Japanese Cultural Trivia of the Day:

So yesterday was Hina Matsuri in Japan.

Hina Matsuri, is referred to as both "Doll Festival" or "Girl's Day" in English, and no, not because of any sexist business about girls liking dolls. The festival is held to pray/hope for the healthy and happy upbringing of female children, and the dolls represent the Japanese Imperial Court, in traditional Heian dress.

The dolls are believed to be able to contain bad spirits, which leads us to today's bit of trivia.

Today many younger Japanese families don't keep up with this practice. About half of the female students in my classes report that their households don't set up the dolls. A handful find the dolls themselves creepy and weird.

But the families who do still have a set of dolls that they display, usually keep one set year round, putting them out for the festival, and taking them down soon after.

The original tradition, still practiced widely, is called "hina-nagashi," in which straw dolls were placed on a boat and set afloat on a river, carrying the bad spirits away with them. In modern cases where putting a bunch of straw and wood in a publicly or commercially used river is not a good idea, some shrines send the dolls out to sea, collect them, bring them back in, and burn them.

I suspect that the families who re-use the often expensive dolls instead of burning them or sending them away, hope that a year in the closet between use will give them time to digest the "troubles" that they are supposed to absorb. But the knowledge that you're NOT supposed to keep them around may live on in a popular superstition. It's one that I just learned about this year, and it inspired the entire post: If you don't put away your Hina Dolls in a timely manner, you won't be able to marry off your daughters!

The origins of this superstition seem pretty old, but from what I've found online, it seems like they have their roots in two places. The first is just what I said above. Moving your troubles into the dolls doesn't help you any if you keep them around after. The second is more interesting for fans of words.

It's kind of a play on the multiple meanings of the word 片付く(かたづく； katazuku), which can made into the transitive verb 片付ける、meaning "to clean up," or "put in order" which is what you have to do to the dolls. But it can also mean "to be married off," which is what you can do with your daughters, if you clean up the dolls on time!

「雛人形を早く片付けるほど娘が早く実家から片付く！」

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day

As soon as I heard this at work today, I knew it had to go on this site. It's exactly the kind of language trivia that keeps me fascinated with Japanese, despite its unforgiving brutality.

(1級 studies are not progressing well)

狐の嫁入り
きつね　の　よめいり
kitsune no yomeiri

Fox wedding; sun-shower

Looking at both the literal translation and the application of this expression side by side, you can imagine how quickly I went running to the internet to find out what was up with this. I got all kinds of folklore-y goodness.

Turns out that this is, as Japanese wikipedia calls it, a "strangeness" of a tale that has been handed down since at least the beginning of the Edo Period (1603) and is known all over Japan, with the exceptions of Okinawa and Hokkaido, where marriage between foxes has yet to be legalized.


On certain nights, just before you fall asleep, you might see a procession of red glowing, flickering lights in the woods, a phenomenon called 狐火 in Japanese: "fox fire." Similar to what we call St. Elmo's fire, or will-o-the-wisp, it can usually only be seen from far away.

Japanese people used to say that the lights were made by a procession of 提灯 (hanging lanterns) carried by foxes on the way to a wedding (except in Tokushima-ken, where they figured the somber atmosphere was more likely that of a funeral procession).

There's even an actually recorded (which is not to say true) incident of a wedding during the Edo Period, in which a ferry-master was paid a large sum of money to commission and prepare numerous boats to ferry guests, procession style, over to the wedding. Everything went of without a hitch, but the next day, he found that all of the money he received had turned into leaves. People said that the wedding had been between the families of two Inari-shrines, famous for employing tricksy foxes as spirit-messengers.

So there's all that.

And then the connection to weather? Well, according to the folklore, strange weather heralds fox nuptials. Depending on the region, the exact kind of weather can be different (rainbows in Kumamoto, hail in Aichi), but raining while the sun's out is mostly widely accepted as the sign, hence the expression.

What I want to know is, if the foxes have to get married when the sun's out, what's the deal with the lantern processions at night?

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

やーーーーーー

Yeah, we're still rolling with the や行 over here, and today that means a great word to know for your Japanese traffic accidents, subway suicides, dolphin slaughterings, arsons... what else is morbidly entertaining?

野次馬
やじうま
yajiuma

Rubbernecker; Gawker;
Spectators of something not intended for spectating (see explanation below).

Baseball game: ×　Motocross rally:　×
House fire:　○　Car accident:　○

Indulge me by letting me give you a quick explanation of where this one comes from. The 野次 bit can be used on it's own to mean to heckle or to jeer (used like this: 野次を指す） but they're actually 当て字, chosen to fit the meaning of this phrase a little bit better.

The original phrase actually began as 親父馬　（おやじうま; old man horse) which was what you called a horse that was too old to be used for either riding or labor, but which, for some reason, you haven't yet shipped off to the 糊 factory.

