One of my favourite aspects of the language is 四字熟語 ("yojijukugo", 4-character idioms). Literally, it means:
yo(yon) = 四 = four
ji = 字 = character
jukugo = 熟語 = phrase
These four character kanji compounds can be used in all sorts of situations and are a very convenient way on conveying a complex concept simply and quickly. Many yojijukugo have an idiomatic meaning that can't be easily determined just by looking at the characters, although some are quite easy to understand. Becoming a master at using yojijukugo will take a lot of practice. But here are a few of the more common ones to memorize. Break these out in conversation with your friends and watch their jaws drop!

1. 弱肉強食 ("Jakunikukyoushoku")
Character meanings: weak/meat/strong/eat
English idiom: Law of the jungle (literally, the weak are meat for the strong to eat)

2. 一石二鳥 ("Issekinichou")
Character meanings: one/stone/two/bird
English idiom: Kill two birds with one stone

3. 一期一会 ("Ichigoichie")
Character meanings: one/period/one/meeting
English idiom: Once in a lifetime

4. 自画自賛 ("Jigaijisan")
Character meanings: self/painting/self/praise
English idiom: Blowing one's own horn

As always, there's a lot more info about these, with examples, at Wikipedia.

The Japanese love to talk about the weather. I suppose when you have a country with such a diverse climate it’s hard not to. The beaches in Okinawa rival any tropical paradise, and snowy Hokkaido is a Mecca for skiers and snowboarders from around the world.
The seasons are very clearly separated in Japan. The Japanese are very proud of this fact and often ask foreigners whether they have 四季 (shiki, four seasons) in their own countries. In Fukuoka, winters (冬, fuyu) are generally mild with snow falling maybe once or twice a year. Spring (春, haru) is a great time of year to visit as the temperatures get warmer and the 桜 (sakura, cherry blossom) start to bloom. Then, the 梅雨 (tsuyu, rainy season) hits in late May/early June bringing a month of rain and sweat. Summers (夏, natsu) are hot with high humidity and air-conditioning is a must! Finally, autumn (秋, aki), with it’s 紅葉 (kouyou, leaves changing colour), is a great time to experience outdoor Japan.

The continually changing seasons are always a topic of conversation. When writing letters, it is standard practice to add a weather-related comment at the very beginning of the letter, even if it’s an impersonal mass mailing from a company to its customers! The Japanese version of Microsoft Word has a function to automatically insert the relevant phrase, by just selecting the season and the current weather:


This inserts a super-polite phrase like this one into your document:
菊花の候、貴社ますますご盛栄のこととお喜び申し上げます。平素は格別のご高配を賜り、厚くお礼申し上げます。

Having recently come back to Japan from a trip to the UK, I was barraged with the usual questions about my home country. The first of which wasn’t “Did you have a good time?” or “Where did you visit?” but always, “Was the weather cold?”!!

The Japanese language has only 101 different possible sounds in its syllabary, which means there are a lot of words that end up sounding the same! This often confounds new students of Japanese, who have difficulties telling the difference between words such as 橋 (hashi, meaning bridge) and 箸 (hashi, meaning chopsticks). We're often asked which words have the most meanings (or, more accurately, which sounds have the most words corresponding to them). So, without further ado, here is a list of the top ten most common word-sounds in Japanese:

10: しょうし (shoushi, 31 words)
9: こうそう (kousou, 32 words)
8: せいし (seishi, 33 words)
6 (tie): しょうか (shouka, 34 words)
6 (tie): きこう (kikou, 34 words)
5: しこう (shikou, 36 words)
4: こうか (kouka, 39 words)
3: こうこう (koukou, 42 words)
2: こうし (koushi, 44 words)
1: こうしょう (koushou, 47 words)

Of course, it's usually quite easy to figure out which of the meanings a person intends to use, based on the context.
The astute reader will notice that 8 of the 10 sounds above contain the component 'kou'. This is because there are a huge number of kanji that can be read as 'kou'. Jim Breen's always useful online Japanese dictionary finds all of 303 different kanji characters read as "kou"! Nobody said it was an easy language to read and write!

Just a quick post on the different priorities of cooks in Japan:



This microwave has 2 buttons. The first is labelled あたためる (atatameru, to warm), with a picture of a bowl of rice. The lower one is labelled 生ものの解凍 (namamono no kaitou, or defrosting raw things). Look closely at the picture, though. That's right, the one thing they decided to use to represent all possible raw foods was: a squid!

No streetlights? No problem. Vending machines will light your way...



Stretching as far as the eye can see! In Japanese, vending machine is 自動販売機 which is another great example of kanji that can be understood even if you don't know how to say them. To break it down:
自: ji, meaning onself
動: dou, meaning to move
自動: jidou: to move by oneself - hence, automatic!
販: han, meaning marketing
売: bai, meaning to sell
販売: meaning sales
機: ki, meaning machine

So, a 自動販売機 is an automatic sales machine! There, wasn't that easy?

