip-length boots and prepares to wade blindly through territory normally reserved for Treyvaud.

Sure, I’ll admit that post title is half fishing for search hits and snarky comments, but http://urusai.jp basically asks you to make that same equation. The page is a Nestlé coffee ad disguised as quasi-日本人論.

I came across it while searching for 五月蝿い, a set of ateji for うるさい. You have to dig pretty deep in the page to find the article addressing the reason why it gets those kanji, but it also explains that うるさい, then written 煩し (don’t ask me how that gets pronounced…うるさし？), initially meant “incredibly skilled or of great personal fiber.” It was associated with a quest for perfection or completion, I believe, and as everybody knows, those are generally the most annoying types of people, so うるさい also came to take on the feeling that other people had towards these class suck-ups – one of distance and annoyance.

うるさい definitely means “of a loud and generally unpleasant volume,” but as shown all over the front page, it can also mean a sort of perfectionist, a stickler. The front page is covered with examples of the pattern Xにうるさい: 四季にうるさい, 旅にうるさい, 言葉にうるさい, コーヒーにうるさい. “The Japanese are sticklers for the four seasons, travel, coffee, etc.” ALC provides fastidious, which is another way to say it. I guess the simplest way to express it naturally in English would be something like, “The Japanese are serious about coffee.”

Although to be honest, truly コーヒーにうるさい people are not going to be drinking Nestlé instant coffee.

I think Dimitry Kovalenin has a livejournal account? If so, that’s awesome. It looks like he might be doing the Russian translation of 1Q84? Also, a commenter on the entry found information in a database of proteins, or something, with the label 1Q84. Apparently the enzyme acetylcholinesterase is also related. This enzyme is active in synaptic transmission and is the target of certain nerve agents…namely sarin gas. Which would make me seriously re-think prediction 3 – maybe he’ll address the Aum attack rather than WWII. Hooray for Google Translations.

Yes, this is all super-otaku, but if you can’t find something in life worth getting crazy about, then you’re probably a really boring person.

Dimitry, if that’s you, I’m sorry about the kumozaru thing, heh.

Japan is clearly viewed as a nation of hardworking people. The “play hard” view of Japan is less well known, and the “relax hard” view is even more hidden. This side of Japan can be found in the onsen, saunas and sentō where Japanese spend hours during off-days; the rest rooms floored with tatami where they drink jars of coffee-flavored milk and smoke cigarettes afterwards; and the restaurants they then retreat to for beer and eats.

This isn’t true of all Japanese, of course. I’d say this applies mostly to older people who live slightly outside of the major metropoli. But even younger people and those who live in cities take their hygiene and relaxation seriously.

While most people stick to their local onsen and sentō, higher quality springs and scenery draw people on 日帰り(ひがえり)温泉 trips. Break it down and it’s a ghost of a trip – you’re traveling long distances to do very little other than have a bath. However once you’ve done a couple and become accustomed to the whole group bathing phenomenon, they’re hard to live without.

Travel agencies offer package sets that generally include round-trip train fare, lunch, and entrance price for one of the baths. These can run anywhere from 5000 – 9000 yen. Not a bad deal, but using a Seishun 18 Kippu will cover your train fare for five separate trips for 11,500 yen. Read more about the ticket here.

Here’s one example of a trip out to 長寿館 in 法師温泉 – one of the least accessible onsen ever made:

How to Higaeri Onsen from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

Hooray, the green envelope finally arrived. The only curious thing is that my four Japanese roommates got their envelopes a few days, maybe a week, earlier. My Korean roommate and I got ours today.

Gaijin Bash has an awesome set of photos from a 廃墟 (はいきょ) he busted into. Check out the link to learn what the compound means.

足の甲(こう)                   =   

土踏まず(つちふまず)    = 

Speaking politely in Japanese isn’t just about being deft with keigo. Keigo, which you use constantly and just don’t realize it, is just a small part; basic word choice is also important, as it is in English. There are several different ways to say the same word, and generally the longer the phrase is, the more polite it is. One of the best examples of this is the many different versions of いい. You can power up your いい, but you can also power it down to ええ depending on who you’re with.

Sometimes you need to use an entirely different word rather than a variation of the same word. This is especially true of English. I vividly remember the moment when I learned the definition of the word “asinine.” I was a freshman on the debate team and heard a senior member use it in a speech. When I asked him the definition he said, “It’s a nice way to called someone or something stupid.”

Unfortunately I don’t know how to say asinine in Japanese. I do know, however, that すごい is not going to cut it in important business meetings (just like “stupid”), which is why you should swap it out for it’s more polite cousin 非常(ひじょう)に. すごい, however, can be both adjective and adverb, while 非常に is only an adverb.

When you’re swapping for the adverbial すごい or すごく, you can do a straight-up replacement.    So you can do this swap:

すごく危ない –> 非常に危ない –> 非常に危険

(You might want also consider powering up that 危ない to the compound noun form 危険(きけん), which is the third option up there. I guess this really belongs in another post, but 非常に危険 felt more natural to me, so I went ahead and added it.)