An old useless horse, just standing around taking in the scenery then became a metaphor for people with no business being involved in something, loafing around, scoping it out anyway. It kind of connotes blowing off your own responsibilities (responsibilities like driving your car at a reasonable speed) to indulge in something undignified (gawking at a flipped k-car on the side of the road, for example).

I'm not sure if rubbernecker, or rubberneck is an Americanism, but now that I've been in Japan, I can't ever hear it without thinking of the original rubbernecker, 轆轤首。

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

Hey guys. I'm a little too drunk and naked for a full yo-ji post today, but I appreciate what Brett's trying to do in terms of resuscitating the cite, so... I guess I can manage something.

What? You're not happy about my intoxication? Or my nudity? WHAT? WHY? 裸になって何が悪い？

That's right, I'm talking about 草薙剛's infamous bout of public drunkenness a few weeks ago. Or like a month ago. Man, it has been a while since we posted. Anyway, one of the things that was most amusing to me about the whole SMAP star fiasco was the level of media attention it garnered, despite being ten times tamer than your average company 飲み会. If I had 20￥ for every time some Japanese person I knew got naked and rowdy while drunk, I'd have like 60￥.

But at least the media was willing to acknowledge the fact that the only reason it was a big deal was because 草薙 was famous. And that's how I learned today's bit of trivia, which is as simple as it is amusing:

有名税
ゆうめいぜい
yuumeizei

Famous tax; (or more poetically) the price of fame.

If a salaryman had been stumbling around naked in the middle of the night, hollering for "Shingo," the police would've let him sleep it off, and sent him home. That would've been it. But the scandal, the loss of endorsements, the media frenzy that befell poor Kusanagi-san... hey, that's 有名税.

Also, as far as my answers to some of questions that have been posted in the comments:

Yes we know Lang-8 and love it. We've used it as a sounding board for some of our example sentences, mentioned it once or twice in posts, and we even have a Daily Yo-ji group on Lang-8 that's inching ever closer to 200 members strong!

I do want to take 1級 but I've set my sights on Summer 2010 for a few reasons. One is the same as Brett's: I'm extremely busy. But also, we just took 2級 last December, and even though we passed, it wasn't by much. Given the fact that there's a pretty big comprehension/kanji leap between 1 and 2, and the fact that the pass/fail percentage rises from 60 to 70%, I think I need a full year of study to be prepped. And since I haven't really STARTED studying... Summer 2009.

And thanks for the encouragement. We haven't given up our Japanese studies, or our interest in yo-jis. You can count on increased posting during down-times... like summer vacation.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

Did you know how funny Japanese tea was? Neither did I, until someone called me お茶目. Never content to let a potentially interesting origin story go unexplored, I did some internet research and discovered that "tea" is hilarious!

First, you should know that 茶 by itself, can be defined as "mockery," and you should know that in all likelihood, it's 当て字。Many of the kanji in the words we're about to look at are listed as 当て字 on various internet sources.

お茶目
おちゃめ
ochame

playfulness; mischievousness

The 茶 here means おどける.






茶番
ちゃばん
chaban

farce




茶々
ちゃちゃ

disruption






茶々を入れる
ちゃちゃ　を　いれる
chacha wo ireru

to tease; make fun of







茶利
ちゃり
chari

the name for funny, farcical, humorous scenes in old Kabuki or bunraku dramas; archaic, but important for us because, according to some theories, it spawned ちゃら.






ちゃら
chara

nonsense; bullshit; random speech.

I don't know if ちゃら is ever used by itself, but it lends its meaning to all of the following compounds.



ちゃらほら
charahora

speaking senseless lies.

「ほら」 is a common attention getting utterance, that I always thought just meant "Look!" Along the same attention-related lines though, there's 法螺: which means boasting or bragging, which is where ちゃらほら pulls in the meaning of 嘘. Or it could just be, 「ほら！You're lying!」　But ちゃらほら is thought to be the precursor of the next word, ちゃらんぽらん。



ちゃらんぽらん
charanporan

off-hand, off-the-cuff, devil-may-care speech

There's an お笑いコンビ that goes by the name ザ・ちゃらんぽらん. You can see some of their stuff on YouTube, but they don't seem particularly funny to me.



ちゃらける
charakeru

irresponsible talk.

This gets used with an honorific, as either 「おちゃらける」 or 「おちゃらけ.」







べんちゃら
benchara

flattery

Again, use with the honorific 「お.」









ちゃらちゃら
charachara

Extremely hard to define, but it covers ideas of "messing around," "showing off," "lavishing someone with flattery," "the appearance of cheap flashy clothing," and "flippant behavior." I find all of these kinds of 擬音 words hard to use (I've had some DISASTERS, putting ぎりぎり into practice), but if you want to use it, it goes along with する。

ちゃんちゃら
chanchara

Probably the most commonly used of these phrases, judging by the number of internet posts devoted to it, 「ちゃんちゃら」 goes with 「おかしい」 like 'q' goes with 'u.' There are two definitions of something that's ちゃんちゃらおかしい:

1. So ridiculously funny that you can't help but to burst out laughing. Here's the Japanese definition , in case my translation is bad: 身のほど知らずで、噴き出したくなるほどおかしい.まったく滑稽だ.
2. A boast that is so brazenly untrue that it's strange/ridiculous: 身のほども知らない大言壮語を吐いておかしい.

