Category Archives: casual

Chillin’ Out

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After two straight weekends of awesome globetrotting madness, I finally had a weekend to myself and could make use of a couple of terms my host mom in Nishiaizu taught me:

骨を休め – literally “rest one’s bones,” take a physical rest

羽を伸ばす – literally “spread one’s wings,” a similar pattern but also includes a mental rest aspect, and another alternative is…

鬼の居ぬ間に洗濯をする – literally “do laundry while the oni is away,” where oni = unpleasant boss-like person/situation that oppresses you

Get the scoop on these and other idioms at this awesome ことわざ dictionary.

Uncool Compound – 複面 (Updated)

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fukumen

The Japanese are a curious set of folks. Endlessly courteous and patient in most normal circumstances, when they get behind the wheel, they are transformed into vicious tailgating demons. Yes, this is a blanket statement and I realize that it’s not exactly fair, but after spending three years driving every day in this country, I feel qualified to make the claim that Japanese drivers are at least creative with their interpretations of traffic laws. Red lights don’t really count for the first couple seconds. The speed limits are actually 30km faster than actually posted. Hazard lights instantly make any location a parking space.

One of the funniest things is the highway patrol cars. Because they aren’t the police, they don’t have the authority to give out tickets, so they drive their SUVs at the speed limit (generally 80km/h) with lights flashing, suggesting that drivers slow down. People zip around them at speeds up to 150km/h.

The actual police drive unmarked white cars. There are a couple signs that give them away. One, there are always two guys in the car. Two, the guys are always wearing helmets – no joke. And three, there are two rearview mirrors, one for each of the dudes. Japanese refer to these guys as 複面 (ふくめん), 面 referring to the flat plane of a mirror, and 複 doubling it. These dudes mean business, and everyone knows this. If you ever come across a single line of cars going the speed limit in the left lane, more than likely one of these unmarked cars is at the front of the line; best to follow along until the 複面 exits, at which point everyone speeds up again. It’s hilarious to watch some drivers speed past everyone, realize they just passed the cops, quickly move to the left, and then slam on the brakes.

I believe this blog post has one of the few photos of a 複面 (and proof that I wasn’t just hearing things when a friend explained this to me). The caption above the photo of cars says that the driver was warned by a 複面 over a microphone.

Update:

Oops. Looks like I messed up here. I my defense, I swear that a friend taught me the set of kanji above. I vividly remember his explanation and writing down the kanji in a notebook…that I am not able to locate at the moment. *gulp* Also in my defense, a Google search that reveals 複面パトカー is a somewhat uncommon input mistake. Not nonexistent, though.

As Gulab has noted in the comments, the correct kanji is 覆面. Here, let me make that enormous for you:

truefukumenBooyah. As he noted, it means concealed or, in this case, unmarked. Thanks, Gulab. Sorry it took me so long to update this post!

Ode to っ

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smalltsu

Tokyo Damage Report has a nice post taking a look at the 小さいつ and all its different roles. Very interesting stuff. He breaks it down into four categories. I’ll switch them up a bit:

3. Contractions. Put two kanji together, and often the sound between the characters gets contracted. Uninteresting, as he notes.

4. Emphasis. Now we start to get interesting. People add an extra syllable into words like とても and よほど to emphasize them. In English we tend to draw out vowels for emphasis, but in Japanese they hover on that moment riiiiiight at the beginning of the consonant and then hit that fucker with a wicked staccato. This theory works in the next two sets.

1. Onomatopoeia/り. I’m not sure that these words sound exactly like their actions (Is it possible to “sound” like “looking very similar,” which is what そっくり means? Although, maybe it is possible. Maybe the Japanese are just hyper-aware of the sounds of different actions. I guess they do have way more noises than English. Hmm…), but they are at least more aurally interesting than your average word. They also extend on the emphasis theory. The number of superlatives in the group is impressive. One I picked up from a friend is ごっつい, which I think means “huge.” I wonder if there are any XっXり words that haven’t been taken by meanings yet. Get ’em quick before some domain-name squatter can.

2. と. I believe all of the words in this category are adverbs, whereas the words in the り category can actually be verbs themselves. I guess that proves と is a nearly universal marker of adverb-ness? Again these are used to modify verbs and make them even more extreme.

I think the best way to get used to these is to not study them on their own; they almost always work with other verbs, and you should pick one or two for each pattern. Generally they only work with a very limited range of verbs anyway. さっぱり, for example, is used almost exclusively with 忘れる or 分からない, implying a complete blankness of mind.

