I am so bad at updating. SO BAD. Part of the problem is that I've been going out/actually talking to people in the evenings, so instead of writing my blog posts after dinner, I come home exhausted, talk to Nick for a little bit, and then fall asleep. The dangers of having friends!
Anyway, here are the answers from the super short words challenge!
1. pasokon = personal computer (paasonaru konpyuuta)
2. rimokon = remote control (rimooto kontorooraa)
3. meruado = mail address (meeru adoresu)
4. kaanabi = car navigation system, aka GPS (kaa nabigeeshon)
5. santora = sound track (saundo torakku)
6. furima = free market (furii maaketto)
7. kopipe = copy and paste (kopii ando peesuto)
8. ama = amateur (amachua), which is the opposite of puro (pro, short for professional)
9. infure = inflation (infureeshon)
10. shinse = synthesizer (shinsesaizaa)
...the highest anyone scored (that they told me; I dunno, maybe someone got all of them but was super secret about it) was a 2.
Say it with me:
:'D
Perhaps I have been in Japan too long, but a lot of these seemed pretty intuitively obvious to me! (Well, not kopipe* and santora and shinse. I got shinse after I thought about it, though.) I have probably just been in Japan too long, you guys. Probably.
Let's see. What has happened since the last time I updated?
Monday was Louki's birthday, and I made her a cake, because it was either that or read stuff for class. Anyway, it turns out that some people think being able to bake a cake is impressive? I dunno.
Also, somewhere in the middle there I discovered that Grace is a brony which means that OUR BRONY LEAGUE IS NOW AT THREE. We are UNSTOPPABLE.
Anyway, a bunch of people went out to a kaiten sushi** place, which was really good AND really cheap! And I ate a bunch of saba (mackerel), because I am into saba.
Then, when we came back, it turned out that basically the entire dorm was waiting to sing "Happy Birthday" to Louki. It was exciting!
Almost immediately after that we all trooped up to Ashley's room to wish HER happy birthday at midnight. And I wanted to play her the ponies happy birthday song, but then I realized it was from an episode she hadn't seen yet and I was sad.
The next day I had penmanship, and one of the women who I haven't seen in almost five months was there. It turns out that she injured her knee and was bedridden for a while, which is (obviously) why she wasn't coming to class, but it's great that she's able to get up and walk around again! Also, she was shocked to see me, because apparently Nakano-san had told her that I had gone back to America...and failed to tell her that I was coming back. OOPS.
But anyway! It was a pretty good class! I actually did some pretty okay penmanship and was super proud of myself until Nakano-san, 15 minutes before the end of class, handed me a string of about 20 incredibly difficult kanji and told me to try it "as a challenge." ...it was pretty bad. I shall take pictures and put them up here at some point. Prepare your eyeballs.
Also, people in penmanship class have realized that actually maybe I kind of know something about Japanese religion, because:
A. I can understand the weird, obscure Shinto terms Nakano-san uses
B. I got into HARVARD, so clearly I must be kind of okay
C. Nakano-san was describing an amacha*** ritual, and I correctly identified it as being created by Gedatsu-kai,****
D. I knew what Gedatsu-kai was (I just read a book on it...)
E. I know the difference between Amaterasu-oomikami and Amaterasu-no-mikoto (one is from the Nihon Shoki and the other is from the Kojiki).
It's amusing, because a couple of new women have started coming, and Nakano-san keeps introducing me as knowing "all this random stuff even I don't know about Shinto." Ahahahaha, what.
That evening I had Japanese class, where we finished reading a mystery novella we started a couple of weeks ago. In the end, it turned out that the person I suspected from the beginning did it, and when we were just reaching the climax, our teacher asked if anyone knew who had done it, and I said I did, and she was SHOCKED OH MY GOODNESS. It was kind of obvious, though. If you're going to include a character and not have him/her DO anything, OBVIOUSLY HE/SHE DID IT. Especially if it's a novella.
Wednesday I went out to Toyota City to interview Aoyama-san, the priest who the Yamaguchis (my host family in Tochigi) introduced me to. He answered negative to almost all of my questions, which is interesting, but not entirely unexpected. Anyway, I got some good information out of it, so now I just have to write it up into my paper. I've been trying to work on my paper a little bit each day, but that's not actually how I work on papers, so it's more like on Wednesday I worked on my paper for a couple of hours and doubled the word count and I haven't touched it since then. Oh well. It'll get done.