The adjective version of すごい requires you to be more specific with your description; this is a good thing to practice, even in English. So rather than something being “awesome” or “great,” you can say something like 非常に質がいい (it’s of incredibly high quality), 非常にきれいな (it’s incredibly beautiful), or just 非常にいい (it’s incredibly good).

I have to credit my senior year Japanese professor here. Until she noted this easy switch in class, I don’t think I had a grasp of the meaning of 非常に.

I love, love, love it when people complain about living in Japan. Often it’s a symptom of homesickness or culture shock and they’re just lashing out at anything to compensate. Sometimes they’re just cynical.

There are no trash cans. Wah. Trains stop running so early. Wah wah. There are no hand towels in the bathrooms. Wah wah wah, motherfuckers.

One of my all-time favorite complaints is the fact that Japan doesn’t have street names. People who voice this particular complaint are in such a state of blissful ignorance that they are unlikely ever to get used to it. I once met a German guy who was complaining about how hard it is to find things in Japan because of the lack of street names and numbers. I asked him for his address and showed him where he lived in less than 30 seconds. I was equipped to do this because I was carrying my trusty map:

The 2009 version just got released, so I upgraded from the version I bought three years ago. There are a number of different pocket-sized maps, but Mapple’s is the most popular. It has tons of useful information in the front.

Last trains:

Detailed subway transfer information (which car to stand in for the easiest transfer):

But the most useful part of all is its main function – maps. To find a place, all you need is the 区 (Ward, although recently I’ve seen “City” used frequently), the neighborhood name, and then the address number. The number is a three-digit number in the format 1-2-3, where 1 is the neighborhood number, 2 is the block number, and 3 is the building number. As an example, let’s find the Sword Museum. Its address is 渋谷区代々木4-25-10.

Generally you can look for the ward first on the map. Shibuya is pretty easy, but Yoyogi, the neighborhood name, is actually a bit far from Shibuya Station, so it’s easiest to track down Yoyogi Station’s page from the map in the front, which tells us Yoyogi Station is on pg 88:

Here’s pg 88 around Yoyogi Station:

Clearly not on this page, so lets check one page south:

There’s 代々木4. Now you track down the light blue 25 closest to it, and that will be right about where it is. On the map it’s marked with 刀剣博物館.

Rather than doing everything street by street, Japan takes a grid approach, which is actually a lot more manageable when you think about it. Get used to it. Once you do, you should be able to find anything. Mapple – don’t leave your tiny ass apartment without it.

Oh, and you can forget visiting the Sword Museum – it’s crap. Small display and zero English.

*NOTE* New address is HERE.

Nishiaizu has a small cable television station. Their basic cable package is a mix of different channels - the basic network stations, one J Sports channel, its own station, and a station that used to be called the SUPERCHANNEL. Now, apparently, it’s called Super!dramaTV. Yes, you can check that capitalization and punctuation yourself:
http://www.superdramatv.com/

They have a variety of foreign shows, including MacGyver, which translates into Japanese as 冒険野郎マクガイバー. Put that back into English and you get (and I have to warn you that this is painfully literal) "Adventure Bastard MacGyver." Here’s the page:
http://www.superdramatv.com/line/bouken/index.html

Hence, the subject line of this entry. That fuggin bastard.

Originally posted December 5th, 2006

I just learned how to say "The Defenestration of Prague" in Japanese.

Originally posted November 10th, 2006

Limited edition Silk Yebisu. Pretty thick and malty with a pilsner bite. To be honest I can’t really differentiate it from The Hop. I give it 2.5 Mehs. Discovered today at Queen’s Isetan in Shinagawa.

A few weeks ago the cafeteria in my town made Chili con Carne. There’s one junior high school and five elementary schools and they all eat the same thing every day. I’m not sure about the high school. I was at one of the elementary schools. They couldn’t get tortillas so they served it with pita bread instead.

Anyway, in Japanese Chili con Carne gets called チリコンカン (chirikonkan). They shorten the carne to kan and say the word incredibly fast, so it sounds hilarious, almost like a strange Japanese compound word.

Which inspired me to create this compound:

チリコンカン化 (chirikonkan-ka) - become Chili con Carne

For example:

部屋でのんびりしていて、急にテレビがチリコンカン化しちゃった！
I was just putzing around my room and all of a sudden my TV just fucking turned into Chili con Carne!

Originally posted July 14th, 2006

The office lady at the junior high school gave me a set of school supplies when I got here last fall. Scissors, white out, tape, pens, pencil, notepad. I didn’t really notice it until recently, but the mechanical pencil had something written on it in Japanese.

あなたは、他人の人権を侵害していませんか？

福島県

This translates to:

Aren’t you violating another person’s rights?

Fukushima Prefecture

What a GREAT fucking prefectural motto.

P.S. I guess the translation could also be something like, "Are you sure you aren’t violating someone’s rights?" Still, strange enough.

Originally posted June 23rd, 2006

I saw a traffic sign that read:

Here is the Japanese pronunciation:

It is hilarious, though, to replace "traffic fatalities" with other Japanese words. I am just as bad as they are.

