Author Archives: Daniel

Green Goddess For Cheap (Update)

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Anyone who’s looking for a good dictionary should check out Amazon Japan. There are super cheap copies of old editions of Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, aka the Green Goddess. It’s famous for loads of usage examples. The old edition is also good for beginners since entries are listed in alphabetical order. It’s a steal at 786 yen.

I would be remiss if I didn’t provide this link (via Wikipedia) to Tom Gally’s writings. He worked on the fifth edition of the dictionary. You can read specifically about the dictionary here, here, here and here.

Cool Kanji – 閂

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kannuki

How badass is that kanji?! It looks crazy, like some weird malfunction. Like some other radical should resolve itself below the 門, but for whatever reason the computer can’t handle it and just inserts a dash. Reminds me of the time when I saw 囮.

The pronunciation is かんぬき, and it means – are you ready for this?! – bolt, latch, bar (on a gate/door). How great is that?!

Still working my way through 1Q84, so most posts will be short until I get finished with that. Almost there! At this point in time I’ve read 740/1055 pages. Not too shabby for 12 days of reading.

Alternate You’re Welcomes (Update)

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After going over 助かる・助かりました (alternative versions of “Thank you”) the last couple weeks, I thought I’d give you some ways to say “You’re welcome” other than the standard どういたしまして. There are a bunch:

ドンマイ – This is short for “Don’t mind.” The actual meaning is closer to “No worries,” and it’s usually repeated for emphasis. ドンマイドンマイ. One of my favorites to throw around due to its hilarity.

とんでもありません – I believe this literally means “not at all.” You are basically negating whatever has just been said to you, specifically the heaps of thanks/praise just piled upon you for doing whatever wonderful thing you just did. (Confusingly, とんでもない can also be used as an adjective to mean “not unimpressive.” e.g. とんでもない間違いですよ！ “That is a pretty ridiculous mistake (you moron).” Something like that.)

いいえ・いえいえ – Again, you’re dismissing something someone has said. If you happen to be a dude, make sure you say this in a suitably deep voice. I feel like the intonation requires a slight rise in tone, and if you don’t start at a low enough tone, you’ll end up sounding like a lady.

はい・ほい – Sometimes all you have to do is recognize the person’s thanks with a slightly longer than normal は〜い. I’ve noticed that the people in my office kind of soften it by saying ほ〜い, which is possibly for ladies only?

Updated with a comment from facebook – Yoko, a former classmate, sez:

haha, yeah, ドンマイ is pretty funny. i think ‘ほ～い’ is more of a ojiichan-way of saying はい, but girls use it since the trend nowadays is to use more masculine terms (like when a girl says うまい instead of おいしい) either that or ほ～い is somewhat disrespectful so if a guy says it he might get in trouble :P

Just Read It

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(Updated with links to books on Amazon Japan because I was lazy on Friday. Used copies of 夜のくもざる going for 1 yen!)

I’ve read 450+ Japanese pages over the past week, probably more than double the amount I read over the previous two months, and I can feel a tangible improvement in my spoken Japanese. Yes, you read that correctly. Spoken Japanese. I’m sure that my reading abilities have gone up, which makes sense, but over the last few days I’ve also noticed that phrases and patterns seem to come to me more quickly than they did last week. A couple of thoughts about this phenomenon and reading in general:

– At some point you have to make the leap. Once you have some kanji under your belt, you need to put down the dictionary and start reading for length of time and volume rather than complete understanding. Why length of time? You need to train your eyeballs to read vertically. When you first start reading vertically, you’ll actually be zig-zagging slightly to the left and right as you take in the characters. One of my Japanese teachers said this is why your eyes get tired more quickly at first. The more time you spend reading, the faster your eyes will train themselves to recognize kanji without straying from the invisible center line. Why volume? It builds confidence. It’s important to feel like you’re making progress with reading. This doesn’t mean that you should stop looking up words (definitely look them up if it’s very important), but if you can get most of the meaning without looking up a word, then you can skip it. (This is, by the way, exactly what we all do in our native languages – context provides great usage examples and a lot of meaning.)

– As for why reading helps improve spoken Japanese, I’m not exactly sure. I like to think it’s because, magically, the grammar patterns are imprinted on my brain pudding, enabling it to function more naturally in Japanese. I’m sure this is the case to a certain extent. Perhaps the net effect of reading on speaking varies by person depending on how much they vocalize internally as they read. I don’t think I vocalize much at all (constantly skip over readings I understand but don’t know, probably swallow patterns in big chunks rather than word by word), but I still feel better about my spoken Japanese than I have in weeks. Mmm…brain pudding.

– There are limitations to this approach: for whatever reason my conversation topics are limited to religious cults, the NHK collection man, Czech classical music, and gin and tonics.

– Kanji shouldn’t be studied. Just keep reading and get used to them. Matt explains far more articulately here.

– Start with shorter material and work your way up to the big guns. If you try to start reading with Wind-up Bird Chronicle (or the Japanese translation of Pynchon’s V…I actually did look briefly at the translation before realizing I wasn’t going to pay $60 for a book that was difficult in English), you are setting yourself up for defeat. Start with some short stories. One of the best collections for beginners is Murakami’s 『夜のくもざる』(“Night of the Spider Monkey”), which is a collection of “super-short stories” (超短編小説). Each story is only 2-3 pages long, so you can get that “Whew, I finished reading” feeling without going for hours and hours. The one downside of this collection is that all the stories are weird. Like, super weird. Kaori Ekuni has a couple short story collections that might be good for first-time readers, one of which has the funny English title on the book “It’s not safe or suitable to swim” (『泳ぐのに、安全でも適切でもありません』). Anyone know any other good reads for beginners?

