American Gaijin
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Moving forward…
After the last post, I just stopped caring about blogging for a while. I just pretended like it didn’t exist. It kind of helps that a medicine I’m taking seems to make me care less in general, which, knowing me, is a good thing. My feelings about Japanese are still very conflicted, but as of…
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Nani?
I am not good at writing posts when I am discouraged. I’m terrible at feigning enthusiasm, and there have been several posts I’ve written over the past couple of months that I abandoned halfway through, with the thought “what’s the point?”. I tried to write another one tonight, and it met the same fate. I…
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Hidden Japanese #2
This one rather amuses me, though it’s a little on the adult side. So Americans, when they are getting intimate, use the word “come”. I’ll be circumspect and not come right out and say the context, but those of you that know what I’m talking about, know what I’m talking bout, and those who don’t,…
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Hidden Japanese #1
We are mostly all familiar with the typical numbers in Japanese: 一ニ三四五六七八九十 But did you know that these are not the only Japanese numbers? I’m not talking about ひとつ , etc., I’m talking about an entirely different set of kanji for the on’yomi readings. These kanji exist because in the ancient Chinese culture, long before…
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New Years
New Years is tomorrow, and for nearly all cultures (even though it may happen on different days) it is seen as a time of renewal and regeneration. I don’t see why this blog should be any different. Starting tomorrow, this blog will take a slightly different direction. It will still be about Japanese – in…
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A New Direction
I started three different blog posts, and abandoned them right in the middle. That’s a sign that I need to do something different. I’m starting to bore myself, and if I’m boring myself, I can’t imagine what I’m doing to everyone else. I’ve run out of interesting things to say – even to myself. I…
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Christmas
Today is Christmas in Japan, and tomorrow is Christmas for me. Christmas and Japan really seem to have a strange relationship with each other. It does seem that Japanese do celebrate Christmas – in their own way. It’s been stripped of any religious or spiritual significance, and has been converted into a time where people…
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Leggo my eigo
Many years ago, when I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s, the cult that I was raised in had a propaganda magazine called “Youth <insert year here>” where leaders of the cult would attempt to be relevant to the youth of the day, and most of the time, they just came…
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Jyukugo
Japanese jyukugo fascinate me, because each one tells a story. Sometimes the story is boring, but sometimes they offer an unwitting insight into the mind of a culture. I was reminded of this when I learned the jyukugo 電池. The two kanji together mean “electricity” and “pond”. But if you put them together, it means “battery”. …