I’m in was in China for a week. Hopefully I’ll be able to publish these prewritten posts in a timely manner.

As a dedication to the Middle Kingdom, this week’s kanji is 中, pronounced ちゅう or なか.

A couple of very useful phrases with 中 are:

Xの中(なか)では、〜　Within/Among the category X,

行ったことある国の中では、日本が一番興味を持っています。
Of all the countries I’ve been to, I have the most interest in Japan.

X中(ちゅう) where X can be nearly any two-character compound that can act as a verb. For example:

実施中 (じっしちゅう) something is underway (e.g. a sale, campaign, experiment)
勉強中 (べんきょうちゅう) someone is studying
就職活動中 (しゅうしょくかつどうちゅう) someone is looking for a job
募集中 (ぼしゅうちゅう) someone is looking for something
受付中 (うけつけちゅう) reception is open for something (e.g. applications, orders)

This is a quick way to describe what state something or someone is in (“amidst” if you want to try and associate it with the 中). Another example: I am currently was 旅行中 and you are were 仕事中 (although this last one sounds slightly fishy to me).

As you all probably know, kanji were imported from China. At some point in time, Japan decided to organize some study abroad courses over in the Zhongguo, so scholarly type dudes, monks and shit, would go over and bring back cool stuff – tea, Buddhism, bureaucracy. Gradually through religious study and stuff, I think, kanji came into use by educated, political types (all men).

Hiragana and katakana developed later as abbreviated forms of kanji, although according to myth Kobo Daishi invented the former. (If there was ever a Chuck Norris figure in Japanese history, wouldn’t it have to be Kobo Daishi? We could say hilarious stuff like: Kobo Daishi pissed into the Lake of Japan and turned it into the Sea of Japan. Kobo Daishi sneezed and the Mongolians’ boats all capsized. Shikoku used to be the other way around until Kobo Daishi walked around that motherfucker so much that it did a 180.)

Japanese were not content to create only two other sets of characters. They also created a bunch of kanji that don’t exist in Chinese. These are collectively referred to as 国字（こくじ）, and this week’s kanji is one of those – 峠（とうげ）. It means mountain pass, I think. It’s definitely some feature of mountainous terrain but probably has a few translations in English.

It always makes me think of Aizu-Bange because that last little hill between Yanaizu and Aizu-Bange, that stretch with several sad little inaka love hotels, is called 七折峠（ななおりとうげ）- Seven Folds Pass. Yesterday I drove by Bandai-Atami and on the outskirts between Atami and Inawashiro there was a love hotel named ホテル峠, so perhaps the word 峠 is associated with a hidden space created by mountains, an area perfect for devious activities.

(In addition to 国字, there are 国訓（こっくん）, characters where the meaning in Japanese differs from the original Chinese, and 幽霊文字（ゆうれいもじ）, “ghost” characters that have no pronunciation or meaning at all. Mistakes will be made. In many languages.)

I’m in Tokyo now, so just a quick post. I’ve always thought that 上京（じょうきょう） is one of the coolest two character compounds. Can you figure out what it means? I’ll give you a few blank lines to figure it out.

Get it yet?

Still no luck?

Okay, it means “go to Tokyo” or “go to Kyoto.” Literally it means “go up to the capital (implied: from our measly little backwater swamp town).” Back in the day said capital was Kyoto. Now it’s Tokyo, so if you use it now, it means go to Tokyo. Ta da.

(Funny that you 上がる to the Kanto Plain.)

I learned this kanji in Tokushima at a jazz bar. It was a bar in one of those buildings with several different bars packed onto each floor. A man got on the elevator just before I did and held the door for me. Turns out he was going to the same bar I was. There was hardly anyone in the bar – only a few others who turned out to be the band that was playing that night – so we talked for a while, and he told me how surprised he was that I ended up going into the same bar he did. It also happened that he owned a bar himself, so he invited me to stop by and booze a bit the next night. He said that the random chance that we went into the same bar was 何かの縁, which I like to translate as “some kind of connection/fate.” The usage is with 〜ある, so 何かの縁がある.

