Spam From Japan: Eating Whale

Fish kanji

About three years ago, I was working as an ALT in a junior high school. I was halfway through my school lunch in the staffroom when the science teacher, who also coached the tennis team, sat down beside me.

“Sensei,” he began, for he was speaking Japanese, “You don’t eat whale in the UK, do you?”

“No we don’t.”

He pointed at an empty compartment of my tray. “How was it?”

To our left, two younger, female teachers nodded their heads in unison and pushed their trays away with uneaten meat on it. Across the table, another teacher did the same. This was unprecedented, as Japanese teachers often try to set a good example by eating all their food, even if there are no children around to see it.

I returned my tray and chopsticks to the metal trolley and checked the lunch menu pinned to the teacher’s notice board. I vaguely remembered expecting some kind of fish that day. However, I saw a handful of stray fliers promoting today’s lunch first. It had the name of the animal in kanji and a guide for pronunciation written over the top. The text, loosely translated, read, “A whale is a large animal, so you can take a big serving!” It was accompanied by a cute anime-style picture of a smiling whale.

Apparently, they were expecting dissent.

I realised my mistake immediately. Even within sushi bars where you can find all kinds of semi-obscure kanji for fish, ‘whale’ is frequently written out phonetically. If presented solely with the kanji, it’s a reasonable bet (for a non-native speaker) that it’s a type of fish as it includes another kanji which means ‘fish’.

The reaction of the teachers in the junior high was markedly different from those teaching in many of my elementary schools. These teachers were clearly enjoying it and sighing about how it took them back to their school days. I actually have a great deal of sympathy for people whose childhood food is being restricted and declared morally wrong, but it’s interesting that a deliberate attempt to instill the same sense of nostalgia in the next generation is being made.

February 24th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Random Japanese Words Are Awesome. Sometimes.

fugu

When studying second language acquisition, linguists often research how the native language (also known as L1) interferes with the target language (L2). For examples, a native English speaker who is learning Japanese might say “gomen nasai” when hearing that their friend has received bad news. They might have meant to say, “I’m sorry (to hear that),” but they are actually admitting fault for whatever happened. Likewise, a native Japanese speaker learning English might ask, “Are you busy?” and add more work when an English speaker replies that they are not. Yes, I’ve been there.

These linguists rarely look at how the L2 interferes with the L1. I mean, seriously, when’s that going to happen?

If you’re learning Japanese, all the freaking time.

I once overheard two English-speaking guys talking on the train. One said to the other, “I’m going into work at a shougakkou on Mokuyoubi.”

Wait, what? I can understand using shougakkou in place of ‘elementary school’ within Japan. After all, I attended a ‘primary school’ like many other Brits and so both expressions are equally unusual to me. I’ll happily tell you that I’m thinking of upgrading my ordinary keitai for an iPhone. Yeah, it makes sense to select the word you have in common when two or more dialects collide.

I also understand using a Japanese loan word for something so culturally specific that there’s no comparable word for it. Would you prefer to eat “vinegar rice, often served with raw fish” or sushi? I’m even a fan of the word kawaii. Sure, you can translate it as ‘cute’, but we all know there’s something more going on there.

So why Mokuyoubi when you mean ‘Thursday’? Is this really unique to those of us learning Japanese? Maybe those linguists should investigate.

Do you use Japanese words when you’re talking/writing in English? Which ones? If you’d like to read more about Japanese check out my article on the number eight and Japanese wordplay.

August 18th, 2009 | Tags: , , | 9 Comments »

Spam From Japan: Japanese Wordplay and Hidden Eights

It’s revealing that while American ads use the telephone keypad to spell out letters to help you remember that number, Japanese ads use whole sentences.

Numbers are easy to convert into words and then sentences in Japanese. Everyone knows the one about ‘4′ being pronounced shi, which means death, right? But you can also convert longer words. For example, yaoi can be rendered as 801.

That’s not to say English doesn’t do it too (or should that be ‘doesn’t do it 2′?), but Japanese makes it easier because it has a limited number of syllables to work with, and so there is an increased chance that a single sound in the language will be a complete word. Also, we’re playing with two different languages and writing systems here.

So, having said that, today is August 8th. Two eights in a row. In order to make sense of it, I consulted a site called Every Day Is A Holiday (Japanese).










Abacus Day/Soroban no Hi
When you count using an abacus, it makes a sound a bit like pachi pachi, which is a play on the repeated pronunciation of ‘8′ in Japanese.
Moustache Day/Hige no Hi
The kanji for eight, 「八」, looks like a moustache.
Calabash Day/Hyoutan no Hi
The number ‘8′ looks like a calabash, or gourd.
Octopus Day/Tako no Hi
Because octopodes have eight legs! That one was easy…
Laughter Day/Warai no Hi
Haha is the sound of laughter and also a way to pronounce two eights in a row. There are a lot of ways to read ‘8′ in Japanese.
Respect For Parents Day/Oyakoukou no Hi
It’s a bit of a stretch, but hachi (8) hachi (8) can be lined up and rearranged to make haha and chichi, which mean ‘mother’ and ‘father’.
Fermented Food PR Day/Hakkou Shokuhin no Hi
Celebrate food like natto and cheese on this day dedicated to promoting foods that undergo fermentation. If you’ve figured out the pattern by now, the reference to the number ‘8′ is hidden in ‘hakkou’.
Papaya Day/Papaiya no Hi
The two eights are hidden in the first two syllables of ‘papaya’.
Fruit Day/Kudamono no Hi
The eighth day of every month is Fruit Day! It promotes fruit as a snack, which is oYATSU in Japanese.
Teeth Day/Ha no Hi
Last one, I promise. This also falls on the eighth day of every month and is for promoting healthy teeth. Tooth/teeth in Japanese is ‘ha’.