Thursday I had Japanese class, where we were learning kanji compounds with two or more readings/meanings. For example, 心中 can mean "in [someone's] heart" (しんちゅう) or it can mean "a love suicide" (しんじゅう). They are pretty different words!
After class I went out with a bunch of other foreign students to kaiten sushi AGAIN, because we are all about kaiten sushi.
And now it is Friday and I am writing this in the afternoon so that I don't forget in the evening. GENIUS.
Next week is Golden Week, which is a week with a million holidays in it, so everybody goes traveling. Everybody except me, that is. I don't really have any plans. Maybe I'll figure something out or maybe I'll just bum around or maybe I'll go on a day trip somewhere. WE SHALL SEE. On the other hand, we have to finish a draft of the handbook by Monday, so maybe I'll just work on that...
*Which may be my new favorite word. It just sounds so perky!
**Rotating sushi. It's where the sushi is on a conveyor belt or in sushi boats. People are always shocked when I say that we have kaiten sushi in the US.
***Sweet tea.
****As it turns out, Nakano-san belongs to a more Shinto-centric spin-off of Gedatsu-kai called Kamunagara-no-michi (which is the old reading for the word "Shinto," by the way!). I need to find infos on it, basically.
Showing posts with label shortened words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shortened words. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Sometimes stuff is problematic
So apparently nobody can figure out the shortened words. Here, have some hints:
pasokon, meruado, and kopipe are all words having to do with computers
kaanabi and rimokon are both electronics
furima and infure are words you will most commonly hear in economics
shinse and santora both have to do with music
ama is the opposite of puro
YAY, now you will definitely be able to figure them out, right? Right? Right?
Other exciting news! On Friday night we had our dorm's dance party, which went better than the Halloween party, but has convinced me that even if I have friends at them, I am just not into parties!
Additionally, I discovered that when I put on a dress, dudes apparently become really interested in flirting with me. It's awkward, 'cause some of them were dudes who have never bothered to talk to me before and suddenly they were all, "Man, you are HAWT in a dress," and then ogled me awkwardly, and I was all, "OH MAN, IS THAT SOMEONE WHO DESPERATELY NEEDS MY HELP FAR ACROSS THE ROOM I GOTTA GO." On the other hand, I had a bunch of actually good/interesting conversations with people who had things to remark on other than my hawtness in a dress/lack of hawtness the rest of the time.
Oh, on a totally unrelated note, several days ago, Ashley recognized my dorky Hitchhiker's shirt for what it is,* which led to SO MUCH GEEKY BONDING, as if we weren't already buddies because of our shared bronyism** and disturbing enthusiasm for Gurren Lagann (it is the best and if you disagree YOU ARE WRONG).
In other news, I have begun to realize exactly how right Alyssa's Law of Anthropology is. Alyssa (who is the anthropologist Fulbrighter in Fukuoka) was saying at the conference that anthropologists like to spend a lot of time talking about how "problematic" everything is. And recently I've been doing a lot of reading that has driven that point home. Of course, sometimes labeling something as problematic makes sense, especially if it's a translated word. For example, could you call a kami a god? Maybe. But that could be, ahem, problematic, because it might make your readers think that you're talking about the Western concept, with the gods existing in a different world/level than humanity. It gets even more complicated when you're using words that also exist in Chinese, or words that exist across cultures, like "Buddha." In Japanese, there's a phrase "to become a buddha," which is basically synonymous with "to die." Except that's not how becoming a Buddha works in any other kind of Buddhism. So it's pretty understandable if you have to put a disclaimer on that sort of thing.
...and then there are people who think pretty much everything is problematic. This especially becomes a problem when you're talking about Shinto between 1868 and 1945, because everybody argues over whether it was a state cult or not and whether it was a religion or not and whether it was a state teaching or not and whether etc. etc. etc. And it's fine to recognize that there's a lot of debate surrounding a lot of terms, but apparently some people feel the need to write a disclaimer EVERY. TIME. THE TERM. APPEARS. Yes, I got it the first time! It's problematic! I know!
