Author Archives: Daniel

Cool Kanji – 件

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I remember this kanji because when we learned it, one of my classmates made up a sweet mnemonic to remember the word 条件（じょうけん）. He knew that it had the 人弁 (にんべん, person radical), so he gave both of the characters names – Joe and Ken.

条件 is a useful word. It means conditions, as in the conditions on a contract or the conditions/prerequisites for an application.

件 by itself is also pretty useful. My teacher in Tokyo used to make us use it in the subject lines for emails, e.g. 期末テストの件 (a subject I used back then), 小学校訪問の件 (a subject line I actually use now), or 田舎ビール種類不足の件 (a topic that I would like to raise now). Basically it is the “RE:” that you see (or used to see…has this died out?) in the subject lines for emails meaning “regarding such and such.” It’s an easy way to make your Japanese emailing more professional.
 

Friday Puzzle – This Picture is an Image, Clearly

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One of the central themes of this blog is that Japanese expression cannot be directly translated into English, and therefore rather than frustrating ourselves over constantly trying to translate, it’s more important to be able to “get used to” the circumstances for Japanese phrases.

This is one of my favorite Japanese phrases that illustrates the importance of “getting used to it”: 「この写真は、イメージです。」

The direct translation will give you something similar to the title of this post, but that is nowhere close to the actual meaning. To figure it out, let’s look at where the phrase is used.

Have you seen this before?:

Mmmm...fries

 

Take a step back and it looks like this:

Mmm...more food

Yep, it’s one of those hot foods vending machines from an expressway rest stop. The text is warning us – the onigiri birthed from the bowels of this machine will be nowhere near as tasty as they appear in this picture. (On another note, that shit is casual.)

So rather than translate this, what would you write on a vending machine like this in an English-speaking country? I’ll give a beer to the phrase I deem best. Depending on the responses, I may also give a beer for the funniest offering, so feel free to try your hand at both.

The prize if you win? One can of 100% barley malt beer – e.g. Ebisu, Suntory Malts, Asahi Premium.

Please do not post your answer in the comments. Send it to me via email or facebook. My email address is るぱんさんせい (romanized) at-mark gmail dot com.

Friday Puzzle – Somebody Farted Answer

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This puzzle is from three weeks ago. Sorry for the delay. The gesture is dismissive, and there are a few possible one-word answers that could go along with it. Here are a few I thought of:

違う（ちがう）- with this word you are actively correcting what another person said. What they said is wrong, and you are swatting it out of the air.

大丈夫　（だいじょうぶ）- this one is used to dismiss something unnecessary. It may or may not be wrong, but either way you are “alright” without it.

いい　– this word means “good,” of course, but I’ve written previously about its other meanings. Like 大丈夫, this dismisses something unnecessary.

In all the cases, the speaker would draw out the syllables for as long as he waves his hand. I wanted to make a video to show how this works but have had very little free time, so for now I’ll attempt to represent the intonation like so:

chigau → chiGAuuuu

daijoubu → DAIIIIjoubuu

ii → iiiiiiiiiiii

違う is most often used with the first facial expression – you’re angry that they are misunderstanding you. 大丈夫 and いい can probably be used with either, mostly the second, which was my attempt to represent surprise.

Only a few responses for this puzzle, but only Thomas kept his answers to single word responses. He offered 臭い, which I’ll accept, and だめ, which I think is strong but could also work. So, Thomas earns his second beer.

Airbag Expressions

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It’s easy to lose focus during language classes, especially once you’ve reached that level where the class is conducted exclusively in the target language. If you don’t maintain your concentration consistently, you’ll start to miss words here and there, the meaning of what the teacher is saying will start to fray, and eventually you’ll find yourself gazing out the window, wondering exactly why it is that airplanes don’t sink like stones.

My senior year Japanese professor was great at keeping everyone’s attention. She rotated between a variety of topics, even literature, and knew that to keep everyone’s attention it helps to be silly. I’ll never forget the way she played up her love for Yon-sama or the way she used to laugh whenever we said something silly. (On a quick, somewhat-related side note, nothing more effectively disarms and simultaneously entrances Japanese elementary school students than an English teacher who doesn’t care about looking or sounding like an idiot.)

One of the topics that she taught was “Airbag Expressions” (エアバッグ表現). This may be the single most useful thing I ever learned in a Japanese class.

Let me let that sink in…

THE SINGLE MOST USEFUL THING I EVER LEARNED IN CLASS!

She had a theory that requesting something of a Japanese person was the equivalent of a head-on collision; without deploying a proper linguistic buffer – the airbag – the Japanese person may be shocked beyond recovery, and it is unlikely you will ever get what you want.

She taught us a number of incredibly useful phrases that help warn Japanese people that you are about to ask for something and other ways to lighten the actual request itself. The two that I use most frequently are:　恐縮（きょうしゅく）ですが and （もし）ご迷惑（めいわく）でなければ、

恐縮 is a difficult word to translate into one word in English, so let’s look at the kanji themselves. 恐 means fear or awe, and 縮 means shrink, so when the speaker uses it, imagine him literally afraid of what he is going to ask for, shrinking away from the requestee. One of the nicest translation in English is “It’s terrible of me, but…” or “It’s terribly selfish of me, but…”

(There’s definitely an element of brushing away selfishness with the term; it’s often used as a response to heaps of praise: 「おめでとう！大変上手にできました」“Congratulations! You did a fantastic job” 「恐縮です」　“It was nothing.”)