Originally posted May 6th, 2006

Whoa. So Murakami’s new book has a title: 1Q84. Pronounced いちきゅうはちよん. Check out the link to see his updated Shinchosha page. What a strange title. At first glance it looks like 1984, and with his recent talk of eggs, perhaps this is Murakami versus the man. He’s said it will be longer than Kafka on the Shore, and in the updated version of his book Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Rubin has speculated that it might be the "comprehensive novel" that Murakami has mentioned as his long-time goal. I heard it was coming out in May, but the site says 初夏 – early summer. Is that May?

Shinchosha is promoting it as his next big mysterious novel – they have links to Hard-boiled Wonderland, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore. Sadly, I think that’s the order I’d put them in from best to worst, and if 1Q84 has to follow Kafka, it could be crap. やれやれ。

乱気流に突入 - learned this one in class today as I was teaching travel vocab. It popped in the textbook as a translation for `turbulence`. I like the sound of the phrase…rankiryuu ni totsunyuu. Rhymes nicely.

Originally posted October 7th, 2005

I finished reading Bruce Feiler’s Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan on the plane back to New Orleans last night. It’s a reasonably good book by a former-JET participant who was in Sano, Tochigi Prefecture. For people who haven’t been to Japan it might even be "a revelation", as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says on the back cover. There were parts that even *condescending italics* I */condescending italics* found interesting, notably the effect of homeroom groups (kumi) on students in middle school.

But Feiler caricatures the Japanese people throughout the book, almost purposefully translating everyday Japanese verbiage into awkward, robotic phrases.

For example, Feiler goes to a hostess bar [these range from chaste to adventurous, the one in the book on the more chaste side of things] with his supervisor and the hostess greets them:

    "I am so honored to receive you," she said with a smile. The mama took a special interest in the newcomer. "Oh, the honorable foreigner speaks Japanese so weeelll," she said with a subtle flutter of her eyelashes. (52)

Passages like this are numerous. In this case, I really only have beef with the addition of "honorable". While there is probably basis for the addition in the language she used, it seems unnatural. Couldn’t he just have used "It’s so great that you came"? Instead, he opts for a more literal translation of the Japanese.

The most egregious case of mistranslation is when he translates parts of a booklet given to ninth graders before their school trip to Kyoto. Here are the objectives of the trip given in the booklet as translated by Feiler:

    1. By working together with teachers and each other in an unfamiliar environment - let’s develop lifelong memories.

    2. By visiting various historical places directly - let’s deepen our studies and understanding of our heritage.

    3. By working together within a group with good health and safety - let’s learn about public manners and have a positive experience.

Translation that dirty makes me want to take a shower. The Japanese syntax is immediately apparent. This is informed speculation, but I bet the Japanese sentences all looked something like this:

(Clause A) て, (Clause B) おう。

A gerund clause (Clause A, which ends with a verb in -te form, the standard gerund form) which is followed by a volitional verb clause (Clause B which has a verb in volitional form). Feiler has separated the two clauses with a dash in each case. The gerund clause explains the means by which the volitional verb will be accomplished. Feiler, however, decides not only to keep the Japanese order (usually a big mistake) but also to translate a verb in volitional form in the same way that Japanese people usually do: using the word let’s. In Japanese class, volitional form is taught as either "let’s (verb)" or "should we (verb)?" In many cases it probably means something more along the lines of, "I/we will (verb, with perhaps a bit more emphasis)" or "Want to (verb)?" The construction "let’s (verb)" is used so often, that many times Japanese people turn nouns into volitional sentences by turning them into gerunds. Hence, Let’s Murakami Haruking.

A cleaner translation would be something like this:

    1. We will work with each other and our teachers in Kyoto to develop lifelong memories.

Or, alternatively:

    1. We will develop lifelong memories by working with each other and our teachers in a new environment.

It makes me wonder exactly how much Japanese Feiler knew before he went on JET. At one point he mentions that there is a family in Osaka he has visited before. I think he also mentions that he studied the language at university. On the other hand, errors like the above translation pop up. He also has a pretty sharp memory - he fills in detailed speeches. How much did he shape them to fit the narrative? Yes, the objectives that he lists are pretty insane in and of themselves. But, Feiler exacerbates this by translating them like a Japanese high school student would.

Feiler did not alter his own words when he translates a speech he gave in Japanese (which I am willing to bet was far from perfectly natural Japanese), but throughout the book he translates Japanese people’s natural Japanese into unnatural English.

The facts, however, do speak for themselves in many cases, which is why this book is reasonably interesting.

Originally posted July 20th, 2005

This next week I’ll be posting entries from my old livejournal once a day building up to March 12 – the day I first started real posts here at How to Japanese last year. There are some funny ones I’d like to include, but I’ve forced myself to stick only to posts involving Japanese. お疲れ to me!

Considering going for a taste on the Old Edo pub crawl to celebrate on Friday the 20th (national holiday). If you’re interested, lemme know.