It has a host of other meanings – relation, connection, ties, fate, destiny, marriage, conjugal relations, chance. A very multifaceted kanji. It has the thread thingy on the left and reminds me of 緑（みどり）　and 豚（ぶた）.

One of the simplest usages is 縁を結ぶ (えんをむすぶ) – to form a connection with.

The 新明解 (しんめいかい), a famous Japanese dictionary, lists the fate definition as the first one and also notes that it comes from Buddhist philosophy. It gives two examples:

前世の縁（ぜんせのえん）- a connection with/to a past life

妙な縁で彼に会う（みょうなえんでかれにあう）-  (I/he/she/they/we) meet him by a strange turn of fate

This kanji has to be high on the list of most underrated kanji. This is one of the ones that you learn early on (due to the fact that it’s in the word for number – 番号) but never fully appreciate until you get to the intermediate/advanced stages of study. That’s the point where you start to hear ごう interspersed throughout all different sorts of conversations.

For example, I have very vivid memories of the feeling I had when someone first said to me, 「よんじゅうきゅうごうせんにのって、ひがしへいって．．．」I give it to you in hiragana so that you can experience it as I did. “ごう?” I remember thinking to myself and then it came to me, 「４９号線に乗って、東へ行って．．．」It was marking the road number.

Being able to use this kanji appropriately will make you sound much more natural in Japanese. People would understand you if you said just 49, the number of the highway that runs East to West from Iwaki to Niigata, but it’s far more natural to add 号線.

Here are some more useful compounds:

〜（番）号室    Room number (I believe the 番 is optional)

〜号棟        Building number (one of several buildings)

〜号車    Car number (of a train – check your next shinkansen ticket and you’ll see this)

〜号        Used for names of ships (e.g. the Titanic – タイタニック号 – or the Colombia space shuttle – コロンビア号)

００７号        Special Agent double oh seven

号外    Special edition of a newspaper (literally “outside the standard count”)

称号（しょうごう）degree, as in BA (文学士の) or BS (理学士の), which seem to be shortened to 学士号 frequently

This is also one of the very first kanji I made a mental image for to help me remember it. Allow me to show off my Photoshop skills:

Give it a hat.

Then a jaw.

A crazy eyeball.

Flappy tongue.

And some flecks of spit and, voila, you have yourself a drill sergeant.

“MOVE YOU FUCKING MAGGOTS! GO! GO! GO! GO!”

And now you will never forget that this kanji is pronounced ごう.
 

One of the most difficult things about learning another language can be finding an easy way to express ideas that seem simple in your mother tongue. It can be frustrating to learn that there isn’t a one-to-one ratio for every English adjective and verb.

One of the parts of Japanese that seems especially complicated is the four-character compound (四字熟語、よじじゅくご). This is because they are often idiomatic (一石二鳥、いっせきにちょう), and many idioms don’t translate as neatly as those poor dead birds.

I just learned one recently that’s very easy to remember and expresses what seems like a comparatively simple concept in English. 疑心暗鬼（ぎしんあんき）means paranoid. It’s often used like an adjective (彼は疑心暗鬼だ。) or in combination with ～になる（疑心暗鬼になる。）.

Here’s the character by character breakdown:

疑 – suspicious, doubtful
心 – heart
暗 – dark
鬼 – monster

It isn’t the official way to say paranoia (which is 被害妄想、ひがいもうそう), so it can also be translated as “suspicious,” “wary,” or “fearful,” but it’s by far the coolest way to express this idea.

Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (“The Green Goddess”) provides a most excellent translation – “Fear peoples the darkness with monsters.”

This is one of my all time favorite kanji. I first learned it in Beppu where they have these things they call “hells.” They are like onsen but much hotter and are different colors. There’s a dozen or so of them and they vary in terms of respectability. The worst one houses something like 100 alligators. They’re all cooped up, piled on top of each other and forced to swim in their own shit all day long. There’s a sign that says something stupid like, “Hot springs provide a tropical atmosphere perfect for raising crocodiles!” Boo.

The kanji itself, though, is great. It’s fish on the left and then that thingy on the right, which I always recognize from the word for jaw – 顎. So, you can remember it as a fish with a big-ass jaw – alligator. It almost looks like the part on the right is trying to eat the fish part…as a crocodile would.