表現 Break: その場限り...

We've talked about 九州男児 on this site a few times before, but just to refresh your memory, men from the island of 九州 have a well-deserved reputation in Japan for being the epitome of masculinity in good and bad ways. The only concrete details I was ever able to glean about what makes a 九州男児 were these: They are very strong-willed and they make their women walk three steps behind them. Brett elaborated on them some in 亭主関白, but for an outsider, the definition remained elusive. It makes a great conversation topic, though, and just knowing about the existence of 九州男児 is enough to raise a few eyebrows.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found a book on the topic in my local Kinokuniya! 九州男児の解説書：Manual of Kyusyu Man.

Now I can explain all sorts of aspects of the 九州男児 personality, like: they're quick to say whatever comes into their mind. They have a habit of referring to even people who they've just met as 「アンタ」 which, like 「お前」, is familiar at best, and insulting at worst; this gets them into trouble when they're outside of 九州. There's all sorts of good stuff, even things that apply to me and Brett, since we've had the benefit of being acclimated to Japan in Kyuushuu. 「とんこつ」以外はラーメンと思っていない； If it ain't Tonkotsu*, it ain't ramen.

For the purpose of today's 表現 post, we're going to focus on one that gives us an idiomatic use for an old grammatical friend: 限り.

その場限り
その　ば　かぎり
sono ba kagiri

九州男児の友情は「その場限り」と心得るべし。
You should understand that a Kyushuu man's friendship, while generous, can be fleeting.

That's an 意訳 that's informed by reading the rest of the section, but the idea of その場限り is clear: confined to a certain place, time, or situation.

Nagasaki, with it's rich history as Japan's 玄関口 and Fukuoka's busy Hakata, brought a lot of different kinds of people into Kyushuu. The folks there were exposed to a lot of commercial traffic, which meant a lot of fleeting relationships. It's not at all uncommon for people to meet, 意気投合して, have a great time, and have that be the end of it. その場限りの友情.

You can use this expression for pretty much anything that is contained or limited in a similar way. Check some examples below.

その場限りつもりだったけど：I didn't intend for it to keep going, but...

その場限りの嘘をつく：Lying, but only in those circumstances.

その場限りの付き合い、その場限りの関係、その場限りの愛情, all kinds of great usages.

See when and how you can use it. And hey, even if you're not in Japan or in Kyushuu, keep the 九州男児 in mind, in case you ever meet anyone from here. I promise you, the conversation will be well worth it.

* とんこつラーメン (tonkotsu ramen), originally from Hakata, I think, is made with a milky pork-bone broth that smells god awful and tastes like heaven. As the book explains, it's not that people from Kyushuu don't like soy-sauce based or other ramen broths, it's just that we don't consider them to be ramen. If you say ramen, we think tonkotsu.

意気投合

いき　とうごう
iki tougou

It's been 9 days since I took off from Saga, and I've made it to Nagoya. Once I get to Tokyo, I'm going to try and post (for those of you who are interested) an account of my trip, and if I make it out to Saitama to see The Hopeless Romantic, you MIGHT even get a video. For now, suffice it to say that I have been through 14 prefectures, over 1500 kilometers (over 50 walked), ridden in over 20 cars... been to islands, mountains, waterfalls, shrines. And somehow (自画自賛だけど) I've managed to end up with 2,000 yen MORE then when I started. I'm not done yet, but I wanted to post a few pics, a few vocab words, and a great yojijukugo that I was saving for exactly this occasion.

Definition:
お互いに気持ちが通じ合い、一体感を感ずる。互いの気持ち、考えなどがぴったりと一致して親しくなること。
Translation:
1. To hit it off
2. To get along like peas in a pod
3. To discover a kindred spirit

The picture above is of Uno-san and his mother, who picked me up in Okayama and ended up giving me a tour of Okayama prefecture that lasted two days. I had intended to merely pass through Okayama but I'm glad I didn't! They treated me (and were kind enough to say that it felt) like I was family, even going so far as to buy souvenirs for me to take to my girlfriend in Tokyo!

The left picture below is of Azukizawa-san, who took me in the direction of Sakaiminato (Mizuki Shigeru's hometown), and he was by far the person that I had the best conversation with. Which is to say that we talked for hours about American television, our favorite action movies (Die Hard and Batman), and Eyeshield 21 (the only anime series I've ever watched regularly).

On the right are Riko-chan and Ryuunosuke-kun, whose mother gave me a lift on the final stretch to Nicky New-Job's apartment in Nagakute-cho, Nagoya. The kids were adorable, and we watched Thomas the Tank Engine together and ate chicken soup flavored potato chips.

















In all of these situations (and more) one word I kept hearing over and over in various incarnations was 縁, which you may remember from 合縁奇縁.

縁 means a relationship, or fate, or the bonds of fate, and is used to talk about chance meetings. I heard people using it with the honorific ご attached to talk about the relationships we formed meeting in this way. There are a lot of other words I learned with similar themes, but for today, let's focus on 縁 for a moment.

By itself you can use it to mean anything from "destiny that binds two people together," to "the chance to meet someone and start a relationship." It encompasses a broad range of meaning involved with connections between people.

Here are some compounds that use it:

• 類縁 (るいえん;ruien): family relationship
• 腐れ縁 (くされえん;kusare en): undesirable but unseverable tie
• 血縁 (けつえん;ketsuen):　blood relationship
• 旧縁　(きゅうえん;kyuuen): old relationship; old acquantaince ( see 竹馬の友)

And as for 意気投合, it's what happens when the chance meeting (縁) goes so well that you become fast friends, specifically when you have the desire and opportunity to see that friendship continue down the line.

Use it with する。

When I first learned this one, again from my Yojijukugo tutor, Otao-san, she gave me the following example: 偶然で会ったけど、意気投合して、友情を育みました. For today's example sentence, I'll use my very simple attempt at applying it, which drew a laugh at the time.

例文：意気投合して、結婚しました.
We met, hit it off, and got married.