夜郎自大

やろうじだい
yaroujidai

や　is for 「やった！」 As in, 「やった！このや行シリーズがやっと終わるみたい！」

Today will be the last Yojijukugo post that starts with や、ゆ、or　よ! Maybe not the last one FOREVER, but I think we've got enough to smack the smile off of any uppity bangumis that wanna tell us WE don't know Yojijukugo.

(Though, while we're still here, I'd personally like to request that Nirav make a KN^4 post on 余裕, cause seriously, that business is complicated!)

Today's entry is a great one to know as a foreigner in Japan, because I think it aptly describes the attitude that many of us are prone to adopting when we forget that we're not as awesome as Japan can make us feel.

Also, I found the PERFECT picture for this. BOOM!

Definition:
自分の力量をわきまえず、仲間うちで威張ること。知識も力もないのに尊大にふるまうことのたとえ。
Translations:
1. Getting a big head about being a big fish in a small pond, while forgetting that the world is mostly ocean.
2. Using your strength to be the boss of your microcosm, in a way that fails to acknowledge your real worth in the macrocosm. (What's your worth in the macrocosm NOW, fish?)
3. Act with reckless arrogance.

自大, using the kanji for "oneself" and "big" are apparent enough. 夜郎, rather than being ateji for 野郎、is actually the name of a very tiny independent country that we call Yelang in what is now China. The king of Yelang, upon receiving an emissary from the Han Dynasty (yeah, THAT Han Dynasty) displayed remarkably poor judgement (as well of a lack of knowledge about what the Han Dynasty was) and made some unfortunate boasts.

I don't know how accurate this story is, as the accounts of said king also include a Taketori Monogatari-esque birth...

Use 夜郎自大 with になる。Or you can say of someone or something: 夜郎自類である。

例文：
この学校の六年生の態度はやばいですね。行動を正してやる先輩もないし、夜郎自大になってしまいました。来年は中学生になることを知識してないみたい。
This school's 6th graders are rough, huh? With no older students to keep them in line, they've gotten recklessly arrogant. It's like they've forgotten that they're gonna be middle school first years in just a year.

Daily Double: 自画自賛 and 一心同体

Brett and I are gonna try and be extra nice to you guys this week because, to be honest, we've been kind of phoning them in lately. 言い訳をしますが, I've got all these boxes to pack, all these people to say goodbye to and, well... Brett is STILL in America.

But you'll be happy to know that studying pays off. Today I've got two new conversation friendly yoji for you. No insane levels of obscurity today. While we usually present yoji together if they have some meaning or characters in common, today I'm giving you two that I learned simultaneously.

The first is something I am actively involved with, and the second... well, let's take a look.

自画自賛
じが　じさん
jiga jisan

Definition:
自分のことをほめること。自慢すること。
Translations:
1. Self-satisfaction.
2. Singing one's own praises/ tooting one's own horn.
3. Self admiration.




一心同体
いっしん　どうたい
isshin doutai

Definition:
二人以上の人間の心が一致し、同じ体、すなわち一人の人間であるような強い結びつきをすること。
Translations:
1. Two hearts beating as one.
2. Working/Being together as though inhabiting one body
3. United, body and soul.

The kanji for 一心同体 are basic enough, (one heart, same body) but it marks a milestone for me. Remember how excited I got the first time I was able to guess the meaning of a yoji just by looking at it?

This time, when I heard this one for the first time, I was able to identify it as a yoji (yoji that begin with 一心 or 一身 are common), understand the meaning, and correctly guess all the kanji. All by myself! And that was how I learned 自画自賛... by bragging about it too much.

You can use 一心同体, as you might expect, in relation to love, but it's also applied in other senses as well. You can see how the idea of 一心同体 might resound powerfully in the Japanese consciousness. Try using it in some of the same contexts that you would use 一致団結.

自画自賛, on the other hand, goes well with 調子乗っている.

例文：去年、わが野球部は全員一心同体となってがんばったため、甲子園で優勝しました。しかし、今年は自画自賛ばかりしているので、彼らしか今年も勝つと":思っていないみたいです。
Last year our baseball team, working together as one, did their best and won Koshien. But this year, they're spending all their time singing their own praises; it looks like they're the only ones who think they're gonna repeat.