On a final note, I asked Itou-san about finding a female priest who went through seminary as a college student (because both she and Nakano-san did the crazy summer crash courses), and she is amazing and knows a bunch of people and said she would introduce me and YES. SO EXCITED.
...and on an actually final note, people have found my blog through the keywords "euphemisms for chest hair."
What.
The.
Fork.
*So many people have told me that my "whale shirt" is "cute," and then I wait for them to continue and they just stop there and I am sad.
**Season 2 ended today and it was amazing and I just, wow, you guys, wow.
I WISH I HAD A BBBFF. OR A PFF. OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.
ALSO, PONIES + OPERA WHY IS THIS SO GOOD
[obligatory spazzing]
Ahahaha, you probably all think I'm insane but I DON'T CARE BECAUSE PONIES.
pasokon, meruado, and kopipe are all words having to do with computers
kaanabi and rimokon are both electronics
furima and infure are words you will most commonly hear in economics
shinse and santora both have to do with music
ama is the opposite of puro
YAY, now you will definitely be able to figure them out, right? Right? Right?
Other exciting news! On Friday night we had our dorm's dance party, which went better than the Halloween party, but has convinced me that even if I have friends at them, I am just not into parties!
Additionally, I discovered that when I put on a dress, dudes apparently become really interested in flirting with me. It's awkward, 'cause some of them were dudes who have never bothered to talk to me before and suddenly they were all, "Man, you are HAWT in a dress," and then ogled me awkwardly, and I was all, "OH MAN, IS THAT SOMEONE WHO DESPERATELY NEEDS MY HELP FAR ACROSS THE ROOM I GOTTA GO." On the other hand, I had a bunch of actually good/interesting conversations with people who had things to remark on other than my hawtness in a dress/lack of hawtness the rest of the time.
Oh, on a totally unrelated note, several days ago, Ashley recognized my dorky Hitchhiker's shirt for what it is,* which led to SO MUCH GEEKY BONDING, as if we weren't already buddies because of our shared bronyism** and disturbing enthusiasm for Gurren Lagann (it is the best and if you disagree YOU ARE WRONG).
In other news, I have begun to realize exactly how right Alyssa's Law of Anthropology is. Alyssa (who is the anthropologist Fulbrighter in Fukuoka) was saying at the conference that anthropologists like to spend a lot of time talking about how "problematic" everything is. And recently I've been doing a lot of reading that has driven that point home. Of course, sometimes labeling something as problematic makes sense, especially if it's a translated word. For example, could you call a kami a god? Maybe. But that could be, ahem, problematic, because it might make your readers think that you're talking about the Western concept, with the gods existing in a different world/level than humanity. It gets even more complicated when you're using words that also exist in Chinese, or words that exist across cultures, like "Buddha." In Japanese, there's a phrase "to become a buddha," which is basically synonymous with "to die." Except that's not how becoming a Buddha works in any other kind of Buddhism. So it's pretty understandable if you have to put a disclaimer on that sort of thing.
...and then there are people who think pretty much everything is problematic. This especially becomes a problem when you're talking about Shinto between 1868 and 1945, because everybody argues over whether it was a state cult or not and whether it was a religion or not and whether it was a state teaching or not and whether etc. etc. etc. And it's fine to recognize that there's a lot of debate surrounding a lot of terms, but apparently some people feel the need to write a disclaimer EVERY. TIME. THE TERM. APPEARS. Yes, I got it the first time! It's problematic! I know!
On a final note, I asked Itou-san about finding a female priest who went through seminary as a college student (because both she and Nakano-san did the crazy summer crash courses), and she is amazing and knows a bunch of people and said she would introduce me and YES. SO EXCITED.
...and on an actually final note, people have found my blog through the keywords "euphemisms for chest hair."
What.
The.
Fork.
*So many people have told me that my "whale shirt" is "cute," and then I wait for them to continue and they just stop there and I am sad.
**Season 2 ended today and it was amazing and I just, wow, you guys, wow.
I WISH I HAD A BBBFF. OR A PFF. OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.
ALSO, PONIES + OPERA WHY IS THIS SO GOOD
[obligatory spazzing]
Ahahaha, you probably all think I'm insane but I DON'T CARE BECAUSE PONIES.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Come at me, disasters
I'm pretty bad at updating, 'cause I have too much going on in my life or whatever. EXCUSES.
