Further Yo-ji Resources

Most of the time we try to do one of two things when posting yo-ji, hyougen. kotowaza, and other cool stuff:

1. We post something that we learned in conversation with Japanese people. We usually have a story to go along with it, might be able to relate it directly to our lives, we don't have to look up how to use it, and we can rest assured in the fact that it will be useful to us and to our readers because native-speakers use it.

2. We try to post something that lends itself to interesting cultural or historical content: a lot of times we'll look for phrases that are seasonally relevant, or have fascinating origins in Japanese (Chinese) history that will help us and our readers impress people with the range of our knowledge.

But sometimes we run dry, and we have to go yo-ji fishing. When that happens, here's what we use, and now with a little cash and some Amazon.co.jp, you can use them too.

「四字熟語」これだけ辞典
The Yojijukugo "All you need" Encylopedia
published by Escargot Books



This is something I inherited from 大づの先生, the most senior 国語先生 at Kawasoe-Chuugakko. My copy still has his name written down the spine. Sometimes I think he gave it to me so I'd stop asking him what stuff meant all the time. As you can see, it's very, very dense, but all-encompassing, with over 1700 四字熟語 and their definitions contained in its pages. Does not feature example sentences.

小学四字熟語ことわざ慣用句問題集
Grade School level: Commonly Used Yojijukugo and Proverb Workbook
published by さし書房


　 　 　
I lost the cover to my copy a while ago. This was the first yo-ji book I ever bought, and is still the easiest to use. The Japanese is easy to understand. The definitions are illustrated with pictures that... I guess they could be clearer, but they could also be more obscure. Also doesn't feature example sentences, but it does have quizzes where you have to choose the right saying for the situation or match the definition, etc. Pretty useful.

ことわざ・四字熟語に強くなる！
Increase Your Proverb and Yojijukugo Power!
published by 世界文化社



My yo-ji mentor, Otao-san, uses this book. It's like the Japanese equivalent of a book containing anecdotes or jokes or techniques or quotations to be used in speeches. It contains in-depth explanations of thousands of phrases, examples of the 使い方 for many of them, and is organized into sections based on theme: "Proverbs related to success," "Proverbs for when you're lost," "Yo-ji related to society and nature," and the very broad "Yo-ji related to life" (to name a few). It also has a running sidebar that's like a "On This Day in Japanese History," section. I haven't really looked at that much. Lot of people's names, written in kanji.

教科書によくでる四字熟語2009カレンダー
Textbook Yojijukugo 2009 Wall Calendar
published by 旺文社




Last but not least, I got this calendar as a house-warming present from the very same Otao-san. I find it extremely comforting because it only features three yo-ji a week, and if a Japanese publishing company can't put out more than that, The Daily Yo-ji's not doing so bad after all. It's designed so that elementary school students can also use it (all kanji glossed), which makes it easy to use in the bathroom where, unless you're Brett, you probably don't bring your electronics with you. And yes, I was given explicit instructions to hang it in my bathroom. When I laughingly promised to comply saying, 「毎日読まれるようにね,」 Otao-san corrected me by saying, 「毎日より、毎回！」

Book Review: 日本語能力試験 実力アップ Series

People ask from time to time where we get the numbered grammar points from our Tuesday 2級 Grammar sections, so I thought I'd take up some trivia space today and recommend my favorite books.

The 日本語の力試験　実力アップ (JLPT Efficiency UP!) Series is what got me through 3級 with absolutely no problems whatsover, so I figured I'd go for it again this time around. I like it because they're written almost entirely in Japanese, so you have no recourse, no shortcuts...

It's sad, I guess, but growing up in the American school system I learned that the best way to pass tests is not to study the material, but to study the tests themselves. You'd think that knowing Japanese would be enough, but I believe it's actually better to know HOW and what the test is going to ask you. Do a couple of practice tests, and you pick up on patterns; you know what tricks to expect. These books are great for that.

For 3級 there was a book of grammar with practice questions to check your comprehension, and a list of the required kanji in the back. Add to that a book of two mock examinations, and you're all set. The gap between 3級 and 2級 however, is VAST, as you can see by the fact that the same series prints 4 separate books to prepare for 2級: Grammar, Listening, Reading, and Kanji/Vocab.



The Grammar book lists 191 grammar points, each with easy to understand explanations and example sentences, interspersed with practice questions.

The Listening book has drills to help you hear the difference in pronunciations (some that are extremely helpful, like the difference between 8日　(ようか) and 4日 (よっか) and some that are kind of unnecessary, like when じゃない means "isn't it?" and when じゃない means "it isn't." But the main focus of the book is tons and tons of practice for the two types of listening questions on the actual test: those with pictures and those without. It provides lots of helpful hints about things to listen for. On the 3級 test, for example, students listened to a man ordering his coffee and was then asked to describe how he liked it. He ordered by saying 「砂糖をいれずに」 even though 「～ずに」 is a 2級 grammar point. The practice book prepares you for these kind of things.

The Kanji book is my favorite so far. It starts by teaching you kanji that share radicals like (注、柱、駐、主、and, 住) and once you're done with seventy some pages of those, it moves on to kanji that share readings, like (表す、現す、and 著す). I'm about half-way done with this book, practicing by writing them out on flash cards and and then practicing in the same kanji notebooks my elementary school kids use. The better I get at production, the better I get at recognition, which I practice by reading the example sentences provided in the book.

I haven't yet started the Reading book; I'm waiting to finish the Kanji and Grammar, but it seems to be largely the same idea as the Listening. Drill after drill mixed up with tips on what to expect.