You guys got a bonus 四字熟語 in that last definition there, and I found another one in my researches today that I'll post for you tomorrow. See you then.

Here are some of the links I used to write this post:
1
2
3

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.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day

If you're preparing to go to Japan, the internet will provide you with an endless checklist of things you should or should not do to make yourself less of a foreign barbarian. While a lot of it is encapsulated in phrases accompanying this or that action, half or more is registered through gestures that would be seen as harmless in some other cultures. There are a few notions that rank as chief among these faux pas: standing your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice, treading over tatami mats in shoes - muddy or otherwise - or chomping on some food while walking around, to name a few.

Beyond the big ones, though, the personal awareness one must exert to adhere to the minutia of manners is intense. Zen Buddhism intense. I used to think I had a fairly good grasp on dinner table etiquette when my girlfriend's mother suddenly pointed out to me that I was doing EVERYTHING wrong. There was, apparently, an order in which I was supposed to pick up my respective bowls. Nested within this order was a new way for me to pick up my chopsticks that involved first lifting a bowl with my left hand, then my chopsticks - from above, and at the exact center - with my right, tucking them between the pinkie and ring finger of my left hand, gliding my fingers about a quarter of the way down the newly suspended chopsticks before shifting my hand below them so as to not break contact while also refraining from touching the tips, and finally adjusting the chopsticks to a usable position (ie the proper position, which is a whole different lesson) with just one hand. If it sounds complicated (and vaguely run-on sentencey), that's because it is. I still practice it from time to time when the mood strikes me, but as a ravenous eater I can ill abide cultural nuances asserting themselves between the food and my mouth. And that's where today's trivia comes in.

遠慮の塊
えんりょ　の　かたまり
enryo no katamari

I can guarantee that anybody who has been in Japan for any more than a week or two will have experienced this phrase, even if they did not know the meaning or even detect anything unusual about it. Breaking down the words is not only helpful, but fun for two reasons.

First, 遠慮 is a great word. Why? It summarizes the traditional Japanese psyche: reserved. While this word is not nearly so definitive today as it might have been hundreds of years ago, it will still serve as an excellent label for the diffidence you will puzzle over from students, coworkers, etc. It will also give you the stock phrase "遠慮しないで", or "don't hold back," "don't be shy," as well as the not so stock phrase "今度は遠慮します," which can help you politely decline something you don't want to do. Use them wisely, padawans.

Next - and also, high-geek warning - 塊 is the first word in the title of the bizarre but ridiculously amusing game "Katamari Damacy," or 塊魂. This, sadly, has almost nothing in common with today's trivia save the kanji 塊, which means lump, chunk, clump, bit, etc. For this phrase, though, I'm going to flex my editorial muscle and add in "morsel" as a potential translation.

Put it together - the morsel of reservation, ie the last bit of food on a communal plate that nobody is willing to be responsible for taking. The idea is that everyone is being gracious by saving the final piece for everybody else. Rather than make a big deal about who is going to enjoy the last, tiny, delicious bit of food you've been snacking on, nobody takes it, and the problem is solved. But - much like no-walking-and-eating, always using bathroom slippers, and not referring to your students as the Japanese equivalent of "that little bastard" during class - this is another convention I break unrepentantly.

On a final note, our long-time readers might remember we covered a similar phrase that would've been enriched by this bit of trivia: いいとこ取り. If you use these two phrases together in a single sentence, there is a very high chance you will actually KILL the person you are speaking to with impressiveness. Consider yourself warned.

A little sampling of my usual dinner chatting:

暴食と言われてるこの俺様が遠慮の塊をとってやる！逆らう奴がおればかかって来やがれ！
Brett "The Eating Machine" Staebell has dibs on this last piece! Anybody who thinks they can stop me: BRING IT!

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

This week I'm celebrating having come one step closer to Nirav-like awesomeness in the following way: I've finally achieved お得意さん status.　While お得意さん (おとくい; otokui) means "regular customer, or valued client" the Japanese nuance of it is a little bit stronger. I think that it implies more of a sense of friendship or value than a word like 常連 (じょうれん；jouren) which also means regular customer.

The お得意さん is someone who's pretty damn 仲良し with the owner of a restaurant or bar, and Brett and I have noticed that there are two kinds of 常連. There are the those who know the owner through their patronage, and those who are friends with the owner outside of the business establishment. The latter is more likely to be an お得意さん than the former.