Let's see if I can quickly recap what's been going on in my life.
Tuesday morning was the monthly festival (tsukinamisai) at Susanoo Shrine. I hadn't been able to go for the past three months because of one thing or another (well, graduate school application deadline, food poisoning, and being in Tokyo respectively), so it was nice to see everyone again. I...hadn't forgotten everything either! And I got to fold paper for the offering trays and apparently was proclaimed a genius because even though I was shown how to fold the paper from the bottom corner up, I was able to make the exact same shape from the top corner down. Um. I'd call that basic spatial awareness, not genius, but whatever.
Also, Nakano-san offered to take me to a fire purification festival that's performed at Misogi Shrine, about 3 hours by car from Nagoya. It's very unusual, because most fire purification ceremonies are performed at temples, not shrines. Her husband works at the shrine, and she apparently goes up there a fair amount, so she offered to take me the next time she goes up. Pretty exciting!
Tuesday evening I had Japanese class, where we read about how people are giving their children ridiculously difficult to read names. This won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese, but some names in the article included: 結愛（ゆあ）, 明日（ともろう）, 笑（えりく）, 香魚（かな）, 夢紅（むく）, and, my personal favorite, 響（りずむ）. WHO THE HECK NAMES THEIR KID THAT? That's just cruel.
After class, we had a nomikai with the foreign freshmen and Tuesday sensei*. It was pretty fun, although it quickly degenerated to learning swear words in foreign languages. I know now some swear words in Chinese! Yay? Also, one of the freshmen is Mexican, and was trying to teach everyone cusses in Spanish, but finally one of the Chinese boys asked, "Can't you cuss at people without involving their parents?" Ahahaha, it's kind of true.
Anyway, Wednesday morning I had penmanship class, where, funnily enough, we had a long discussion about people naming their children ridiculous things.
Also, I practiced writing this:
I hope you are super impressed by that heart radical. It took me...FOREVER.
Anyway, Wednesday afternoon everyone in the dorm had a mandatory disaster drill, because, you know, almost all the foreign students are leaving in a month and it would really suck if a disaster occurred in the next month and they didn't know how to deal with it. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. Anyway, you would think that a disaster drill would only take...oh, an hour, right? I mean, there are only so many disasters that can occur. We aren't near active volcanoes or anything... But, no, it took 3 hours. THREE. HOURS. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
After that everyone wanted to throw themselves out of windows, but we couldn't find any appropriate windows so instead a bunch of us went to all-you-can-eat pizza again (and I, once again, failed at eating pizza but ate a million pounds of eggplant pasta; it was AMAZING).
Today I had Japanese class in the evening, and we learned some crazy shortened words. In Japanese, a lot of borrowed words are simply too long to use in daily speech (plus, Japanese is all about making words shorter than they already are), so words get shortened. Like air conditioner becomes eakon. And Starbucks becomes sutaba. See how many of these words you can figure out (all of them are shortened forms of commonly used English words or phrases**):
1. pasokon
2. rimokon
3. meruado
4. kaanabi
5. santora
6. furima
7. kopipe
8. ama
9. infure
10. shinse
Hint: 1-7 are two or more words mashed into one, while 8-10 is a single word which has had the second half chopped off.
If you speak Japanese and can figure out 9 OR if you don't speak Japanese*** and can figure out 6...I'll give you a prize or something, I guess. OH MAN, PRESSURE'S ON NOW. It should be noted that we have a native speaker tutor in our class, and she couldn't figure out some of these. So they're not easy. And, no, it won't work to put them through Google translate. You have to think about it. You can work in teams if you want, just as long as you are working as a team, not just mooching off some poor soul.
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to!
*Although now I guess he's We Don't Take Class with You sensei. IT'S SO CONFUSING. Monday sensei is now Thursday sensei and Thursday sensei is Tuesday sensei. I don't know what to believe.
**I could have thrown in some German to be a jerk, but I'm not a jerk. Aren't you happy I'm not a jerk?
***For those of you who want to try this but don't speak Japanese, all vowels are pronounced like in Spanish. R is pronounced like a cross between an L and an R and is used for either sound in English. A double A is pronounced like a normal A, just twice the length. Everything else should be intuitively obvious.
