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To Educatedly Say “Your Eyes are Beautiful” to Japanese Girl

Thursday, January 26, 2006

I was planning to use Mouri Ran (毛利蘭) picture from Detective Conan (名探偵コナン), however it is hard to find her picture from net. Thus, I used Kamiya Kaoru (神谷かおる) from Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに検心) here...
(Picture from:
http://sobakasu.free.fr/)

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If you’re not a native English speaker, I think you’ve ever been in a point on your English learning when you find that definite and indefinite articles (‘the’ and ‘a’) are extremely hard to comprehend, that it makes you think that unless you were reborn as a native, you will never understand them (honestly, sometimes I still feel so :-) ). Or, if you ever happen to learn German, you’ll know that its definite articles not only change according to gender, but also to the noun role in a sentence (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), and that they could fill up your nightmares, specially before your German test :-). Well, every language has their difficult part, and when I was happy to find that there is no such articles in Japanese when I started to learn it, I should’ve known that the ‘phantasm’ that would haunt me through the rest of my life like the crawling creature in “The Ring” had yet to come (Okay, I’m exaggerating here... :-) ).

Well, those ‘horrors’ finally came to me, and they are called particles. They are short, most of them are only expressed by a single kana, but they play an important role in Japanese. Using the wrong particle in a particular sentence doesn’t make the sentences wrong sometimes; but worse, it makes the sentence convey a message totally different from what you intent to say. I give the example below. (I got this from Makii. We keep a shared diary where I write in Japanese and she write in English, and then we check each other’s entries and write our correction there. I made so many mistakes related to the particles that now the diary is full of particles usage explanations from Makii. The good point is, I think our diary is qualified enough
now to be used as a Japanese Particles Guidebook :-) )

Here's the example:

Let’s say that you met a Japanese girl with shining eyes, and you’d go to the center of the universe just to say that out loud (世界の中心で、「your eyes are beautiful!」を叫ぶ <-- if you know the movie you’ll understand this :-) ). Anyway, you want to look cool while doing it, and you think by saying it in Japanese will do the trick. So you type the sentence in your favorite automatic English-Japanese translator and whisper the sentence that the translator gives you to the girl...

Well, at this point, I could only hope that either the girl realizes that you’re not native Japanese, or she has a good sense of humor to think that you were just joking when saying it. Most of automatic translators would translate the sentence into 「あなたの目は美しいです」 (Anata no me wa utsukushii desu), or if you want it in a more colloquial way: 「目は可愛いです」 (Me wa kawaii desu) --> your eyes are cute. (In fact, I tried 3 translators and all of them gave me the same results). The sentences are grammatically correct, but the girl will reckon you saying that only her eyes are beautiful (and other parts are not). The grammatically and ‘spiritually’ correct translation would be 「あなたの目が美しいです」 (Anata no me ga utsukushii desu) or 「目が可愛いです」 (Me ga kawaii desu). You can see that the differences are only in wa () and ga (), and these are the horrors, oops, the particles that I mean.

The problem will also arise if you want to say “You look great today!”. You shouldn’t say 「今日君は素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!), but 「今日君が素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!). Actually, there’s another particle for this that will give a better effect on what you intent to say: mo (). If you say 「今日君も素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!), it would translate as “You also look great today! (as great as usual)”.

To sum up, here’s the list of “you look great today!” translation:
今日君も素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!) (highly recommended!)
今日君が素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!) (okay)
今日君は素敵だよ!」 (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!) (never ever say this unless you really really know what you're saying).

Well, either way, I hope the girl understood what you really wanted to say... (even if what you actually want to say was "you (only) look great today!" :-) )

The Second Sheet

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

I tried to find a picture of kabuki, but unfortunately I don't have it. This is the closest thing to kabuki that I ever took picture of, therefore I use this instead...
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Last week there was a thesis defense for doctor candidates in my department and, as usual, it was followed by party in the evening. I won’t tell how it all began (since it’ll claim too much space here), but after some chat, Carmela, UNESCO fellow who currently stay in our lab, said to Saito (Saito belongs to another lab) that she was lucky to had landed in a lab with handsome members like ours (ahem... :-) ). This reminded me to one of my earliest question for Japanese (and I almost always forget to ask about it): Why there’s no native word for handsome in Japanese (they use ハンサム, hansamu, which was adapted from English word handsome), while there’s a native word for beautiful (綺麗, kirei). And as you might well guess it, I wasted no time to ask about it.