We've met a lot of the former、and most of the time, they're えらい調子乗っている. They'll start a conversation with us, ask all the typical questions for foreigners, offer us a drink saying that they "know the owner well," and pretty soon they've got the staff running to get their "キープ" bottle, ordering things that aren't on the menu, and generally bossing the boss around to show off how special they are/how much they know. In my opinion, these kind of 常連 aren't any different from the clients at a snack bar (hostess bar). The owner puts up with them and acts like he likes them because their money is made of money.

In Saga, there's a chain of 焼き鳥 restaurants called かちがらす ( a crow-like bird, maybe a magpie?), and they serve THE BEST カルビ in Kyuushuu. We've been going there for the entire time that we've been in Saga, but only in the last few months have I gotten to know the owner. The かちがらす本店 isn't a very busy location, so one night I was sitting at the bar, chatting a bit, and the owner decided he wanted to close up his shop early and take off to go drinking somewhere else. I got invited along. After that, I brought him some お土産 as a thank you, and now, everytime we go, we get tons and tons of free food (ox-tail, side salads, bizarrrrrrre fish), and every couple of weeks, the dude calls me at home to say "No customers tonight; come hang out."

So in addition to the definition of 常連, and a small hint about how to go about gaining favorable 常連 status (give お土産! They never expect it from customers, let alone foreign customers), the real piece of language trivia I wanted to share was something I finally got to use on the last occasion I was enjoying a meal at かちがらす。

ご馳走様です！
ごちそうさま　です！
gochisousama desu!

I know, I know... You're going "WTF, Daily Yo-ji? Did you just put 「ご馳走様です」 in a trivia post? Are you retarded?"

「ご馳走様,」 as everyone knows, is what you say when you finish a meal, it means everything from "Thanks," to "That was great," to "I'm done," to "It was a glorious feast!" Along with 「頂きます,」pre-eating, it's one of the most basic 決まり文句 this side of 「お元気ですか.」

The reason it counts as today's trivia is because of its other usage, which I recently learned, and if you all knew this one already then, to answer your previous question, yes, we are retarded.

Contextual Translation:
1. TMI (too much information!)
2. WHOAH, that'll be enough of that.
3. STOP talking please.

Playing off of the "I'm all done, thanks" nuance it contains, ご馳走様 is Japan's version of telling you they don't wanna hear it, for whatever reason. My girlfriend's mother jokingly says it when I'm saying something saccharine-sweet about Yuri. Japanese people will use it to let you know that your 自画自賛 is not appreciated.

I'm planning on using it to deal with the 文化違い whereby adults find it appropriate to discuss things like diarrhea and vomiting as parts of casual conversation. Oh, and it would be great for the tendency of adults to announce things like 「おしっこしたいな」, which in English, doesn't get put so directly in mixed company. 「ご馳走様です」 might tell my Japanese friends that I don't really want to talk about those things more effectively than my current 皮肉れている response, which doesn't work as well in Japanese as it does in English: 「おめでとう。お前クーキー欲しいか？」

Here's the context I originally used it in, when another 常連さん at かちがらす were discussing the differences between Japanese and American bread:

Me: ただ僕の感覚だけど、日本人はフワフワなパンが好きじゃないですか？アメリカのパンはね、中がフワフワで、耳がカリカリで、本当にいい食感です。
It's just my lowly observation but, don't Japanese people enjoy really soft airy bread? American bread is more likely soft and light on the inside, but with a crisp or crunchy crust. It's a great texture.
Him (drunk, 60-something): 外が硬くて、中がやらかいか？
The outside's hard, but the inside's soft?
Me: ええと。。。　その感じ。
Awwwww, man.... yeah.
Him: 俺のちんちん一緒やん！
Like my dick! OH!

Everyone together now: ご馳走様！

Anyone else have an experience where you used this or wished you had used this to escape awkwardness?

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

When I was a kid, I used to drink a lot of ginger ale. Before I ever knew what 'ginger' or 'ale' was, I started drinking it and "ginger ale" existed in my mind as a single unit of meaning: it was a fizzy drink, it was the color of Coke mixed with water, and it was the only thing besides tomato juice at my grandmother's house.

It wasn't until I was 19 years old, and eating sushi in America for the umpteenth time when I had the revelation that the very same ginger I was using to cleanse my palette between pieces of raw fish, was possibly related to "ginger ale," and when it hit me I was like, "Whoa." And then I moved on quickly.

What I'm trying to say is that learning Japanese is EXACTLY like that. Well, maybe not exactly. But... pretty much. For example, when I first got to Japan. I knew the words 「楽しい」 and 「おいしい」 as descriptive adjectives, and when I first heard someone say 「楽しんで」, I thought, "Hey, that's neat."

For about three weeks, Japanese people who came to my house to eat let me continue to say 「おいしんで」 before someone finally explained to me that 「楽しんで」 only works because there's a 「楽しむ」 verb.

Point is, when you learn a language through immersion, first you hear something, then you take it in, and only later, if you're lucky, do you start to figure out how the language works.

So today's post is something that was a bit of an embarrassing revelation for me, mostly because it reflects on how much I didn't know.