Let's see if I can quickly recap what's been going on in my life.
Tuesday morning was the monthly festival (tsukinamisai) at Susanoo Shrine. I hadn't been able to go for the past three months because of one thing or another (well, graduate school application deadline, food poisoning, and being in Tokyo respectively), so it was nice to see everyone again. I...hadn't forgotten everything either! And I got to fold paper for the offering trays and apparently was proclaimed a genius because even though I was shown how to fold the paper from the bottom corner up, I was able to make the exact same shape from the top corner down. Um. I'd call that basic spatial awareness, not genius, but whatever.
Also, Nakano-san offered to take me to a fire purification festival that's performed at Misogi Shrine, about 3 hours by car from Nagoya. It's very unusual, because most fire purification ceremonies are performed at temples, not shrines. Her husband works at the shrine, and she apparently goes up there a fair amount, so she offered to take me the next time she goes up. Pretty exciting!
Tuesday evening I had Japanese class, where we read about how people are giving their children ridiculously difficult to read names. This won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese, but some names in the article included: 結愛（ゆあ）, 明日（ともろう）, 笑（えりく）, 香魚（かな）, 夢紅（むく）, and, my personal favorite, 響（りずむ）. WHO THE HECK NAMES THEIR KID THAT? That's just cruel.
After class, we had a nomikai with the foreign freshmen and Tuesday sensei*. It was pretty fun, although it quickly degenerated to learning swear words in foreign languages. I know now some swear words in Chinese! Yay? Also, one of the freshmen is Mexican, and was trying to teach everyone cusses in Spanish, but finally one of the Chinese boys asked, "Can't you cuss at people without involving their parents?" Ahahaha, it's kind of true.
Anyway, Wednesday morning I had penmanship class, where, funnily enough, we had a long discussion about people naming their children ridiculous things.
Also, I practiced writing this:
I hope you are super impressed by that heart radical. It took me...FOREVER.
Anyway, Wednesday afternoon everyone in the dorm had a mandatory disaster drill, because, you know, almost all the foreign students are leaving in a month and it would really suck if a disaster occurred in the next month and they didn't know how to deal with it. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. Anyway, you would think that a disaster drill would only take...oh, an hour, right? I mean, there are only so many disasters that can occur. We aren't near active volcanoes or anything... But, no, it took 3 hours. THREE. HOURS. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
After that everyone wanted to throw themselves out of windows, but we couldn't find any appropriate windows so instead a bunch of us went to all-you-can-eat pizza again (and I, once again, failed at eating pizza but ate a million pounds of eggplant pasta; it was AMAZING).
Today I had Japanese class in the evening, and we learned some crazy shortened words. In Japanese, a lot of borrowed words are simply too long to use in daily speech (plus, Japanese is all about making words shorter than they already are), so words get shortened. Like air conditioner becomes eakon. And Starbucks becomes sutaba. See how many of these words you can figure out (all of them are shortened forms of commonly used English words or phrases**):
1. pasokon
2. rimokon
3. meruado
4. kaanabi
5. santora
6. furima
7. kopipe
8. ama
9. infure
10. shinse
Hint: 1-7 are two or more words mashed into one, while 8-10 is a single word which has had the second half chopped off.
If you speak Japanese and can figure out 9 OR if you don't speak Japanese*** and can figure out 6...I'll give you a prize or something, I guess. OH MAN, PRESSURE'S ON NOW. It should be noted that we have a native speaker tutor in our class, and she couldn't figure out some of these. So they're not easy. And, no, it won't work to put them through Google translate. You have to think about it. You can work in teams if you want, just as long as you are working as a team, not just mooching off some poor soul.
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to!
*Although now I guess he's We Don't Take Class with You sensei. IT'S SO CONFUSING. Monday sensei is now Thursday sensei and Thursday sensei is Tuesday sensei. I don't know what to believe.
**I could have thrown in some German to be a jerk, but I'm not a jerk. Aren't you happy I'm not a jerk?
***For those of you who want to try this but don't speak Japanese, all vowels are pronounced like in Spanish. R is pronounced like a cross between an L and an R and is used for either sound in English. A double A is pronounced like a normal A, just twice the length. Everything else should be intuitively obvious.
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