紅葉 （こうよう、kouyou）

There's a single word in Japanese that describes the changing color of the leaves during autumn, 紅葉(kouyou).

Having grown up in Hawai'i, the fall leaves are kind of exciting for me.  I seem to remember seeing some Peanuts comic strips in which Charlie Brown and company would jump into piles of fallen leaves.  I yearned for the seasons sometimes, as a kid.  I like that there's a single word for it in Japanese.

These pictures are of Ikebukuro, from a little neighborhood park in the midst of what is mostly a concrete metropolis.  These little parks can really stand out--

詰めが甘い （つめがあまい、tsume ga amai ）

I've been teaching a TOEFL course for the last few months, and a friend of mine also teaches it in the room next to me.  We had our final class this week.  My friend forgot his textbook that day and was scurrying to the office to see if they had a spare copy.

He got the copy and we were about to go up to the classroom.  One of the ladies who works at the school (also a friend) was lingering in front of the office, and my friend explained to her that it was the last class and he forgot his textbook.  She laughed, "Tsume ga amai, ne!"  He and I looked at each other because we didn't know what that meant, but he somehow sensed something about it.  He said to her, "Kibishii!" which, in most dictionaries, translates as "strict," but these days we would probably say  "You're harsh," or something like that.  Our female friend / co-worker laughed.

We went up to class, and I entered my room just as one of our school's Japanese teachers was leaving.  I asked her what tsume ga amai meanst and her explanation was, "Tsume ga amakatta kara, sono ato shippai suru."  I understood the second half but not the first.  She was saying "Because you tsume ga amakatta, you'll fail."  So it set in that tsume ga amai is not a good thing, but I still didn't quite know what it meant.

Later on, our female friend / co-worker said that she looked it up in the dictionary, and tsume ga amai means "to slack off tpward the end."  I was thinking, "Oh, maybe kind of like fizzle out."  Basically, you didn't finish strong.  She continued to explain that it's kind of like someone who's playing chess, and he has the chance to checkmate, but he spaces out and doesn't do it, makes the wrong move, and so he loses the game.  

I had to laugh at that one.  The more people explained tsume ga amai, the more it felt like she was calling my friend a loser.  I Googled it and found another translation that sounded pretty good:  "You didn't follow through to the end."

I thought this was a nice visual example.

I learned something new about いただきます and ごちそうさま

I imagine that most people who are at all interested in Japan and Japanese culture somewhere along the line learn about the customs of saying “Itadakimasu ( いただきま )” before eating and “Gochisousama deshita (ごちそうさまでした)” after meals.  I believe I first learned these expressions from Episode 2 of Neon Genesis Evangelion; when Shinji moves in with Misato and they have dinner to celebrate, Misato cries out 「 いただきます!」before swilling her beloved beer.  The translation provided in the English subtitles was “Let’s eat!”

For a while, I didn’t give it much more thought than that.  Then during my second year here, I started teaching a very bright young engineer whose English skills were far surpassed by her knowledge of a wide range of topics.  She asked me how to say 「 いただきます!」in English, and I told her that my first Japanese textbook translated it literally as “I am about to receive.”  She thought about it and said that this seemed an incomplete interpretation because いただきます is keigo, or honorific language, the kind that a person would use toward someone of higher status than the speaker him/herself.  So, my student suggested, “I am about to receive with respect” would be a better translation.

I gave it no further thought for years, until this week, I learned something new about いただきます and ごちそうさま.  One of my high school students, the granddaughter of a Buddhist priest, explained to me that while both phrases are ways of giving thanks, いただきます expresses appreciation to the creatures that died for you to eat and ごちそうさま expresses gratitude to the people who made this meal possible, not just those immediately responsible for paying the bills and preparing the food, but also the farmers, hunters, butchers, and everybody in between. 

Not everybody in the class knew this, but most did.  It seems to be something that has to be taught, to be learned.  It took me a long time to come upon.

I wonder if the subject ever came up in my Japanese class (I took Japanese 101 and 102 before coming here). . .Maybe I was distracted for the moment and missed it. 