So you could use it like so:

「恐縮ですが、来週の火曜日休ませていただいてよろしいですか。」

or

「恐縮ですが、ホチキスを貸してくださいませんか。」
(Although, maybe borrowing a stapler is not exactly weighty enough to call for a 恐縮.)

（もし）ご迷惑でなければ is a conditional clause. もし is not necessary, but it does help emphasize the fact that what you are about to say is conditional, and it reinforces the –ば. なければ seems confusing at first, but it’s just like あれば, really.

あれば = if something is/does X
なければ = if something is not/does not X

So, ご迷惑でなければ means, “If it isn’t a bother/trouble/problem…”

You can use this in almost identical situations as 恐縮, and you can even use them alongside each other:

「大変恐縮ですが、ご迷惑でなければ、推薦状を書いていただけませんでしょうか。」
“It’s terribly selfish of me to ask, but if it isn’t too much trouble, do you think you could write a recommendation for me?”

These are powerful expressions and should only be used for the most noble of purposes. Save them for a time when you need to make an extremely difficult request, one that might otherwise be denied. I am guilty of throwing these around too freely and have been trying to expand my set of エアバッグ表現 so that I have a larger selection to choose from. (「悪いですが、」, I choose you!)

Cool Kanji – 恐

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This kanji popped up in a post a couple weeks ago. It’s got 心 on the bottom, so you know it’s going to be some kind of emotion. Not sure exactly what the top means, but it’s pronounced きょう and おそれる（恐れる）and means fear, awe, frightening. It’s used in the always useful 恐縮, the awesomely-named Osorezan (恐山) up in Aomori Prefecture, and also in the word for dinosaur 恐竜, which has, I think, the same etymology as the word in English – terrible lizard/dragon. (Err…or is that the etymology of Tyrannosaurus?)

Cool.
 

Vacation

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I’m off this week showing some family and friends around Japan. I thought I’d have time to write, and I actually have prepared some posts, but I want to wait and check them over again before they go up, and there are two small kids that are in the group I’m showing around – I should be getting paid for this (oh wait, I am!). How to Japanese will continue as regularly scheduled next week. Look forward to next week (especially Wednesday).

Hint

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I generally use the title of the puzzle as, to borrow a term from Click and Clack, obfuscation. The puzzle has nothing to do with farting. If you’d like to resubmit, please do.

The puzzle is here. 

What a Cool We Are!

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I completely forgot to mention the meaning of めちゃx２イケテいる. イケテいる is a verb that means "cool." If something is in the state of being cool, it is イケテいる. めちゃめちゃ makes it stronger. Young people use it often either as めちゃ or めちゃめちゃ, for example めちゃ寒い – damn cold or maybe even fucking cold. The show translates this as "What a Cool We Are!" although "We are Damn Cool!" is much less Engrishy.

Mecha-ike YouTube Dregs

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I have sifted through the YouTube offerings for you and found a decent selection of old Mecha-ike clips.

This guy, this guy, and this guy have a ton of videos. 

爆走数取団 – Counting Biker Gang

One game they don’t play anymore is called  爆走数取団 (ばくそうかずとりだん). This was my favorite game for a long, long time. The male members of the cast dress up like biker thugs and play a counting game. The first person says an object, for example "books," and the next person has to use the appropriate counter to count that object, so 一冊. He would then say a different object, say "CDs," and the following person would count that, 二枚. This continues until someone makes a mistake, at which point they have to fight a sumo wrestler. Sweet game. I remember seeing part of this episode where Akiko Wada cried: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

And here is the always unpredictable Ega-chan versus the sumo: 1, 2. 

色取り忍者 – Irotori Ninja

They have replaced 数取り with 色取り. Here are three clips I made introducing the  色取り忍者 (Irotori Ninja) Game and showing how it can be played at elementary school: 1, 2, 3. Also, a funny clip introducing the guest ninjas for that episode.

オッファー – Offers 

Once a year Okamura and Yabe both get "offers" where they do other jobs. Yabe has worked at an onsen, in a pastry shop, and as a manager for a fashion model among other things. Okamura has performed with SMAP and EXILE. In the fourth offer, he performed with a Chinese juggling troupe: 1, 2, 3 … this goes on to 13, so you can find the rest yourselves. And here’s are clips from Okamura’s offer with EXILE, which was hugely popular: 1, 2.

抜き打ちテスト – Pop Quiz

One of the other famous bits they do is the 抜き打ちテスト（ぬきうちテスト, pop quiz), where they surprise all the participants by giving them a test. Then they make fun of the stupid answers and crown the バカ of the group. They have played this game with numerous different groups, most recently with イケメン guys. Here is the first one they did: 1, 2, 3, 4.

