aramusha — reckless-behaving person, daredevil, rude-mannered samurai
This was part of the headline on a recent Sumo monthly magazine, which featured a picture of Yokozuna Asashoryu after he won the recent Natsu Basho. Asashoryu had upset many sumo fans, and the Japan Sumo Association, with his disrespectful and un-Yokozuna like behavior after a losing performance in one of his tournament matches. There were actually two headlines on the cover of the magazine, the other reading tsukisusumu, which means “to push forward with force or vigor.” However, the aramusha headline was in bigger font.
tanshinfunin — to commute over a long distance
An example would be living in Hokkaido but working in Tokyo, perhaps flying home on the weekends. This particular example was the plight of a student I interviewed recently, who flew home once a week to see his wife and two young children in Sapporo.
futsukayoi — hangover
It’s funny how you can study a language for the longest time and never come across certain words or expressions seemingly essential to one’s vocabulary. This is such an entry. I didn’t learn it on account of having one myself (at least recently); actually, I can’t remember the why’s and wherefore’s of how I picked this up. But I’m sure it’ll come in handy one of these days. I love the fact that a literal translation of the word would read something like “drunk on the second day.”
uwasa o sureba… — speak of the devil…
I heard a student utter this when I walked into the classroom recently. I grilled her on what she had said and what it meant, but she was unable to explain the meaning in English. But she insisted it had positive connotations. Later when looking it up I of course realized it only has positive connotations depending on what was being said before it was uttered. uwasa on its own means “rumor” or “gossip.”
suisui — swimming smoothly, unhindered
rakuraku — comfortably, easily
These were both used in an train advertisement for monorail service to Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
netto shinjuu — internet-assisted suicide
A new term, found in the “Changing Japanese” section of a recent Japan Times newspaper (each Thursday’s edition features Japanese lessons and related articles on the language). netto means “Internet,” and shinju means “double suicide” or a suicide committed with others. This term is an outgrowth of the recent spate of group suicides involving people who met through Internet sites.
fuan — anxiety, unease
I was watching one of the weekend sports shows and they had a very long segment on Japanese baseball’s Hanshin Tigers, who from the sound of it are the Chicago Cubs of Japanese baseball. In other words, they haven’t won a penant in a very long time (well, since 1985 at least). This year, at least at this point, almost halfway through the season, the Tigers lead their division by 9 games, with arch-rivals Yomiurui Giants in second. But Hanshin traditionally starts strong, and then goes into the tank in the second half of the season. They did this last year. Thus, Hanshin fans right now are full of fuan, or unease, that their lead will not hold up. fuan rendered in katakana script means “fan, ” ironically enough.
Definitions were garnered from my Canon Wordtank 3000 (which uses the New Anchor Japanese-English Dictionary), and Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC (and the Japan Times, where noted). I’m pretty much flying solo these days with respect to my language learning, so I would be ever so grateful if those with a better grasp of the language than I, could contribute, via comments, to this post. I.e., if I’ve gotten something wrong, or there are alternative ways to say the above, or additional meanings that would be relevant, etc., please add a comment so I and other learners don’t stray too far down the wrong path. Thanks!
I learned fuan when I was studying the kanji for “fu” (which I think of as the “un”-kanji). It’s one of my favorite Japanese words because if you say it with an un-Japanese accent, it sounds very Chinese–or as if you’re saying “Well, phoo[ey] on you!” It’s become a mainstay in our family lexicon, but I’m sure that no Japanese person would understand the way we pronounce it or use it in conversation. I’d love to encounter it in its natural setting. Is it actually pronounced “fan”, “fawn”, or “fu-on”?
re: internet suicide, here is a recent and very disturbing article on the topic…what stuck in my mind most is the idea of flying thousands of miles to meet somebody from online and then to go ahead and kill each other.
denshobato – carrier pigeon
shigosen – prime meridian
kanatoko – anvil
The last one you can stump Japanese natives with, because anvils do not feature in Japanese cartoons. If you pantomime using a kanazuchi (hammer) to shape something on an anvil, Japanese people will get it, but usually not know the name for the anvil, im my experience.
The “yoi” of futsukayoi means drunk and/or motion sick (funayoi=seasickness). Which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Same baaad feeling.
Check out the little “Eijiro on the Web” dictionary search engine at http://www.alc.co.jp and type in “yoi” in kanji. Highly entertaining results.
I guess I can see that “uwasa o sureba…” is translated as “speak of the devil”. I’m only guessing but as it literally means “if you tell a lie…” then I’m guessing a more correct translation is “if you speak ill of someone … they’ll suddenly appear” which I guess is kind of how “speak of the devil” works as well.
A few tips for studying. One of the best online dictionaries is here.
http://www.alc.co.jp
Far more entries and examples than WWWJDIC although JDIC has a name and place dictionary which I think no other dictionary has.
You can purchase http://www.ALC.co.jp the dictionary database for home / PDA use. It’s only like $15. The software to use the dictionary is up to you. There is one called “Personal Dictionary (PDIC)” for Windows and WinCE. I’m sure there are others.
Another thing you might want to consider is a Pocket PC. As Pocket PCs (Windows CE) machines have pen based Kanji input they are great for looking up Kanji and being small computers you can install many dictionaries on them. Including PDIC, JDIC, and a bunch of others. It’s relatively expensive to get all setup but you can at least start looking up kanji without having to know how to say it first.
http://greggman.com/japan/ce/ce.htm
Just a thought.
gregg-
thanks for your advice, i’ve always found your japanese related posts at greggman very helpful.
I don’t know, but for some reason I find the ALC site user unfriendly. Perhaps I just need to get used to it. one thing, it’s geared, obviously towards Japanese users learning English. So, for example if I enter てかてか (in hiragana), I get “no entries found.” If I enter テカテカ (in katakana), I get what I was looking for. A Japanese would know to enter it in katakana at first go, whereas I don’t know that. WWWJDIC accepts my hiragana input for this particular entry and gives me back the word in katakana with the english translation. But as it’s geared to English speaking users of Japanese, this isn’t surprising.
What I find with ALC is that it’s about the same as my Canon Wordtank, which is also made for Japanese learning English. That said, I’m interested in the ALC database. I wonder what dictionary they’re drawing from, or is it their own proprietary dictionary. I will say that all of the *good* Japanese learning books I have are from ALC, and I wouldn’t have passed L3 of the JLPT without their mondaishuu.
Pocket PC, oh don’t tempt me! I don’t need yet another toy in my life. Actually, the Canon’s downfall is it’s Kanji lookup (is their any denshijisho that uses Halpern’s SKIP method?), so utterly frustrating. I would love to be able to lookup via drawing out the character. I do have an old palm, which I used to use King Kanji on (a kanji flashcard program). Have any of these pocket pc kanji handwriting programs been ported to the Palm?
oh, btw, I knew that uwasa o sureba translated to “if you speak ill of someone … they’ll suddenly appear”, but I don’t think any English speaker would say that in conversation, so I thought “speak of the devil” was more appropriate. I think “speak of the devil” was originally from a 17th century proverb “talk of the devil and he’s sure to appear”, so they are quite similar. I would love to know the etymology behind the japanese expression.
M– re: fuan, I would say it’s pronounced “fu-on”, or perhaps better “fu-awn”. I’m not sure but I think when referring to “fan” (eg. baseball fan), the pronunciation is shorter.