Jokes That Japanese People Might Not Get:

With all of the effort you put into reading and trying to use our 四字熟語, imaginary readership, you might find yourself tempted to try and make jokes using them, or out of them. My advice is this: Don't.

Now that I'm back in Japan but not yet regularly employed, one of the things that I've been doing to make ends meet is working at a local bakery. I've actually been able to use a number of yo-jis in the course of conversation there:

切磋琢磨: (re: learning Japanese so I can shove it in Brett's face)
孤軍奮闘: (re: the boss's joke that I would have to come in to work tomorrow, even though the rest of the company has a day off)
画竜点睛: (re: the chocolate cream breads that someone (me) tried to put out for display before the chocolate cream was in them)

But today, when we were making these cow face cream pastries (モウモウクリーム), and I noticed that the chocolate ear spot had fallen off of one, the head bakery dude (パン長?) said 「いいよ。色々な牛がいるから、」and I replied 「そうですね。十牛十色,」　I may have taken things too far.

FAIL.

If you want to joke with your 四字熟語, there are a couple of things you want to make sure of first.

One is that the target of the joke knows you well enough to figure out that you are in fact, making a joke, and not just retarded. I've mentioned before the frustration of the non-native speaker in Japan. If you say something that doesn't match up to their imagined responses, Japanese people around you are more likely to assume that you made a mistake than to try to figure out if what you said has another meaning.

The second thing is that your yoji-juku-joke is an established one. Your best bet is to go with one of the common jokes that we've mentioned before in the comments, but would be good to include in a real post.

There's 焼肉定食, infamous for being the answer most Japanese students provide when given the following problem: Complete this 四字熟語：＿肉＿食.

And then there's 鹿素麺, which is a mangling of 四面楚歌.

Do you know of any other humor-fied yoji out there?

白川夜船 / 白河夜船

しらかわよふね
shirakawa yofune

While Jeff draws a lot of his yojis from conversation and snatches the rest from the ether (a trick I keep meaning to have him teach me), up until now I've just had to string together random kanji and hope they were a yoji. In fact half of my posts so far haven't even made sense to Japanese people until I popularized them on my hit late-night TV show, "Japanese: You're Doing it Wrong!" This just goes to show that even if you can do a ton of other stuff right (like figure skate, or wear pink gloves), it's all for naught if there's something amiss about that bandana...

Anyway, this yoji is special in that I discovered it while reading Slam Dunk, a manga that a few Japanese acquiantances at an enkai told me is a MUST READ. I've never been a huge fan of basketball and thought it would therefore be a bit boring - and thus perhaps induce today's yoji - but instead have found it both educational and wildly entertaining. This phrase could really be applied to either the protagonist or his rival/teammate, though for different reasons. And while the origin might have something to do with taking a night boat down the ol` white river, the actual meaning deviates substantially from the literal.



Definition:
周りで何が起こったのか、わからないほどぐっすりと眠り込んでいること。
Translations:
1. Sound/fast/dead asleep
2. In a know-it-all manner

If you're just given the barebones definition on this one, it's a little disappointing. After the all, the answer seems to have NOTHING to do with the kanji... until you're treated to this explanatory story.

京見物を下とほらを吹いている人に京の白河のことを訪ねたら、川の名だと思い「夜、舟で通ったからなにもわからなかった」といったと言う笑い話から。

My take on the story: a man takes a trip to the capital to go sight-seeing, and on returning can't stop telling stories about it. Somebody asks him how Shirakawa (the name of a place) was, and the man - mistaking the name for that of a river since it ends with "kawa" - says "oh - well I crossed that river by boat at night, so I didn't really get to see it..."

Like all jokes, it's a lot better when it doesn't require an explanation. The localized (to America) version might read something like "So, you went to New York City last week! How was the big apple?" "oh - unfortunately it wasn't on display, but they had a lot of other big fruits there..."

I think I might be going for a record for most posts with the "bad jokes" tag. ANYWAY, the "dead asleep" usage comes from the idea that you were so soundly asleep your entire trip, you don't know anything that happened around you, and thus thought that perhaps shirakawa was a river, not a place. Usage on this one is pretty simple. If you missed something due to being dead asleep, just roll out with 白河夜船で、～。 Adding "です" and most other simple constructions will work out just fine. And though I can't be sure, it seems the know-it-all definition works primarily on those who don't actually know it all, so use with care.

例文：子どものごろいつも僕は両親に教会に行かせた。そのところはそんなに退屈すぎて何回も白河夜船してしまった。この道で時間をよく潰したね。
When I was a kid, my parents always made me go to church. That place was so boring that I fell into a deep sleep all the time. I was really able to kill time that way.

八方美人

はっぽう　びじん
happou bijin

This one starts off seemingly obvious, with a reading that even those with a basic kanji level can ascertain. Eight directions, beautiful woman (or person). A quick side-note here to go along with my train of thought, how is that 四面 and 八方 can have the same meaning? Is there actually a tangible difference between things coming at you from eight sides instead of four? And four sides I can get - front, back, left and right, or even cardinal directions. But eight? Are they now filling the gaps of the secondary directions? Why not taking it another step and have it be the 16 directions? For those big into translation, I'd say "from all angles" would be a better interpretation. But I digress...(I think I just wanted to say that - thanks for indulging me, however involuntarily.)