And when you're all done with that, there's the same set of practice tests that came with 3級.

If you're planning on taking any of the JLPT tests, you've got about four full months left now. How are you studying?

Book Review: 水木しげるの妖怪事典

As promised yesterday, I'm back with more info about the cool new book I got!

I know I've mentioned it before, but I study in waves. When I'm in the mood to study, I burn through Kanji like nobody's business. When I'm not in the mood to study though, I pretty much just lay on my tatami for a month and a half... like nobody's business.

So one of the biggest challenges for me is finding things to help me study that don't feel like studying.

From what I understand, the reading portions of the 2kyuu JLPT can get pretty brutal, so I've gotten in the habit of picking up books in Japanese that look like the kind of stuff I'd be interested in anyway. I know a lot of people who use manga to practice like this. I recommend doing that too, although I personally find myself more likely to skip words I don't know if I can tell what's going on because of the pictures.

This book, though, is perfect for me. Only one picture per page with a nice block of accompanying text explanation, it catalogs the demons and ghosts of Japan without coming off too encyclopedia-esque. The writer, Mizuki Shigeru, is known for being the creator of the popular manga and anime ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (GeGeGe no Kitarou), but is also considered THE leading expert/master of the 妖怪 (youkai: spirits, ghosts, etc) world. Try buying a book about 妖怪 that's NOT written by him. Seriously, try it. Cause I did. It was hard.

Well-researched and incredibly detailed (down to the 川獺's likely responses to a variety of questions), the book is even more valuable for its application as a study tool. Instead of taking the form of a usual encyclopedia, with formulaic entries that would yield the same pattern of words and phrases ad infinitum, Mizuki writes most of the pages I've gotten to so far in a kind of autobiographical style, relating his earliest encounters with the stories of these creatures, how and where he came across them, and how and where he believed he was likely to actually encounter them. While I expected a kind of specialized encyclopedic jargon that would be good practice for reading... other encyclopedias, I got a book that creates a short, but interesting, narrative for each creature profile with broader vocabulary that I can actually use and apply.

I'll note some of the examples of sections that you can find in his book below:

• 猫の神通力：The magical powers of cats! Hear about how all kinds of nekos, believed to possess abilities and knowledge beyond humans, have used their powers in days past: causing a small-town shrine to hover above the ground to bring back it's parishioners and save it from bankruptcy. (起死回生?)


• かに坊主:The Buddhist monk crab: A traveling monk stays the night in the abandoned Crab Temple of Yamanashi-ken. He's bothered by a strange figure in a monk's visage during the night, but finding nothing suspicious about this, he tells the figure to leave him alone and resumes his sleep. In the morning, when he learns of the mysterious disappearance of the temple's former inhabitants all in one night, he suggests draining the pond behind the temple building. When they do so, they discover not only the skeletons of the missing monks, but a gigantic evil looking crab!

In addition to these anecdotes, there's tons about mermaids, giants, oni, mysterious apparitions, and more detail on the varieties and habits of かっぱ than you EVER thought possible.

This book is one in a series, so if you're interested in 妖怪 of China, or 妖怪 of the world, Mizuki's got your back.

Further recommendations for those of you who like 妖怪 too:

• About 水木しげる.
• ゲゲゲの鬼太郎.
• This movie: 妖怪大戦争by Miike Takashi, inspired by and featuring a cameo by 水木しげる.

Book Review: KY式日本語

I'm always looking for ways to make my Japanese studies more fun, and therefore easy to remember. My latest endeavor is trying to read The Spiderwick Chronicles entirely in Japanese. Since it's probably the kind of book older elementary school students are reading, so far I've been doing okay.

When I went to the bookstore to pick up the first volume, I came across another interesting looking book.
This one:
Forgive the blatant borrowing of the picture from Amazon.jp, but it's a direct link to the page too, so click away.

Most of you have heard the term KY. It's a 略語,　an abbreviation or acronym, and it stands for 空気読めない、 meaning someone who's socially awkward (literally: they can't read the air). I first heard this a while ago, and while I thought it sounded like the sort of silly thing a 笑い芸の人 would think up as a gimmick, it did help me learn a new phrase. I started to hear more from my students. PK was パンツ食い込んでいる, used to describe someone chubby (or someone who just happens to be wearing too tight underwear, the elastic "eating into" their waist). JK was 女子高生, which made JK nanpa (the act of trying to pick up high school girls), a very dangerous phrase for a teacher to repeat, even when he's just trying to ascertain the meaning. Whoops.

While I have yet to power through the full introduction, I get the sense that this book supports the inclusion of these kinds of 略語, a number of which have made it into the new edition of Japanese dictionaries this year. The bulk of it is made up of hundreds of other abbreviations, some in use now, some that it either suggests or imagines might be popularly used in the future.

• FK abbreviates the already abbrieviated ファンデコイ, which means your ファンデ　(foundation, as in make-up) is 濃い (too strong, as in flavors, smells, or make-up applications).
• HT means 話ついて行けない. Someone who can't follow a conversation.
• And the RIDICULOUS "I"T means 'I'す食べたい。　アイス食べたい。 Gurrrrooooan.

I recommend it. I recommend carrying it around and showing it to your Japanese friends. It will produce some GREAT conversations about Japanese phrases, a lot of laughing, and a lot of head shaking followed by "日本人はそのこと言わない。" And it'll put a lot of new things in your head, which is really what it's all about.