– In the end, though, nothing is as satisfying as reading a full length novel. Or at least a nice big fat story like an Akutagawa Prize winner. The first book I ever read from start to finish in Japanese was 『蹴りたい背中』(“The Back I Want to Kick”) by Risa Wataya who won the prize in 2004 when she was 18. Shortly thereafter I read 『蛇にピアス』 (“Snakes and Earrings”) by Hitomi Kanehara who shared the prize with Wataya. They aren’t all that long – I could probably finish them in half a day now – but they each took me several weeks to finish back then when I read at the pace of 5 pages a day. I looked up every word and there were many passages I wrestled with, but it was worth it. (I should admit that I was meeting with a professor once a week to go over any questions. She helped me out with a lot of the patterns I was unfamiliar with. Maybe if there are enough beginner readers around Tokyo we could start some sort of group. I’d be glad to lend a hand if anyone’s interested.)

Future Help

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A short follow up to last week’s post on 助かりました. The present tense of this verb is also incredibly useful. The key is to remember that the present tense (助かる or 助かります) is the same thing as the future tense. That let’s you form patterns like this: 〜していただければ、助かります.

~ is any verb (not necessarily a する verb; the して just stands in for all verbs in the example) that you are having done for you. The subject of the ~ is another person. You, the speaker, are the subject of いただければ, which is the conditional tense (?) of いただく.

Looking at it literally we have, “If I could receive you doing ~, I will be helped (in the future).” In normal English, “I would really appreciate it if you could ~.”

A couple examples:

8時に起こしていただければ、助かります。
I would really appreciate it if you could wake me up at 8.

今日中に出していただければ、助かります。
It would be great if you could turn it in at some point today.

大きい声で読んでいただければ、皆助かります。
It would help everyone if you could read in a loud voice. (Threw a 皆 up there to vary the subject a bit.)

You can even use an energetic 助かります！ right after you’ve made a request to soften said request. (Effective when combined with a frowny face.) Kind of a reverse airbag expression.

In the future once you’ve been assisted, you can then say 助かりました！

号外 – Christian Signs

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One time, in the Bible, Jesus said, “Ask Adamu from Mutantfrog, and you shall receive.” As you know, Jesus doesn’t lie; in my liveblog this past weekend I asked Mutantfrog for an explanation of the Christian signs in rural Japan, and Adamu delivered. Great post filled with lots of information about the origin of the signs. Surprising that so many people just let that organization put them up.

In other news, I have learned how to “trackback.”

1Q84 Liveblog

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liveblog

During my third year of college, my Japanese literature professor invited me to cheer on Haruki Murakami at the Boston Marathon with his departmental literature class, a class I’d taken the year before. The small group of us went in a few cars over to Heartbreak Hill, the brutal rising slope towards the end of the marathon course. We got there and watched the runners pass by, numbers and names written on their arms and shirts, as they trudged, walked and ran through the last few miles of the race. Murakami eventually approached, we cheered, and he ran off with a confused look on his face – it was a great day.

In the car on our way to the race, the professor said something that I’ve kept somewhere in my head for a long time now – six years to be exact. He said, “What we’re doing doesn’t make sense, but we’re not doing it because it makes sense.” This seems like an appropriate time for them to come floating back to me – what I’m about to do doesn’t make sense, but I’m not doing it because it makes sense.

I will be doing it well, though. I’m equipped with a nice Islay single-malt, a choice selection of beer, and a rainy weekend giving me the perfect excuse to sit inside and read. For food, I have some snacks to tide me over, but I’ll go knock off the local McDonald’s for some bread later tonight. Yes we パン!

So sit back, relax, give your whisky a swirl, and check after the break for 1Q84 liveblog madness all weekend (or until my eyeballs fall out).

Continue reading →

号外 – Q-Teen Eighty Four Early Release

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What’s that book he’s got there…

earlyrelease1

Hmm…

earlyrelease2

Ohh…

earlyrelease3

Yes, the street date has been broken for 1Q84. (Do we call it “one kew eight four” or “q-teen eighty four” in English?) I saw a tweet about a possible early release and decided to drop by the closest bookstore after work. Sure enough, there were copies of Book 1 sitting next to the other new hardbacks. They didn’t have Book 2, which is probably fine since I won’t be needing it for another month or so.

Immediate first impressions:

– It was expensive. 1800 yen, or just about $18. Do hardcovers in the US cost $36?

– It’s massive. 554 pages to be exact. I believe Book 2 puts the combined length at over 1000 pages.

– It probably features chapters with alternating stories. I’ve really only read through the index, but this is made clear by some kanji after the chapter numbers. Can’t confirm this because I haven’t read anything yet. Also haven’t looked up the kanji.

– The chapter titles are Pynchon/Fariña-esque. Also similar to Wind-up Bird. They’re more phrase-like than noun-like. At one point they also refer to “readers” (読者), although this could very well be readers within the book and not me and you.

– It takes place between April and June. The months (4月ー6月) are on the cover. I believe Book 2 has a different set of months.

– It looks more dense than his past books. Big blocky paragraphs. Not so much dialogue and short phrasing as in old works.

– It smells like a book.

I read the first sentence already. It’s going to be hard for me to stop myself from reading the rest until Friday, but that’s what I’ll do. After I wake up and have breakfast, I’ll dive right in. See you Friday morning.