Yesterday, while eating a watermelon, I wondered when and how Japan got their first watermelons. So I pulled out my Casio XD-GW9600* and did a search for すいか in the Britannica Encyclopedia. Oddly, I couldn’t find it. Undaunted (when have I ever been daunted?), I pressed the Kenkyusha’s giant J-E button but [...]
Here is a new phrase for me. It has a nice sound to it like 中途半端 (chuuto hanpa - doing something halfway) or ぬきあしさしあし (nukuashisashiashi - walking stealthily like a ninja)*
選り取り見取り
yoridori midori
Having lots of choices
Here is the Kenkyusha 和英 entry for 選り取り:
よりどり【選り取り】
choice.
どれでもよりどり３足５００円だよ。
doredemo yoridori sansoku gohyaku en da yo.**
Your Choice! Any 3 [...]
Richard VanHouten (richvh at TJP.com) has been working on a serialized, fictional story in Japanese called Yuki’s Story. I had the idea to have Yumi record some of the chapters for readers to listen to while reading. Rich graciously accepted the offer. But I’m a little behind on reading the story. [...]
Here’s a neat ことわざ:
朱に交われば赤くなる
shu ni majiwareba akakunaru
lit. blood red-if mingled with-become red
A rotten apple spoils the barrel.
朱 shu is the color of blood, scarlet red
交わる majiwaru means to mingle or mix with
交われば majiwareba adds the ‘if’ factor
赤くなる akaku naru become red
Literally, this proverb means if you mix a red coloring to something, at some point [...]
You can’t imagine how pleased I was when looking over the stats I discovered yet another Google search phrase where 1nichi1kai.com is #1 (at least at this moment) .
This is the highly prized アリが父ちゃん search phrase. Yes, ‘An ant is my father’ in Japanese leads people directly here. Or actually directly here.
* Actually, [...]
I discovered two new idioms (for me).
I was watching a 名探偵コナン anime. The bad guy after seeing Conan and his little friends seemingly trapped in an elevator - it looked bad for them, really bad - belted out a menacing laugh and said 「ふくろのねずみだ！」
Surprisingly, Kenkyusha’s huge J-E didn’t have this idiom, but the 広辞苑 [...]
忍者犬
くのいちハナ参上
ninja ken
kunoichi hana sanjou
Ninja Dog
An Appearance by the Female Ninja Hana
A few days ago I began to notice Hana (our dog) suddenly appear inside when I distinctly remembered letting her out.
I blamed it on my thirty-something rampant senility, but after the third ‘deja vu’, I grew suspicious.
Hence today’s word:
神出鬼没
shin shutsu ki botsu
Appearing suddenly [...]
I sold my ‘educational’ Japanese PS2* and my old Xbox in order to buy an Xbox 360 a month or so ago. Although I’m not really a big gamer, I am enjoying wasting a lot of time with a game called Lost Planet. Last night I played for two whole hours. Its [...]
This may be a ‘duh’ moment for most of you, but…
The other day I tried the energy drink Red Bull for the first time here in the States. It brought back memories of that CM (TV commercial) of the rock climbers at the end of their rope groping for their リポビタンD energy drink and [...]
I haven't had a lot of reading time (or writing time!) to make much progress with the Musashi novel. But I remembered something from the movies. Years ago I watched the Samurai trilogy movies staring Mifune Toshirou (三船敏郎) which is based on the Musashi novel by Eiji Yoshikawa (吉川英治).
In the movie Musashi patiently eats his [...]
|
|