 
 

Did you get through all of that? There are many more besides the ones I’ve listed here. It’s worth noting that all of these days have wildly varying amounts of attention paid to them…! If this was interesting to you, try a more cynical take on learning Japanese in my post titled Six Reasons Why Kanji Are Unnecessary.

August 8th, 2009 | Tags: , | No Comments »

Spam From Japan: Dance For The Dead

Bon OdoriThe Obon Festival in Japan is what Halloween would look like if it still had its soul. It’s a festival to welcome departed loved ones into your home and then send them back to where they came from after you’ve spent precious days with them. The main group event is “Bon Odori”, which is a dance that takes place after nightfall, lit by lanterns.

There are two fixed times to celebrate in Japan, plus another date that moves around based on the lunar calendar. The first is in late July, which is observed by those in Tokyo and a few other places. The second is approaching in August. This is when people from more rural areas celebrate, along with those who still have their hearts there. Around this time, you can see shouryou uma (“soul horse”) made of vegetables and chopsticks by the roadside and outside houses. This is a cucumber or carrot horse with chopsticks for legs and is a prayer at the start of Obon that the departed’s soul will arrive just a little bit quicker. Both horses and cucumbers have a reputation for being pretty fast. At the end of Obon, a cow made of aubergine/eggplant asks for souls to be sent home at their leisure.

I asked my Japanese teacher if these were kindred spirits to teruterubouzu, which are made by children hoping for sunny days during the rainy season, and she gave me a resounding ‘no’. Teruterubouzu are for children, whereas a shouryou uma is a sincere prayer. She also told me about a private moment of the festival, when families take lanterns to and from the temple. The light guides the spirits to their home. In times past, this light was kept on throughout Obon, but this practice has since stopped.

I can’t take part in that, but Bon Odori holds a special place in my heart. People from the local community dance around a yagura, which is part watchtower, part stage, and usually has a taiko drummer at the top. Pre-recorded folk songs play and people use simple, repetitive movements to move around the tower. As long as you’re respectful, you can usually join in too. The secret is to copy the oldest person in the circle.

Below are photographs of the yagura and lanterns. If you would like to know more about Obon, please check out Choutin.com (simple Japanese) or the ever reliable Wikipedia (English).

July 30th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Spam From Japan: Six Reasons Why Kanji Are Unnecessary

I bet you think this cat is pretty smart, but she's actually reading the English translation.As an amateur linguist and blossoming devil’s advocate, I wanted to write a response to a blog entry I saw on JSOC titled Six Reasons Why Kanji Is Necessary.


Kanji are one of a number of writing systems used in Japanese and were imported from China over a span of time, leading to their numerous different readings. You need to know around 1,945 kanji to be considered literate by the Japanese government.


In short, they’re the complicated-looking ones. Do you really need to know them? Of course not. Here’s why.


(1) Without knowing kanji (or the Chinese version, hanzi), tattoos are awesome again. Imagine looking at your acquaintance’s new tattoo and not knowing that it said ‘prostitute‘, ‘idiot‘ or ’sesame chicken’. I bet you thought I was making the last one up. Nope. Now you can appreciate friends’ tattoos without wondering how you’re going to explain that they’ve tattooed the technical term for mouse genitalia on their lower back.


(2) Eating out is a new and exciting experience. Just point to somewhere on the menu. Pick the food with the prettiest kanji. Heck, you don’t even need to know all that stuff about stroke counts. Within minutes, anything from shiokara to basashi to whale could be coming your way. It’s like a potluck dinner with double the excitement and none of the friends.


(3) You can still enjoy Shiso Pepsi. ‘Shiso’ is written in the Roman alphabet on the bottle and there’s even a leaf worked into the design just in case you don’t make the connection between the word ’shiso’ and the stuff in the local supermarket.


(4) Think of the children. It’s hard to explain to a six year-old how you know more kanji than them and why most of them are found only in 18-plus doujinshi. Never again.


(5) If you really want to read, great literature is still available to you. I must’ve read “Kaijuu-tachi no Iru Tokoro” (Where The Wild Things Are) over a hundred times by now. Unfortunately, if you’re looking to read 1Q84 by Murakami Haruki, you’re out of luck.


(6) You will never know when it’s your turn to clean the staff toilet at your place of work. What does 「火曜日」 mean? And is 「５月３１日」 some kind of serial number? If anyone calls you on it, nod your head as if considering the matter hard and try to enter that number into your mobile phone handset. Screw up your face and pretend you are cracking a code like in a Dan Brown novel. If it looks like that might really make you clean that loo, consult a nearby poster of the Vitruvian Man.


As you can see, these are six reasons why not knowing kanji will actually improve your quality of life. If you decide to ignore my sage advice and continue with your studies regardless, good luck to you.

July 11th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments »