Japanese Cultural Trivia of the Day:

These are words that I considered tossing into a 教科書に載っていない post, but then I figured it be more fun to do them like this.

裏
うら
ura


表
おもて
omote

裏, not to be confused with the homonymous 浦 from 津々浦々, has tons of meanings, but the common thread that they share: you can't see the 裏 from the front.

表, which you can find in 表面, 表現, and 代表, has an equal abundance of interpretation and represents the opposite of 裏. It's the visible surface.

You might remember both of these from 表裏一体.

They work really well for talking about buildings and locations (駐車場は裏にあります) and I hear them a lot at work, where 表 is the part of the bakery that the customers frequent, and 裏 is where the baking gets done (「表の掃除終わりましたか。」とか「裏から鉄板持ってきて。」).

But where you can hear it and use it most often is in today's cultural trivia:

裏か表！

裏か (うらか;uraka) as it gets abbreviated in speech, is a system of dividing people into two groups. I want to call it a kid's game, but then... it's not a game, though it often precedes games, and much like じゃん拳　(じゃんけん；janken), everyone in Japan does it, regardless of their age.

Whenever you have a situation where you need two groups, or two teams, you can find people doing 裏か表, which works like this: 裏, as it's meaning implies, refers to 手の平, the part of your hand that can't be seen from the front, so... your palm. 表 in this case is　手の甲, the back of your hand. Everyone stands in a circle, puts a hand in, and then everyone (or at least SOMEONE) in the group chants 「裏か表！」 while shaking/flipping their hand back and forth between the two states of hand-existence.

On the final chanted syllable, everyone picks a side and thrusts their hand out, showing either 裏 or　表. If the numbers of people who chose each are approximately even, then 裏s form one group, 表ｓ form the other. And if the numbers are way off, the process is repeated. Just like じゃんけん has あいこでしょう,　when you have to do it again, there's a different chant. What that chant is, however, is subject for disagreement. The kids that I learned it from always said 「手、手、のって！」 Yuri says simply 「っせ！」 There are even little kid versions that get longer and ridiculous, 「裏かオモ、てんぷら、ハンバーガー。。。」　and on into あほ臭い territory. Have people in other parts of Japan heard other versions?

裏 and 表 can also be linked to ideas of 本音 and 建前, as well as martial arts, but those are subjects for other posts.

表裏一体

ひょうり　いったい
hyouri ittai

Whereas I happened upon previous yojis by happy circumstance or through random J-kaiwa, this one I actually acquired through blunt force (ie, asking a friend "What are your favorite yoji?"). In Japan, this can be seen as a kind of personality test. First, ask somebody what the first 四字熟語 that pops into their mind is. Anything is fair game. Next, ask them what their favorite yoji is, with the distinction that it should probably be different than the first (though it doesn't have to be. Their first reply is supposed to reveal their perspective on life, and their second is supposed to reveal their perspective on love.

I was first subjected to this two-step personality quiz by my girlfriend, who despaired in the answers my limited knowledge of such phrases yielded: 四面楚歌 and 中途半端. So in life I feel like I'm surrounded by enemies, and my affections are half-assed. It took some fancy footwork to convince her that the test was bogus outside the realm of native speakers (hell, I still think 凸凹 is the best kanji EVER), but if you don't want to suffer the same fate, you'd best keep comin` back.

Hmm - 凸凹 (でこぼこ) is actually a pretty good segue here...

Definition:
一つのものの表と裏のように切り離せない関係にあること。
Translations:
1. Two sides of the same coin
2. Two parts of the same thing that are inexorably linked with one another.
3. You can't have one without the other.

I still haven't completely pinned down the usages of this one, but they are wide-reaching and can be applied to a lot of interesting situations. Computer hardware and software, for instance, came up a few times in my research. Just having the hardware or the software is meaningless - you have to have both. In this way, the yoji works for two things that define eachother's utility.

But beyond that, you can also apply it to situations where the two 'sides' are conflicting instead of complementary. For instance, being a professional football (AMERICAN, that is) player might seem like a glamorous proposition. But the other side of that coin is a ton of hard work, sometimes unwanted attention, and risking your body and career every game you play.

An even subtler usage is provided in an example from my 電子辞書:親切とおせっかいは表裏一体だ. Kindness and meddling are two sides of the same coin. Even if you are just trying to help someone out, that assistance can be misconstrued as condescension or downright interference. "The road to hell..." and all that.

My challenge for you all is to try and use this word in a creative way in daily conversation, and to post your results here. To make it harder, you can't use it in any of your many conversations concerning Newtonian Physics, because that would just be cheating.

例文：バットマンの"Twoface"という敵が表裏一体という表現の具代価だ。スーツから傷された顔まで、彼は歩いている矛盾だ。後生だから、ツーフェースは本当に擦れたコインでも持っているぞ！
Batman's enemy "Twoface" is the very embodiment of the phrase "two sides of the same coin." From his suit to his scarred face, he is a walking contradiction. He even has a scratched up coin, for Christ's sake!

Fun, 表裏一体　links!

• 表裏一体トランプ！
• 表裏一体　SEXISM!