無理矢理

むりやり
muri yari

Well, you guys seem to have figured out that the way to keep us posting regularly is by telling us how awesome we are in the comments section... and by visiting regularly. Our site traffic has tripled over the last few months, we've found links to ourselves on websites we use and enjoy, and you've given us great motivation to keep on with our JLPT studies.

And since people have mentioned in the past that some Yo-ji is better than no Yo-ji, today I'm tossing up this ateji one for everyone to check out and enjoy.

I haven't had a whole lot of time lately because I'm working two jobs, and trying to organize a bunch of side projects as well (a flamenco night, a photo contest, and a kid's cooking class) so today I thought I could try to find a 四字熟語 that means "burning the candle at both ends." You know, going overboard and working as hard as you possibly can until you exhaust yourself. Unfortunately it seems that in Japanese, you just call that "being Japanese."

So in lieu of that, we have 無理矢理, which, as I mentioned is actually not a real 四字熟語. It's the ateji for the much more common 無理やり.

Definition:
無理と知りながら強引に物事を行うさま。
Translation:
1. Forcibly.
2. To do the unreasonable.
3. Against one's will.

Used most often to refer to "forcing oneself." "無理やりせんでいい" or the less casual "無理やりしないで下さい" get used to let people off the hook when it comes to things like finishing food or drinks, translating roughly as "You don't have to do the impossible..."

無理やり食べる gets used a lot, but be careful, it doesn't just mean "eating too much," it includes the idea of eating something, or an amount, that you don't want to, 7even style.

It can also be used to talk about overwork, canceling personal plans to do someone else a favor, things like that.

As an added bonus, here's a few idiomatic uses of 無理やり：

無理やり押し込む：To force into, or to wedge into. This is what you would do to a square peg that you had to get into a round hole.

きついT-シャツを無理やり着る：Squeeze yourself into a tiny-t-shirt. You could probably use this with pants too...

ズボンを無理やり脱がせる：To depants someone! (Or to pants someone, which means the same thing, right?)

割鶏牛刀

かっけい ぎゅうとう
kakkei gyuutou

This is not the first yo-ji that I've come across that befuddles my Japanese Kanji conversion software, but it is the first I've found that has interchangeable halves. Google tells me that this one is acceptable as either,　割鶏牛刀 or 牛刀割鶏.

Let's check the kanji to find out why:

割 is all about divisions. Read either 「かつ」 (meaning to divide, halve, cut, or any other form of dividing something, ranging from the mild "dilute," to the violent "Smash!") or 「わり」 (meaning the ratio, the proportion, or again "diluted with," for talking about drinks, as in CaptainのCola割り.

鶏 is （にわ）とり and is as straightforward as they come: chicken, of the domestic variety.

牛 is coincidental, I swear. Even though this is the year of the ox, I wasn't trying to foist any cow themed learnings on you. Besides, when it comes to the year, this kanji gets used: 丑. You might remember it from a lengthy post about why Japan is crazy for unagi on 土用の丑の日.

And last but not least, 刀, which most of you will recognize as "katana," and has popped up with a とう pronunciation at least once before on the Daily Yo-ji, in its very early days: 一刀両断 from all the way back in November of 2007.

Anyhow, I have an English equivalent expression for this rolling around in my head somewhere, but I can't seem to grasp it. のどがかゆい！

So I like to think of it as the inverse of that metaphor about "bringing a knife to a gun fight." 割鶏牛刀 is more like "bringing THIS GUN to a knife fight."

Definition:
牛を料理する大きな包丁で、鶏をさくという意味。伝じて、小さいことをするのに、大げさな道具や過分な力を用いること。
Translation:
Literal: Using a meat ax to carve a chicken.
1. Going to unnecessary and showy lengths to accomplish something simple.
2. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The thing that you want to keep in mind, if you ever have the chance to USE this expression, is that you probably shouldn't. Well, at least not in Yo-ji form. See, the problem is that the phrase 割鶏 （かっけい） is something you will NEVER come across in spoken Japanese. It's rare enough in written Japanese. So any usage of 割鶏牛刀 that I can find solves this problem by employing　one of the much more common words that you can make with 割、namely 割く (さく;saku).

Like this: 「鶏を割くに牛刀,」 which means that in today's post, you've effectively learned one yo-ji and one non-yo-ji ことわざ. You're welcome!

例文 (loosely based on true events) :
Brett: coughs.
Fumiko: あなた、そこで横になって、少々お待ちしてね。
Lie down over there and wait, okay?
Brett: 何を？
For what?
Fumiko: 今先、救急車を呼んだから、着く前に死なないようにガマンしてください！
I just called for an ambulance, so PLEASE try not to die before they get here!
Brett：ええと、どういうことか？
Uh... What?
Fumiko: もう、近づかないでお願い！インフルエンザは映すものだわ！
STOP! Don't come any closer! Influenza is contagious!
Brett: おらー！インフルエンザに罹っとらんさ！救急車をカンセルしろお前！
What? I DON'T have the flu! Call off the ambulance!
Fumiko: あなた入院したほうがいいよ！
Babe, you should go to the hospital!
Brett: 咳のため、入院？鶏を割くに牛刀を用いんだぜ！
The hospital? For a cough? That's like amputating for a splinter!

閉戸先生

へいこせんせい
heiko sensei

Ok, this isn't really a 四字熟語　in the classical sense, but I like it, so bear with me. I recently started law school, and this seems particularly fitting for how I've spent my last week or so.

Setting aside the irony of the fact that I am posting now that I actually have other things to do, and barely made any updates during my 2-month period of unemployment, this particular phrase deals with someone who is so busy with studying that they never leave their house.

Definition:
年中戸を閉め切って読書にふける人
Translation:
1) "Professor Shut-in"
2) Bookworm

The big difference between myself and actual 閉戸先生's, of course, is that they actually study out of intellectual curiosity, whereas I study... because I have to (at least, that's what I tell the cool kids).

My first thought when I heard this was of the monk who was so passionate about memorizing scripture he sat at his station until his legs decayed below him. My legs feel asleep way too quickly for me to make it quite that far, but studying has had something of an effect on my social life (coupled with the tropical storm that passed through yesterday, I didn't leave my apartment for something like 36 straight hours this weekend).

Back to the Japanese, being a 閉戸先生 isn't really a good thing; the fact that your door is closed (the 閉戸 part) means that you are ignoring your neighbors, and by extension your human relationships. You're not necessarily a social outcast, but you are more cut off than you should be. As we saw with Jeff's recent explication of the word 縁, human relationships are not something to be taken lightly, so make sure you never go to la... I mean, never become a 閉戸先生.

Example:
X教授は優秀な学者だけど、ちょっと閉戸先生で、他人との付き合いがあまり上手じゃない。
Professor X is a talented scholar, but he's something of a bookworm and has problems getting along with people.



PS
Don't ever put "bookworm" into google image search at work, at school, or in the presence of children or easily offended people. Take it from someone with experience.