Definition:
どこから見ても美しい人。転じて、誰にも悪く思われないように要領よくふるまうこと。また、そのような人。
Translation:
1. Someone who is beautiful from all angles.
2. To never say anything bad of other people, or someone who acts that way.
3. A sycophant

So unfortunately this does not mean that you have 8 beautiful women coming at you from different angles (thought Jeff "乱...何とか" Bailey will cover that in another post). Instead we have a barrage of meanings that slide the scale from compliment to insult, making this a tricky yoji to employ in everyday language. Jeff noted that he used it to describe somebody who was everybody's friend, but the person with whom he was talking said they would never want to be called a 八方美人. This is further complicated by the fact that the 四字熟語データバンク makes a special note indicating that the phrase is often used in a negative sense, but not always.

So here's a general guideline - if you are talking about a woman and use this phrase, it will most likely be interpreted in the good context, especially if used in a conversation involving appearance. If, however, you are talking about a guy, or about a woman's kindness, be wary - what was intended as a compliment can seem like an underhanded jab at their character. You might be able to preface its use with 本物の, but even that might come across as "He's a REAL brown-noser". Don't be afraid to clarify your meaning, as that will only go to show that, hey, you do actually know what you're talking about.

Today's example sentence is probably applicable to a lot of foreigners after they first come to Japan (especially those wearing the "looking for a Japanese girlfriend" t-shirt), and today's challenge will be for you to somehow translate the joke into English. Good luck!

例文：　A-san:　「僕初めて日本に来た時、八方美人ばっかり会ったよ。」
B-san:　「え？どーゆーことですか？おべっか使い人かきれいな女か、どちだった？」
A-san:　「どちも！」

Jokes that Japanese People Might Not Get:

中途半端
ちゅうとはんぱ
chuu to han pa

Definition:
どっちつかずで、徹底しこと。やりかけで、物事が出来上がらないさま。
Translations:
1. Half-assed
2. Incomplete
3. Left undone

Have you seen the movie Jumper? If not, don't, but just to fill you in, it's basically about a guy who can transport himself anywhere he wants at any time.

We went to see it with our friend Taishi, who seems to like all movies, as long as they're action oriented and have cool special effects. It didn't bother him that the plot was contrived, and so many story-lines left unresolved with the obvious intention of paving the way for a wallet draining franchise. It was, in many ways, a movie that was 中途半端、in it's creation.

But, the thing about "Jumper" in Japanese, is that it's ジャンパ (janpa). Which led Brett to start thinking about rhymes.

To rhyme, in Japanese, is　韻をふむ (I need a kanji check on that fumu), but I don't know how much emphasis they put on rhyming in things like plays-on-words.

So Janpa, rhymes with 半端(hanpa), as in 中途半端. Just saying 半端 (as I learned from Brett, via Nirav) can mean half-assed, or at half-strength. It's often used with "ではない” to negate it, like when it's pouring rain, one can say 「半端じゃない」 to indicate that it's coming down heavy. Or when that kid punched me (see 言語道断), I said 「傷つけるつもりではなかったけど、半端ではなかった。」”

So then, Janpa and 半端 also rhyme with ナンパ (the widely used Japanese word that means "girl hunt," going out to pick up some ladies).

When we proposed a shorter film, entitled ジャンパ半端ナンパ　（Janpa Hanpa Nanpa） to our friend Taishi, he was confused, and didn't really laugh, until we acted it out for him:

Janpa-san: おい。電話番後おしえてくれ。
Hey. Lemme get your number.
Ojou-san: あのー
Umm...
Janpa-san:　教えなくてもいいけど。。。
Well, you don't have to tell me it...
Ojou-san:　　え。。。　ええー？
Uh... What?
Janpa-san:　まー、どうでもいい。
That's cool.
Ojou-san:　　何のこと？
What are you talking about?
Janpa-san:　vanishes instantly

Chicks love it when you stare at them all creepy from around the corner first.

Jokes that Japanese People Might Not Get

反面教師　is a cool phrase I learned during a discussion about lax discipline and Japanese parenting. The first kanji comes from hantai (opposite), the second kanji means "surface," and the last two designate those in the teaching profession.
It's read はんめんきょうし(hanmenkyoushi) and it means "someone who sets a bad example."

Now, I don't know the exact figures, but if you're a westerner in Japan, odds have got to be above 50% that you're here doing some kind of English teaching (actually, I'd love to get the statistics on that, now that I think of it). And if you're anything like me, you get the occasional question about where you're from and what you do.

I usually just say, "教師”　and that suffices, but occasionally, I encounter a rarity: a Japanese person who doesn't just make random assumptions about all gaijin, and they'll ask further: "What kind of teacher are you?"

I used to try and think of the most random or unlikely thing possible. Saying "Kokugo" in my broken Japanese sometimes worked, but there was always the chance they would assume I meant MY home country's language, or that I was just stupid. "Dog grooming" was difficult to translate (犬のパームをかけ方？）　and they were too liable to accept and believe I was a ビリーズ instructor without qualms. So learning this yo-ji was a fortuitous solution.

Try it out next time someone you don't know asks you what kind of teacher you are, and see what reactions you get. Mine so far have run the gamut from amused, to confused, to frightened.

And send me anecdotes about plays-on-words, or jokes that you've attempted to make in Japanese, and the results. I want to make this section a regular thing.