One of the first words that I learned in the Japanese language class I shared with the other Yo-ji guys, Nirav and Brett, was 臭い (くさい: kusai), because our teacher, Ogawa-sensei, used to call Brett a 臭いヤンキー all the time. When somebody in the class translated it (she didn't speak any English), it came out as "stinky." And we thought that was hilarious, Brett actually being such a foul-smelling punk-ass. The more subtle connotations of "shady" and "suspicious" didn't come across at the time. He just smelled bad.

Later, I learned the word メンドクサイ (mendokusai) as a completely separate entity, without the advantage of knowing the words 面倒 (めんどう; mendou) or 面倒 (めんどい; mendoi). The second means "troublesome" or "bothersome," and the first means "difficulty" or "trouble," but it can also mean "attention" or "care," as in 「子供の面倒: caring for children.」　So even though I knew from the beginning that メンドクサイ meant "pain in the ass," it wasn't until much later that I realized the connection. メンドクサイ is used to refer to something that requires so much care and attention that it reeks.

At least that's how I think of it. Some websites will define 臭い as functioning like ～らしい, but when I realized how many of the words made with 臭い lend themselves to a "stinks" interpretation, I was sold on it.

Warning: Just like メンドクサイ, all of these words are subject to the rules of Japanese profanity. In other words, the tone and force with which you say them can turn them into something very offensive.

うそ臭い
うそくさい
usokusai

reeks of lies.

Not only can this be used literally, to call b.s. on someone, but it's also used for things that have a generally phony air. Japanese people might say it about every overseas sushi restaurant run by non-Japanese. Or they might say it about some of the tacky, tourist-trappy re-creations of overseas destinations right here in Japan, like fake Venice or fake Easter Island.

青臭い
あおくさい
aokusai

stinks of inexperience; tastes too strongly of raw herbs; grassy-smelling; smells like blue?

No, it doesn't actually have anything to do with this awesome cheese, but I've heard it said of bad green curry, and of things too heavy on cilantro; I've even heard it explained as "緑の味がするっという意味." Coming from a culture that doesn't consider colors to smell or taste of anything, that didn't help much, but it's not that much of a stretch to see where this comes from. When you take into account the fact that green and blue are often interchangeable in Japanese, you can also understand how inexperience and general newbism might be labeled "blue" as well.

生臭い

なまぐさい
namagusai

fishy; raw; smelling of fish or blood; undercooked.

Pretty straight forward, but even cooked food can be 生臭い。In America, we often say that you can tell when fish is no good when it tastes or smells like fish. In Japan, with its preference for 繊細な flavors, when meat still tastes too much like blood or meat, it's 生臭い。That's why many Japanese people do things like wash chicken before they cook it or soak raw pork in sake, to remove residual odors.

男臭い
おとこくさい
otokokusai

smells like dudes.

I was told that this could be used to describe things like locker rooms, sausage parties, or the sports club shed, or a bachelor pad. But when I asked what you would describe with 女臭い, I was told "Nothing. Women don't smell." I wasn't about to argue with this kind of statement, but even if I was inclined to try to find support for a contradictary position, researching post for The Daily has taught me better than to try looking up "smells like women" on the dirty, filthy, 男臭い internet. (koff koff)

あほくさい
ahokusai

ridiculous.

あほ you might recognize if you're an anime or manga fan. Someone else might want to confirm this for me, but I think it's a convention that when someone does something stupid or embarrassing in one of these mediums, nearby crows start cawing 「アホアホ.」 Other than sounding vaguely like a bird noise, あほ means "fool," "idiot," or "jackass." あほくさい is simply "ridiculous."

外人くさい
がいじんくさい
gaijinkusai

stinks like foreigners.

For those foreigners who take 外人 to be an unforgivable xenophobic slur, this one's gonna hurt even more. But this is interesting: despite confirming with 3 or 4 immediately available native speakers that this is something that gets said, a Google search for 外人くさい gives very few direct results. Some of the results that it does yield though range from offensive, to rational (the first response, here), to HILARIOUS (You've GOT to check out otesu kakemasuさん's comment on this page)!

If you know any other good くさい expressions, tack 'em on the comments! よろしく。

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

Hi everybody! It's Jeff, and it's been well over a month since the last time I made an appearance on The Daily Yo-ji, so, yeah... sorry?

I came back to Japan on December 1st, and spent 6 days on a strict regimen of Japanese study and yakitori consumption, and on December 7th, I sat the ******* in Fukuoka, which I have vowed not to talk about at all until I get the results in February.

Since then, I've been picking up some money doing Eikaiwas, I got a translating gig that hasn't actually sent me any work yet, and starting in January, I'll be stocking shelves for *******, which I vowed not to post on the internet, because I don't want to get kicked out of the country. At least not before March, when I've got a good shot of getting a legitimate, visa-fied teaching job again.

All of that, however, is NO excuse for not posting on the Yo-ji, because I've definitely had plenty of time. So today's language trivia are directly related to my recent failure to contribute.