もっとも受ける芸人は誰！ – Who is the Funniest Comedian!? 

I don’t think I’ve seen this kind of episode live, but it’s called もっとも受ける芸人は誰！(もっともうけるげいにんはだれ!). All the members get a chance to make a target audience laugh. There are four different episodes, each divided into several videos:

1: 1, 2, 3, 4

2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 

4: 1, 2, 3, 4

笑わず嫌い王

This game is making fun of a game played by the manzai group とんねるず on one of their shows. They invite two celebrities and have them eat several dishes, one of which they hate. The other celebrity then has to guess which one the other didn’t like. This is similar, but they have to guess which comedian they didn’t like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

油谷さん – Mr. Oil-Valley 

Here is Yamamoto’s famous 油谷さん (Aburatani-san, Mr. Oil-Valley). He would grease himself up and surprise a male staff member on their birthday or near the birth of a child: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8(*), 9 (These clips are a little frightening knowing that he was kicked off the show in 2007 after being accused of statutory rape. The charges were dropped after reaching a settlement, but not before he lost all his regular appearances and contract with Yoshimoto Kogyo. I haven’t researched it at all, but I think they stopped playing the motorcycle counting game once he left. Ah, a quick check on wikipedia shows that I’m right.)

* I vividly remember learning the meaning of オギャー from this clip. オギャー is the sound a baby makes when it is born.

 

Cool Compound – 発散

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Television is a fantastic way to learn Japanese. My first year on JET, I spent two to three hours watching TV almost every evening and felt palpable improvement in my listening comprehension, which eventually spread to my speaking ability. I found a number of shows (mostly comedy) that I enjoyed and forced myself to watch the news twice a day.

The important thing is to channel surf and find something you enjoy watching.

My favorite show is Mecha-Mecha Iketeru! (めちゃ×2イケてるッ!). It’s a variety show led by the manzai combo of Takashi Okamura and Hiroyuki Yabe.

Here’s a clip where I learned a really cool compound. Listen for why Prime Minister Yabe likes to go out drinking (Excuse the poor subtitling. I did it a year ago for the Comedy portion of a Japanese pop culture presentation at JET Fukushima Orientation, and at the time I had little experience with iMovie.):

The phrase in question is 「ご発散（はっさん）みたいな感じ（かんじ）」, which is literally “A feeling like 発散.” 発散 means release, exude, vent, diffuse, exhale, et cetera. So a better translation is “Feels like blowing off some steam” or maybe “Feels nice to blow off some steam.” I took liberties to get it closer to something spoken and ended up with, “Blow off a little steam, ya know.”

I think a good usage of this term would be 発散として. So you could 発散として〜する。Do X to blow off a little steam. (The variable X, not the drug X, although I imagine that would exude all the steam you would ever want to exude.)

I also want to write a little about the bit itself, which is called 「矢部浩之の私が総理大臣になったら．．．秘書岡村」(Hiroyuki Yabe’s – If I Became Prime Minister… and Okamura Was My Secretary). Prime Minister Abe didn’t last very long, which is unfortunate because I really enjoyed this sketch. It was mainly a play on the similarity between names Yabe and Abe (Yabe even looks a little like Abe), but it is notable as one of the few political satires on Japanese TV.

It mocks:

– The way they put out a special edition of the newspaper (号外, “outside” the issue count) when a new Prime Minister is chosen.

– そのまんま東 (Sonomanma Higashi), the comedian who was elected governor of Miyazaki Prefecture. The newspaper reads そのまんまバカ, referring to Yabe, of course.

– The way the newly inaugurated Prime Minister stands with his cabinet on the steps of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in matching suits and is assaulted by thirty minutes of camera flashes.

– The way Japanese Prime Ministers give press conferences.

– A variety of political hot topics. (Which in this case is 事務所費問題, じむしょひもんだい, the misuse of business administration fees.)

It also makes fun of Abe himself. He was infamous for using 外来語 (がいらいご, words of foreign origin) and, I think, long, complex Japanese phrases. The skit suggests that he might have been throwing out these words to impress without understanding their meaning. In this episode, he hears 事務所費問題 and thinks only of 事務所, administrative office. He starts talking about his own (Yabe’s own) offices at Yoshimoto Kogyo (吉本興業 is a Japanese media conglomerate that hires and manages a lot of Japanese comedians), gets sidetracked, and just rambles about a time when he went drinking.

Mecha-ike performed this skit eight times total over five different shows. Each ends with Yabe improvising (judging by Kato and Mitsuura’s laughter, which seems genuine) a way of saying “I have no idea.” In this episode he says 「アイドンノーやね」.

(In other episodes they have him answer the question but stupidly, the way a parody of Bush would. The topic in one of the episodes was 美しい国創り, one of PM Abe’s catch phrases, and when asked what that meant, Yabe replied, “Hakone is beautiful, right? Let’s make it all like Hakone.”)

Mecha-ike has one other sketch that is somewhat satirical. They dress up as police officers and pretend to arrest celebrities for stupid reasons, making fun of the ineptitude of the Japanese police.

ONTV JAPAN is a great website to find out what’s on TV.