表現 Break: 猿も木から落ちる

さる　も　き　から　おちる
saru mo ki kara ochiru

Be careful with how and when you say this one, because it can sound like a warning, or a threat, if you say it to someone who has not yet screwed up.

If you say it AFTER someone makes a mistake, however, and say it kindly, it's interpreted as a comfort.

Definition:
その道にすぐれた者でも、時には得意なことで失敗することがある。
Translations:
Literal- Even monkeys fall from trees
1. Everybody messes up sometimes.
2. Pride goes before a fall

The nuance here is that it should be used when someone has messed up at something that normally, they are very good at, OR is natural to them. If you ever happen to accurately correct a native speaker's Japanese grammar or kanji or something like that, it would be a great time to use this, feign modesty, and impress them even further.

A bonus phrase that goes along with this expression, particulary the "pride before a fall bit," is the following:

調子乗っている
ちょうし　のっている
choushi notteiru

Your 調子, as most of you already know, is your condition, or state of health. You can use 調子 to ask about someone's health (調子はどうですか？) or the condition of other things, like machines (車は調子悪い。), but did you know you can ride on it? "Riding on your own condition" is a Japanese way of calling someone stuck up, arrogant, or all puffed up on how cool they think they are.

We've taken to reminding each other and our Japanese friends during wakeboarding sessions (when someone invariably tries to do a cool trick and ends up eating it really hard): 波を乗り、調子乗ってんじゃね！Ride the waves, not your choushi.

例文：
Niravが「切磋琢磨」の意味がわからなかったの？ま、猿も木から落ちるね。とにかく、時々間違えたら、あの調子乗っている外人にいいじゃん。
Nirav didn't know the meaning of 「切磋琢磨」? Well, everybody slips up sooner or later. And anyhow, messing up every once in a while is good for that giant ego of his, don't you think?

我田引水

がでん　いんすい
gaden insui

The Giving Tree is a fantastic book, and one that seems to have crossed the cultural divide pretty well. I've seen a lot of translated copies in Japanese classrooms or homes. Shel Silverstein had such a great ability to embed important life lessons for kids into dark, sad stories, without ever making anyone feel like what they were reading was dark, or sad, or... educational, I guess. I mean, think back about the story of The Giving Tree. That was a spoiled little kid, who grew up into an ungrateful man, who eventually becomes a sad, apathetic old man. It's a story about an exploitative relationship, and one that aptly characterizes today's yoji.

Definition:
我が田に水を引く。つまり物事を自分の都合のいいように取りはからったりすること。
Translations:
Literal - Drawing water for one's own field.
1. Being selfish
2. Acting in one's own self-interest
3. Manipulating (situations, arguments, people) to suit one's self

Think about the literal translation as though you were drawing the water for your field out of your neighbor's drinking supply.

The second, third, and fourth kanji are pretty easily recognizable: field, pull (draw), and water. If you haven't learned the first kanji yet though, you've definitely heard it. Let's look at some of the ways that it can be used.

• 我々(われわれ; wareware): the あらたまった version of "watashi-tashi." You don't use this to say, "We're going to the store." You use it for "We are gathered here today...."
• 我侭 (わがまま; wagamama): mostly written in kana these days, meaning "selfish; self-centered; egotistical."
• 我輩 (わがはい; wagahai): an arrogant, masculine way to say "me," "myself," or "us." It's actually a pretty old form of speech, but many people know it because of this famous Japanese book, which of course, inspired one of the funniest lines in this cartoon.

Back to today's yoji though, I've found a million different usages on the web, in some of the following patterns:

• 我田引水をする
• 我田引水的な
• 我田引水になる
• 我田引水で(+動詞)

例文：
ALTでいる英語の先生はよく、教えてやった英語より、日本語を教えてもらっている。何で日本に来たかったと聞かれると、｢日本語を習いたかった」と返事する人が多いけど、｢英語を教えたかった」と言う人があまりいない。日本に来る前にそう言う経験になろうと思ったら、ちょっと、我田引水的な計画よね？
English teachers working as ALTs often do more learning of Japanese than they do teaching of English. If asked why they wanted to come to Japan, many will reply that they wanted to learn Japanese, but there aren't that many who say "I wanted to teach English." If that's the kind of experience they were counting on before they came, isn't that kind of a self-serving plan?