上の空
うわ　の　そら
uwa no sora


　and



ぼうっとする
boutto suru

Both of these words can be defined as "spaced out," but as I've found, the first of the pair, 上の空 has more of a connotation of "inattentiveness." Rikai-chan will add "absent-mindedness," but I think that American English speakers think of that word as synonymous with "forgetful." Here it should be taken quite literally. Your mind is absent.

It's when everyone is talking about something, or there's something pressing that demands your attention, and suddenly the conversation gets directed your way, or the time comes to act, and you realize that you haven't been mentally present for the last five minutes. Or if you zone out during practice, and suddenly there's a football in your face-mask.

When using it in a sentence to explain why you dropped the ball, you might be inclined to try to add に and use it as a location, because it can be thought of as "the upper part of the sky," I'm not sure this is correct. Native speakers simply say 「上の空でした,」 which might stress more of the concept of blankness, or emptiness that 空 connotes.

The second piece of language trivia is, I think, one of those fun phrases, unique to Japanese like じっと見る　or はっきり言う, where ぼうっと matters more for the sound of the word than for any unit of meaning it might contain. ぼうっとする is to just completely space out, and it's what I've been doing more often than I should. If somebody asks me what I did today, I (wouldn't but) could answer honestly, 「ぼうっとした。」

Other than ways to pass time, or states of existence, both of these are also passable ways to excuse yourself if you ever pull one of those non-native speaker stunts where you tune out when the conversation's not directed at you, and then suddenly someone brings you back in. Saying 「聞いていませんでした、」 SoftBank お兄さん style is a little abrupt, so saying ｢すみません、上の空でした,」 would probably flash your Japanese skills and divert everyone's attention from your rudeness. ｢すみません、ぼうっとしていた、」 means the same thing, but doesn't sound as nice.

As far as other usages go, if you wanted to say something sweet to a boyfriend or girlfriend, you could try saying something like this: ｢仕事中だったのに」 or 「パーティで、皆と盛り上がるはずだったのに、上の空であなたの事を想い出した。」　"Even though I was at work," or "Even though I was surrounded by everyone (else) having a good time, I was miles away, lost in memories of you."
Choose your target wisely though. The line is remarkably similar to one of the lyrics of a popular Japanese song from the movie"Swallowtail Butterfly" by pop star Chara.

It's a great song, but I was amused to see that her pronunciation of 事 is off enough that an internet search for the lyrics reveals a number of people who have, jokingly or otherwise, posted 「あなたの肩を想い出した。」

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

As much as I like to talk about food, eating, and eating Japanese food, it's a miracle of laziness that I haven't posted this one yet. Especially since this ranks right up there with chopsticks skillz as necessary knowledge for HOW to eat in Japan.

三角食べ
さんかくたべ
sankaku tabe

Triangle eating is not about McDonald's 三角パイ, nor is it about a food pyramid-style nutritional scheme. 三角食べ is all about the order in which you eat your food.

As the pictures show (and the text attests), the correct way to eat a meal is to start with your rice and work your way around bite by bite. One bite of rice, one sip of soup, one bite of your おかずor 飯. A lot of you may know this already, or have heard about this, but it would be a mistake to write it off. It's a big, big part of Japanese culture.

How big, you ask? Well, since the 1970s, Japanese schools have incorporated it into school lunches, like a part of the curriculum. And although expert testimony (W. M. Edgar, D. M. O'Mullane (9 1990). Saliva and oral health. British Dental Journal) from around the world supports the idea that interspersing sips of soup is good for keeping your mouth well salivated and therefore helping the digestion process.

But the reason for eating like this is not a nutritional one. It's part of the Japanese reverence for food that is one of the main reasons I love Japan. "和食をおいしく味わうため," according to wikipedia. Gotta love the classic wikipedia objectivity, especially in lines like this as well: 日本以外ではこのような概念はない。

If you want to try it out for yourself, remember, start with your rice, and try to size your bites so that you finish each portion of your meal at the same time.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

As I like to work excuses for not posting into the sporadic posts I do make, today's trivia is very much in the spirit of Nirav: it's all about drinking.

All of my 送別会s are taking their toll, and when you add to that all the favorite restaurants and bars I just HAVE to hit one last time (before I leave for three months), I've been drinking almost EVERY night.

And that's how I picked up these two phrases.

無理強い
むりじい
murijii

Peer pressure; arm-twisting; compulsion; insistence; extortion.

迎え酒
むかえざけ
mukaezake

Hair of the dog.

無理強い is kind of the opposite of an extremely common phrase that you'll hear Japanese people say a lot, to be polite, "無理しないでください." Since 無理　means "the impossible," or "the unreasonable," 無理しないで is "Don't try to do more than you can, or more than is comfortable for you." People will say this to each other at meals ("Don't feel like you need to eat EVERYTHING,") or at work, ("Don't overwork yourself"). It's a really useful phrase to know.