To my surprise, all Japanese that surrounded me that night said that there’s indeed a native word for handsome. The problem is that just I never heard about it before. The word with the closest meaning to handsome that I often hear is 格好いい(kakkou ii), which more or less means cool (I hear this word a lot because a lot of people say that I’m kakkou ii :-). And before you send me any objection mail, there’re indeed some people who say that I’m kakkou ii, and most of them are kids :-). Anyway, you know that kids are still pure and won’t tell a lie... :-). Well, to this point I think I have made most of you throw up so I better carry on with the story...). Back to the main topic, the word that they meant was nimaime (二枚目). I rushed for my dictionary after I hear the word, since I get an impression that my ears played trick on me. Nimaime literally means ‘the second sheet’, and even with my absurdly entangled way of thinking I couldn’t see any connection between handsomeness and sheet. Konishi and Makii was about to tell me why, when Kim-san came and they let him explained.

Well, the word originated from practice in kabuki (歌舞伎: Japanese traditional theatrical drama). In the poster for the show, the first picture of the players would display the face of the leading role. For the second picture - I think it was in order to attract some visitors who would come for pretty faces - the picture of the most handsome player in the group will be displayed (here where the term nimaime come from). And if we go to the next picture, we’ll find the most entertaining player in the group.

Just to make sure, we (we?), search the dictionary for the first sheet (一枚目, ichimaime) and the third sheet (三枚目, sanmaime) terms. There was no word for ichimaime, but the entry for sanmaime tells that it stand for the word comedian or clown in English, which fits with the explanation of the word origin above.

By the way, quiz time: if you happen to be in the kabuki group, would you prefer to have your face in the first, second, or third sheet?

The Sloppiest Year of My Life

Sunday, January 01, 2006

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I broke my glasses while I was in Vietnam. Actually it got slammed when I was trying to close taxi door, but so far almost nobody could believe it. Yanagita and Makii even accused that it was because I looked so much at Vietnamese girls that the strength of my sight crumped my poor glasses :-) (They said this because Yoshizawa-san, who was in Vietnam with me, said that I was taking some girls into my hotel room. Two girls indeed visited me, but they were my friend’s sister and her friend, and we did nothing fishy, unless they teaching me how to say ‘I love you’ in Viet could be categorized into one :-) ). Anyway, despite all ‘allegations’, without being asked Yanagita escorted me to an optic so I could make a new pair.

But back to the broken glasses, after giving a second thought, it might hard to believe that someone could be so careless to get his glasses slammed by a taxi door. However, I’d been careless in lots of occasions last year and looking back to all that had happened makes crushing my pity little glasses won’t look even close to an accident at all.

Well, my friends who know me well must’ve learned that I’m reckless by nature, but particularly for important thing, few would see me as a careless person. Even some of my friends feel save when they have me in the room while doing experiment, because sometimes I warn them if there’re something misplaced that could lead to danger (I don’t know whether they will still feel safe if they know how I had been last year :-) ). I should still be grateful that none of my recklessness led to any catastrophe; I was still able to deliver report on time and my research went close to as planned. However, I did most of the works on the last hours of deadline, which was not a good practice at all. And what happened last year was not just that.

To add up to the list: I showed up late in several party where I’ve been invited; rose late at the day of mount Fuji hiking (glad I was still able to catch the train); and forgot that I had already promised to see Star Wars 3 with Yanagita (we finally moved it to another day). Well, if I sometimes put off my works ‘till the last moment, it’s not big issue. Procrastination is nothing new for me; I sometimes exhibit that kind of habit when I get bored, and the things that I need to do is just getting new air and everything will come back normal soon. But if I forget to watch Star Wars, and that didn't happen only for once or twice, there must be a problem.

Anyway, it all had passed, and I won’t blame anything or anybody for what happened last year; it was all from me and it is me who has to do something about it (I even need to say thanks to those around me who supporting me the whole year thru’). I think it’ll be a good resolution for this new year: ‘To make last year the sloppiest year of my life’ (i.e. ‘To make the years to come far better than last year...’). All I need to do now is to find a way to make it come true, and I hope I’ll find it.

By the way, happy new year, and I hope your year will last as you wish it to be, just like I wish mine will too.

What You Can See When You Sit on Water Closet


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I was invited to the year end party at Ali and Kiki’s, and not long after arriving, Tita, who was also invited, told me that Kiki using her picture to decorate the toilet (?). I went there instantly, and found the wall inside being covered with lots of pictures (I also found my picture there). While Tita protesting to Kiki (not because her picture was there, but because “it won’t come out” for she’s too busy to look at all the picture while she’s inside :-) ), I think I could understand why Kiki doing that.

Even though I do “the thing that we do in toilet” fairly fast (I will call it “you know what” in the rest of this writing :-) ), my sister takes time to do it. That’s why she often brings book(s) with her inside the toilet, to kill time. Similar with my sister, Kiki decorated her toiler to help her spending the time required to do “you know what” (I also found some books there to support this 'hypothesis'). Since it seems that Tita used to do “you know what” fast, the picture seems to distract her ‘concentration’.

By the way, just curious: do you also decorate your toilet like the way Kiki did? :-)