Many many moons ago, we had a "discussion" with a native speaker of English who was upset that the Japanese mangle the pronunciation of "coffee" as 「コーヒー」, among many other words. However, we pointed out that coffee isn't an English word in the first place. This source traces it from the Arabic qahwah. This is one example of a word whose pronunciation in English is at least as bad as the katakana version of that same word.
As Japanese has such a limited syllabary, it's inevitable that some words can't be faithfully transliterated into Japanese, one of the most famous being McDonalds, or マクドナルド (makudonarudo) as it's known here. However, in many cases Japanese does a much better job of keeping words imported from other languages close to the root word than English! Partly this is because those words were imported into Japanese much more recently, meaning there has been less time for the pronunciation to be corrupted. But partly it's also because effort is made to represent the sound as faithfully as possible, unlike the common habit in English of anglicizing words. This is very obvious in place names.
So, for example, the country we call Switzerland is called 「スイス」 (Suisu) in Japanese, which is much closer to the original Suisse. Likewise, the recent Steven Spielberg film about the Munich Olympics scandal was called 「ミュンヘン」 (Myunhen) in Japan. Paris becomes パリ (Pari), and Germany ドイツ (Doitsu), Italy is イタリア (Itaria) and Turkey トルコ (Toruko). Interestingly, Spain stays as スペイン (Supein), for some reason, and Sweden is スウェーデン (Sueeden) rather than Suverijji.

Just a short post today, but a golden piece of trivia: Did you know that the name Pacman comes from Japanese? In Japanese the 擬音語 (giongo, onomatopoeia) パクパク (paku paku) means to eat in big bites, or to eat quickly. So パクマン (pakuman) is someone who eats fast without chewing much!

Example sentence: 昼休みは３０分しかないけん、みんな毎日パクパクと食べる。
Hiru yasumi wa san juppun shika nai ken, minna mainichi paku paku to taberu.
We only have a half hour for lunch, so everybody gulps their food down.
Breakdown:
昼休み: hiru yasumi, lunch time. Literally, ?gmidday rest?h
３０分しかない: san juppun shika nai. Literally, ?gthere is only 30 minutes?h
けん: ken. A hakata-ben (link to hakata-ben intro) word meaning ?gso?h ? an informal replacement for ?gので?h (node)
みんな（は）: minna (wa), everybody. As this is an informal spoken sentence, the particle は (wa) can be omitted.
毎日: mainichi, every day
パクパクと食べる: paku paku to taberu, gulp one?fs food down. As with a lot of 擬音語, it?fs connected to a verb by the particle と (to). In this way, it functions basically the same as an adverb in English. So, a direct translation would be something like ?gto eat hastily?h.

パクパク can also often be seen in manga, as the written sound effect for a person chewing hungrily.
So now you know, it's not just a goofy name for a little yellow ball, it's actually the Japanese equivalent of calling him {Gobbleman{!
Still doesn't explain why Ms. Pacman wasn't just called Pacwoman, though...

And for those of you who are wondering, the pic above is plundered shamelessly from National Console Support Inc., proud retailers of the Naruto v2.0 plushy, among many other fine products...

On the surface, the English phrase ?gmore or less?h looks like it should be the equivalent of the Japanese word 多少 (?gtashou?h, made up of the kanji for ?gmany?h and the kanji for ?gfew?h).
?gMore or less?h, for some reason, means ?gmostly?h. However, 多少 means ?ga little?h, i.e. the almost direct opposite of the English phrase. Funny, eh? Yeah, alright, maybe not that funny?c

Japanese adjectives have very strict rules. There are only two kinds of adjective:
1. ?gい?h adjectives (adjectives ending in the character ?gi?h)
おいしい (oishii, delicious)
青い (aoi, blue)
鋭い (surudoi, sharp)
These adjectives can be placed directly before a noun, for example おいしいリンゴ (oishii ringo, delicious apple), or used by themselves, for example ?gおいしい！?h

2. ?gな?h adjectives (adjectives that have ?gna?h added)
貧乏な (binbou na, poor)
きれいな (kirei na, beautiful)
豪華な (gouka na, extravagant)
These adjectives must have ?gna?h added when they?fre used before a noun, for example きれいな人 (kirei na hito, a beautiful person). However, they can be used without ?gna?h by themselves, for example ?gきれい！?h They can end in the character ?gい?h, but are generally made from the 音読み (onyomi, or Chinese reading) of two kanji put together.

All adjectives fit into one of these two groups, except for one common but strange word: 同じ (onaji, the same). This is perhaps the only exception to the above rules, since it doesn?ft end in the character ?gい?h, but it can be placed directly before a noun, without ?gな?h, for example 同じ奴 (onaji yatsu, the same guy). As it?fs such a common word, most students learn it without even noticing that it doesn?ft fit the rules, but it?fs a strange little reminder that language is not a fixed set of patterns, but an ever-evolving tool.

Now that we've finished writing this article, it doesn't seem half as interesting as it did before we started. Ah well, such is life...

For some reason, lots of the students at GenkiJACS seem really interested in learning Japanese swear words. So, in the interests of a well-rounded education on vernacular Japanese, as it's spoken on the street, here's a short intro to swearing in Japanese. Our lawyers have asked us to suggest that the faint-of-heart skip to the next blog entry, which we promise has nothing but sweetness and light.
First of all, it's important to note that swearing in Japanese is very different from swearing in English, in many ways. The biggest difference is that there are almost no exclamatory expletives (in English, for example, {fuck!{) that you can't say in polite company. It's not rare to hear くそ！ (kuso, literally {shit{) on TV, or even ruder forms such くそばば (kusobaba, shit-hag). There aren't really equivalents for the massive range of undirected swearing that people from Britain, for example, are capable of. (We're thinking of the opening scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral here. If anyone knows what the Japanese subtitles were for this scene, leave us a comment!)
Other words quite commonly heard on TV include 死ね！ (shine, die), which is one of the worst things you can say to someone if serious, but which is often heard in a jokey context . Another is the well-known ばか (baka, idiot), which some talk show hosts such as Shimada Shinsuke use regularly on their guests. Most sex-related words such as おっぱい (oppai, boobs) are completely fine.

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