The other trick is to figure out which ones work on their own (ばっちりです！ そっくりです！) and which ones work with する (すっきりした！ ).

Great stuff. My personal favorites are ばっちり (with uncomfortably dorky thumbs up), そっくり (I am ルパン) and こっそり (eating onigiri on the train).

Cool Prefix – ド

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do

I can’t remember when I started noticing ド on TV, but whenever it was, the meaning was quickly apparent: people on TV, mostly comedians, use it as a prefix for nouns to emphasize the extremity of that noun. To be honest, I can’t even remember which usages I saw on TV. So it’s kind of a miracle, one of those language-learning miracles, that I am able to use it at all. What’s more, I believe I use it in ways that I’ve never even heard before. ド田舎 (the fuggin boonies) is probably my favorite, as it describes my pre-Tokyo Japan experience. ド真ん中 (right in the fuggin middle) is another good one.

I took it upon myself to look into the origins of the term and found this awesome blog post. Apparently ド級 referred to the dreadnought class of English battleship. Ships built later were referred to as 超ド級. But ど was used as a prefix in the Kansai area long before 1906 when the HMS Dreadnought first entered service. At some point they must have become interchangeable.

Google is an interesting way to look into the usage patterns here. Here are some of the results:

“ドM”              1,370,000
“ド田舎”         1,350,000
“ド素人”         973,000
“ど素人”         968,000
“ドS”               905,000
“ど真ん中”     786,000
“ド迫力”         428,000
“ど根性”         367,000
“ド真ん中”     238,000
“どM”              167,000
“ド根性”         151,000
“ど田舎”         147,000
“どまんなか” 134,000
“どS”               93,500
“ドアホ”         92,500
“ど迫力”         62,000
“どアホ”         21,500
“ドバカ”         2300
“ド高い”         2270
“どバカ”         1720
“ど馬鹿”         1670
“ド馬鹿”         1530
“ど暑い”         1500
“ど熱い”         870
“ドまんなか” 691
“ド熱い”         686
“ド暑い”         668
“ドうまい”     506
“ド上手い”     317
“ド厚い”         243
“ドかっこいい”  217
“ド危ない”         144
“ド格好いい”     85
“ドかっこういい”     0

(Searches from June 23, 2009)

Immediately interesting to me is that ド田舎 gets a TON of hits. I swear I never saw that one on TV. The other interesting thing to note is that there is almost no pattern of frequency between ド and ど; in some cases ド gets more hits but in the other cases ど gets more. On TV, I’ve only ever seen the katakana version, most likely because it is more angular and therefore seems harsher/funnier than ど. The only firm correlation is that ど・ド + noun is much more common that ど・ド + adjective.

M and S refer to masochistic and sadistic, two not-necessarily-sexual personality traits that the Japanese use. Put simply, M means you are more passive, and S means you are more aggressive.

Needless to say, this is an extremely casual phrase. I’m a big fan and try to throw it out there on occasion, but I’ll probably be less likely to use it now that I know it’s Kansai-ben. Don’t want to be one of those foreigners.

That first ド wasn’t big enough. Lemme try again:

bigdo

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

すごい <--> 非常に

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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.

More Negative Thoughts

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Thinking about 遠慮 and かもしれない has also made me wonder recently whether or not the へん from the Kansai dialect plays a similar role.

For those who don’t know, the Kansai dialect is prevalent in and around Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. One of the major features of the dialect is changing negative ending from ない to へん like this:

できない    　→   できへん
わからない 　→   わからへん

There’s more detailed information here, but the site makes no mention of why exactly they do this or how it came about. I’m sure there are longer, more extensive reasons it developed that way, but it’s interesting that the dialect has what is essentially a ない-replacer.

The Dude Never Dies – The Big Lebowski in Japanese

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I wrote for Let’s Go Japan during the summer of 2003. There were five or six of us writing that summer, and we all flew in to Tokyo before heading out in different directions. I went to Kamakura, Yokohama and Nagoya before heading to Shikoku, where I spent most of my two-month itinerary.

At first I was disappointed about being assigned to such a rural place; I’d only been to Japan once before and had only been able to spend a week or so in Tokyo, so I felt like I was missing out. Only later would I know how lucky I was to spend a month traveling around the highly underrated Shikoku, half of that with the refreshing freedom of a car.

While the landscape was breathtaking and the people were friendly, moving from town to town every day or two quickly became lonesome. I called the office a lot, called home a lot, and fortunately a Bulgarian friend in Nagoya hooked me up with some downloads to help me distract myself. He gave me a couple anime series and a movie or two, but I spent most of my time watching The Big Lebowski, which I’d been a fan of since renting it in ’98. Honestly, that summer alone I must’ve watched Lebowski a dozen times at least. I knew all the ins and outs of the film and even felt some 運命ness; there’s a Townes VanZandt version of the song “Dead Flowers” towards the end of the film, and a vinyl record bar I went to in Nagoya played a couple songs from Sticky Fingers.

(Did you know that in the dream sequence when the Dude gets knocked out by Maude’s goons, you can see that Maude was the one who rolled the ball?

)

So, equipped with a Region 2 DVD player, I’ve taken it upon myself to check out the localization of the movie. A couple weekends ago I watched it – twice. Once with the English language track and Japanese subtitles, and then again with the Japanese dubbing. This may not be a surprise to those familiar with Japan’s movie industry, but the dubbed version was notably better.

Not that the translation of the subtitles was poor. Not being a native speaker, I can’t speak for it completely, but in my biased opinion, it was good and caught a lot of the nuances of the film, even getting laughs out of my Japanese roommates.

But the dubbed translation itself was more accurate and creative. For example, when the Big Lebowski grills the Dude for fucking up the bag drop, the Dude says “We (おれたち) did drop the money,” eliciting a “We?” The subtitles are fairly 文字通り, getting close enough to the Dude’s “royal we” excuse, but the dubbed version goes with some creative Japanese: 「おれっち。言うでしょう？地方なんか行くと。」

The dubbed version does have a major advantage – time. As with subtitles in any language, you have to allow time for the viewer to read and comprehend the line, and when you have a movie with quick dialogue, it’s difficult to capture the feel with subtitles alone. Additionally, the fact that much of the dialogue in this movie is simultaneous makes the subtitles especially ineffective. You can hear the Japanese voices trying to speak over each other in the dubbed version, really helping express Walter’s frustration with Donny.

It also helped that the voice acting was absolutely impeccable; the accuracy with which the voice actors arranged their lines over Jeff Bridges’ and John Goodman’s mouthing was nothing short of incredible, and all of the give and take was more accurately portrayed with the dubbing.

But even the dubbed version misses parts of the critical element that really brings the film together – the role of discourse.

In the very first scene at the grocery store, President Bush on the screen drops the line “This aggression will not stand,” which the Dude later recycles when he confronts the Big Lewbowski. (“I do mind. The Dude minds. This will not stand…ya know. This aggression will not stand, man.”) The dubbed version catches this, reusing 侵攻／侵略 and variations of 許さない, but the subtitled version misses it.

Both miss the Dude’s final line of the movie, “The Dude abides.” This line the Dude recycles from when he was confronted by the Big Lebowksi – “I will not abide another toe.” The subtitled version uses ご免 and the dubbed 許さん for the first scene. In the final scene, the subtitled version has the cowboy say 「元気でな。気をつけて。」to which the Dude responds,

Whereas in the dubbed version the Dude responds with a less intrusively translated 「それがヂュードだし」 to 「気軽にやるんだよ。言うまでもないか。」 Neither relays the idea that the Dude has borrowed terminology yet again.

So what’s the point? The point is that The Big Lebowski is a subtly political film that shows the infectious role of discourse in society and how that discourse is often misrepresentation that leads to innocent victims. Unfortunately, the Japanese subtitles and dubbing don’t fully express this underlying theme of discourse, although I did learn the awesome curse word くそ食らえ.

Take it (for me)

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取ってください。

I steadfastly refused to believe that phrase existed for a long time. I’m not sure why. I think there was a barrier somewhere in my head blocking the logic connection. Getting used to it helped remove that barrier, and now I’m cool.

取る (とる) is often used with “take” verb patterns. Take vacation, take time, etc. So I think that prevented me from realizing that while it does mean take something (in this case, whatever object you are pointing at / put before it with を), but it also means “and give it to me.” Altogether it means “pass.” It’s one of those patterns you learn your first year in class, but for some reason I never got used to it until now. Maybe it has something to do with sharing a small apartment between a large number of people – it’s easier to pass things than to forever shuffle around すみませんing.

With friends you can say the casual 〜を取って, but make sure to add the ください at the office or with people significantly older than you.

I logged this entry under passive. Get it?