無理強い is something that you do not want to be on the opposite end of. It's when people who don't have the tact to say 無理しないでください, insist that you join in the fun, whether it be drinking, karaoke-ing, or smoking marijuana which, to be fair, IS what all the cool kids are doing. As you'll notice, it can have harder meanings (extortion?), but if you use it in the right context, like being hung over, drunk, or a few kilos overweight　無理強いされた, will translate as "I was pressured into it."

迎え酒, on the other hand, is just plain old "hair of the dog." For those of you who aren't native English speakers, or who don't know this expression, "Hair of the dog" is alcohol that you drink when you are hungover. Drinking a beer the morning after drinking ten beers, is supposed to make you feel better. 迎える is to greet, meet, or welcome, so 迎え酒 is pretty easy to understand. It's the sake that comes to pick you up.

Why "Hair of the dog?" Brett looked this one up, and found out that it comes from an old expression/superstition: "The hair of the dog that bit you," was held to help heal dog bites. If you were bitten by a dog, if you could retrieve some of that dog's hair, and put it in the wound, not only would you heal faster, but it was also supposed to prevent infection or disease, like rabies.

I personally prefer this method of dealing with dog bites.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

I think that today's trivia paints a really funny picture in a way that our English equivalents don't quite capture.

箱入り娘
はこ　いり　むすめ
hako iri musume

My girlfriend is an only-daughter (she has three brothers), and in a culture that's big on filial obligation, especially on the part of women, you can imagine how 大事 her family considers her.

This term is used a lot for only-daughters, and where we might translate it as "daddy's little princess," or merely "over-protected" or "sheltered" it literally means "the daughter who gets put in a box."

You can use this in a friendly manner to tease a girl who's an only child, or if you are "daddy's little girl," you can refer to yourself as such. I'm gonna try it out next time I hang out with my girlfriend's family, because whenever I see them we always end up having a long 感動する conversation about how great and special she is.

Side note: I wonder if you can mix-and-match this phrase with 玉手箱 (たまてばこ; tamatebako) or 宝箱　(たからばこ;takarabako), which both mean, treasured box or treasure chest? A 宝物 (treasured item) goes in a 宝箱, so would a 宝箱入り娘 make sense? I'd worry about the fact that 玉手箱 has other connotations. Pandora's box is called a 玉手箱,　as is the box that contains Urashima Taro's lost years... This one might be better confined to the pages of Jokes that Japanese People Might Not Get.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

"She was looking back to see if I was looking back to see if she was looking back at me," is one of those cheesy things that my dad says from time to time... though I can't really remember why, or in what circumstances.

Today we're gonna talk about looking back:

見返り美人
みかえりびじん
mikaeribijin

見返る by itself, means to look back, and it can be used to mean looking back at one's life, or to look behind yourself. A 見返り美人 is not, as you might expect, a woman so beautiful that she's worth a second look. It's even better. It's a beautiful woman who's looking back at you.

Notes:

• The painting above (on the left) is an extremely famous Japanese work of art (considered an epitome of early ukiyo-e, by Hishikawa Moronobu); Something about the concept of the 見返り美人 seems to capture a very Japanese sense of beauty. It's coy, it's demure, and it's fleeting...
  
• 美人 is not necessarily gendered; it's cool to use this for a hot guy looking back at you as well.
• For some reason, lots and lots and lots of Japanese bloggers use this to tag pictures of their pets. Gotta love the blog-o-sphere.

Japanese Cultural Trivia:

Surprise!

You get a bonus third post today and a bit of Japanese Cultural trivia that includes some history, some culinary customs, some vocabulary, and some awesome.

Monday, as you know, was 海の日(umi no hi), but did you know that today is 土用の丑の日 (doyou no ushi no hi)?

I bet that you did not.

In it's most common usage, and according to Rikai-chan, 土用 means "midsummer" or "the dog days of summer," but actually, EVERY season has it's 土用。As this site explains, each season has an official starting day (you can find it on most calendars) and the 土用 period comprises the 18 days before the official start of the next season. For example, the first day of Autumn usually falls on or near August 8th, and the 18 days before that (where we are now) is considered 夏の土用.

(Traditionally, 夏の土用 is the most important of all the 土用s because it's an extremely busy time for agriculture, which is why most people only use it to refer to the summer.)

Now, 丑の日 or the day of the ox, is borrowed from Chinese astrology, and before I spend nine hours on the internet trying to find out what makes 丑の日 different from the other 11 kinds of days, I'm just going to acknowledge the fact that it's not THAT important to this post. The point is that since the Chinese astrological cycle of days repeats every 12 days, and there are 18 days in 土用, you're guaranteed at least one 土用の丑の日.

