Picture taken from party at my professor home, where I can meet (and 'meet' :-) ) not only the current member of my lab, but sometimes some alumni too...
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Again, about kanji.
You know that there’re several kanji in Japan that have the same pronunciation and the same English translation, but they give different nuance to the sentences? One of them (well, actually this is the only example that I know... :-) ) is kanji for the word au (あう), which English translation is ‘to meet’ and it can be written by several kanji (e.g. 会う, 逢う, 遭う). The ‘normal’ kanji is 会う, and I just happened to run across the other kanji (遭う) several days ago, thus I quickly asked Makii the difference between the kanji (you know one of the great things being a member of my laboratory? It is easy to find a free good Japanese teacher... :-). After reading this, I think Makii will charge me the next time I ask her about Japanese...).
Well, while the kanji 会う and 遭う are both read au, and both literally mean ‘to meet’, the usages are different. While the 会う kanji is normally used when you meet someone, the kanji 遭う is used when you meet danger or bad thing (e.g.盗難に遭う(tounan ni au), which means being robbed).
And it was not long when I finally had the chance to use it. Yanagita called me to have dinner together with Saito and Konishi, and when I mailed Makii about the news, here’s what I wrote: 「今夜柳田と遭う予定ですよ」(“I’m going to meet Yanagita tonight”).
(It’s just a joke. Actually, the kanji cannot be used if you want to say that you meet someone, even if you think he is dangerous).
The mail developed into a short chat. Makii wanted to ask me about something, and we then said that we’re going to meet in the lab. When closing the mail, she wrote: “I’m looking forward to meet you in the lab”. You can guess which ‘meet’ that is... :-).
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