Category Archives: get used to it!

More Warning Signs

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I spent the last couple of months apartment hunting in Tokyo. At first I hoped to get my own apartment, but after realizing that would require an initial payment of $3000 plus to an agency, I started to look for a roomshare.

Fortunately, there are some nice websites out there. I replied to several ads and even put up one of my own. I ended up exchanging a lot of emails with Japanese people, and the thing that surprised me was that in nearly all cases, they began mails with 「last nameです」 or 「first nameです」, so 「田中です」 or 「洋平です」 This continued no matter how many emails we exchanged, which I thought was weird at first. Of course I knew who the person was. Did they really think I had forgotten?

I eventually started thinking of it in terms of airbag phrases; it’s just a polite way to begin a Japanese email, a warning sign of sorts, one that’s used on the phone as well. Does it require a translation or easily identifiable English equivalent? Hell no. Get used to it.

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.

小学校卒業式 Bonus Post – かわいそう

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Today was the graduation / term end ceremony at elementary schools across Japan. A class of fourth graders who I’ve taught for the past three years made me a book of notes. My favorite comment so far is the following, from one of my favorite little kids who is a legendary banana thief:

「ダニエル先生は、せが高くていいけど、小さいところに、はいれなくてかわいそうですね。」

かわいそう is a phrase that I remember hearing for a long, long time before I ever really got a sense of what it meant. I remember thinking, Is this person really saying that person is cute? Well, clearly that’s not what it means.  (For any kanji students taking notes: かわいい = 可愛い ; かわいそう = 可哀想 or 可哀相; and, yes, you actually see shit like that in shosetsu).

It’s a difficult phrase to translate into English, and it often ends up as words like pathetic, piteous, miserable, or wretched, all of which seem far to harsh. This is a situation where it’s useful to consult a Japanese dictionary and check the definition in Japanese.
    
That gives us:

弱い立場や逆境に在る者に対して、出来るなら何とか救ってやりたいと思う様子。

I’ll tell you right away, I have no idea what 逆境 means (although I did know the pronunciation – ぎゃっきょう), but it doesn’t really matter – the basic meaning comes through. It is being in the state of feeling as though you want to help someone in a weak or 逆境 position if possible.

Now, rather than finding a specific word to translate it into, what would you say in English if you were feeling like that and decided to vocalize these feelings? I can think of at least one:

“Aww…that poor little puppy.”

“Poor” would be listed as one of the possible translations, but I think the tone of the sentence would better express the meaning of かわいそう – a tone that would express sympathy and an honest desire to help the puppy. And I’m not referring to the tone of this sentence if it were being said by a person in the military about to throw the puppy off a cliff. That would most definitely not be かわいそう. That would be pathetic and miserable.

So this sentence really means something like this:

“It’s great that Daniel-sensei is tall, but it’s too bad he can’t fit into small places.”

かわいそう is a great way to express true sympathy for something you feel for. It definitely has a bit of wabi-sabi wrapped up into it, which makes it even more expressive. Plus, it’s hilarious that I can’t fit into small spaces.