土用の丑の日 traditionally represents the hottest, most humid, nastiest summer day (not in terms of actual temperature records or humidity indexes, but just... in general) and it's a day when you might be particularly susceptible to today's bonus word:

夏バテ
なつばて
natsubate

夏バテ is a term that might also be misleading, depending on your dictionary. I've seen it listed as "adaptation to the summer heat," which sounds to me like getting used to/dealing with it. In actual usage, 夏バテ is closer to "heat stroke." It's a term for exhaustion, fatigue, general malaise and physical misery that you suffer during the nearly unbearable summer months.

But don't worry. There is a trick to beating 夏バテ that every person living in Japan should know, and I'm going to reveal it to. You might even have noticed it yourself at restaurants, or supermarkets, or in advertisements for either of the above. Today, all across Japan, Japanese people will be consuming massive quantities of うなぎ、fresh-water eel.

If you've ever tried unagi, basted in a mildly sweet barbecue sauce (think 繊細） served over steamed rice (even better when the rice and eel are steamed together) with sliced tamago yaki and crisp toasted nori, maybe with some daikon sukemono on the side, good lord... if you've had that, you should know that you don't NEED a reason to eat うなぎ.


But as for it's value as a weapon against the dreaded 夏バテ, consult the nutritional advice of... this lady:

ウナギには、ビタミンＡが豊富に含まれています。
他にもタンパク質、脂質、ビタミンＢ群、ビタミンＤ、Ｅ、カルシウム、鉄など
豊富な栄養素が含まれている栄養満点な食品です。

Chock-full of vitamin-A, plus proper quantities of protein, lipids, vitamins B, D, E, calcium, and iron, うなぎ is just the ticket for a highly nourishing meal.

But for those of you who, like me, aren't satisfied with surface explanations of why things are the way they are, it gets even better. Nutritious and delicious though it may be, how did the entire country of Japan start a tradition of eating eel on 土用の丑の日?

Back in the Edo Period, there was a renaissance man by the name of 平賀源内 (Hiraga Gennai). He studied it all, and did it all. He was a painter, a physician, a scientist, an avid follower of Western studies, an inventor (his エレキテル;electrostatic generator has earned him immortality in Japanese anime, often as an eccentric or even MAD scientist), and an author, writing novels, satire, and articles about nature or science. He was considered an expert on all matter of subjects, and rendered his intellectual services to those who needed them.

So when the Edo Period うなぎ vendors had a problem, they knew exactly who to turn to. How to ensure strong うなぎ sales in summer? Hiraga Gennai had the answer. Create an advertising campaign ensuring the masses that eating eel was a great way to beat the heat. True story. The 土用の丑の日 tradition started because うなぎ vendors and restaurants once asked Hiraga Gennai to help them recover from a sales slump.

It's possible then, that Hiraga Gennai was the first person to become a celebrity endorser in Japanese history, and at the very least he must rank as the most successful. The entire country still buys into the advertising, and Gennai is responsible for billions and billions of yen in うなぎ sales, hundreds of years after his death.

(If that's not enough to make you question his moral integrity, here's a slight footnote: He was also passionate about performing experiments on ore. So much so that his anger at being unable to open new mines and procure more samples drove him into a fit that led to the death of one of his students. He died in a Japanese prison.)

So... enjoy your bonus post, eat some eel today (I will), and stay out of the heat!

Hope everybody's having a great summer!

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

I wanted to add this one as an addendum to Brett's 八方美人 post, and re-emphasize his suggestion that you be careful when you use 八方美人. It's really, really difficult to use it in a positive sense. Unless you're absolutely sure there's no room for negative interpretation, don't expect it to be taken well. In most cases, it's more likely to be associated with today's trivia. Check it out:

胡麻すり
ゴマすり
goma suri

This is something that most of you might be familiar with if you've ever eaten a meal at Hamakatsu, or any similar katsu restaurant. In these restaurants, you get to prepare your own katsu sauce, which involves the literal translation of today's trivia: grinding sesame seeds.

However, the phrase as it's used more commonly refers to baseless flattery or sycophantic behavior. I asked around a LOT to try and find out what I could about the origins of this expression, why grinding sesame seeds is equated to flattery, and there are a few theories.

One derives from a hand gesture attributed to merchants and shopkeepers, especially when they deal with high status customers. I've heard that TV dramas or period movies often feature self-deprecating shopkeepers who suck up to the visiting officials or samurai on horseback, running alongside, offering wares, food, or something to drink, all while rubbing their hands together in a gesture that resembles the grinding of sesame seeds.

The other explanation I've found is that when sesame seeds are ground, they often splinter into tiny pieces and fly off in all directions, which is to say, eight directions, which is to say like a 八方美人.

If you can find any other possible explanations, let me know, because I always like my answers to be a little more concrete.

In any case, you can use this one ALL THE TIME, especially as a joking way to respond to a compliment. You can say: 「胡麻すり上手ですね。」 with a laugh, or you can simply give them a knowing look and emulate the grinding gesture. Cup one hand as though it were a mortar, and then pretend you're holding a pestle in your other hand, moving it in a circular motion.

Try it in conversation and let me know how it works out.