One of the most often asked questions for me is how to translate these two expressions, or what the English equivalents would be.  A lot of people ask if “Let’s eat!” is the custom back home; I don’t know where they pick that up. . .Maybe that’s how most translators for English subtitles interpret it.  I explain that I don’t think “Let’s eat!” properly conveys the gratitude intended in the Japanese phrases; if anything, saying grace would be the closest equivalent that I could think of.  ( Some years ago, one of my students disagreed with me on the function of saying grace, arguing that Western people tend to thank God for things while the Japanese thank people.  I didn’t completely disagree with him but  added that who is being thanked and appreciated in a prayer of grace depends on the person saying and thinking it; but I saw his point. )

Anyway, it was a nice thing for me to learn this week. . .I'm trying to make more time to write down all the things that students teach me.

 

Omotenashi (おもてなし)

This word has been trending in Japan since the 2020 Olympics were announced.
I’m told the word basically means hospitality.  A couple of videos below, one of a popular news announcer/newscaster, Christel Takigawa.  She rolled out the message in French (her father being French, her mother Japanese).  The second video is a good English explanation of the word.

ハピバー

A followup to the last entry ("おめ"), ハピバー is another abbreviated version of Happy Birthday. . .Also taught to me by a Facebook friend.

おめ！

I just saw this on Facebook.  It's one of my friend's birthday, and one of her other Facebook friends posted 「おめ！」 which is short for おめでとうございます！, or Congratulations.  The way our younger generation here can cut syllables, and still be comprehensible. . .I'm starting to feel like there's a bit of genius in it.

じゃん

I'm told that じゃん is part of the Kanto way of speaking, generally used at the end of sentences to emphasize what's been said.  The most common usage I heard is in the phrase 「いい、じゃん！」, which I believe means "It's fine," "It's all good!" or something of that nature.

Three videos on YouTube:
 

やる, やるな, and やるなぁ~

Of course, やる is the same as する, which means to do.
やるな means "don't do that," as placing a な after a verb in its plain form is a strong way to tell someone not to do whatever action the verb denotes.

やるなぁ~ means something along the lines of "good job," "well done," etc.
I just learned the third of these, sort of by accident.  I was watching a TV show called Hammer Session, and I heard one of the characters say it but didn't quite understand it.  The subtitles translated it as "Aren't you good?"  I couldn't understand why やる was used in that situation.  Something like 「やった！」 (I did it!) I could see, but やる?

Two days later, I was at my desk in the teachers' room at school, and I overheard one of my Japanese colleagues say 「やるなぁ~」.  My head perked up.  I asked her what exactly she meant just now, and she explained the differences between the three usages of this word.  I went back to the video that night to listen to it again.  It turns out I misheard the actress.  She doesn't say  「やるなぁ~」; she says 「やるじゃん!」。
I think it means the same thing, though.

There's no embedding code on the video, but if you want to see it the url is:
http://www.drama.net/m1/hammer-session-episode-4/part3
 As the link tells you, it's Episode 4, part 3, of Hammer Session.

skin oh so soft and silky smooth, skin to die for

Sube sube (スベスベ） hada （肌） is soft, smooth, silky skin.

sube sube (スベスベ） = soft and silky smooth
hada (肌） = skin

Of course, sube sube can be used to denote other nouns, not just skin.  I associate it with skin because when I first heard the word, somebody used it while describing skin.

Following are three videos.

The first shows women giving their skin the treatment they deem necessary for akachan hada （赤ちゃん肌, which you can see whenever the babies appear in the video）.  Akachan （赤ちゃん）, or baby, is used in much the way that English speakers might use the phrase "smooth as a baby's bottom."  (See definition on Cambridge dictionary site.)




The second video is of a young woman who topically uses yogurt to achieve sube sube-ness.




 And finally the Photoshop solution

うま味 (umami)

Umami is the Japanese term (and loan word) for what is considered here to be one of five basic tastes (along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter).  Some of its translations are:  a "pleasant savory taste," "rounded, rich and savory.," and a "moreish savoury taste."

Dictionary.com's contribution, "a strong meaty taste imparted by glutamate and certain other amino acids: often considered to be one of the basic taste sensations along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty," is the longest definition that I've come across.

A couple of videos on this topic:



 

Congestion or a Runny Nose

Recently got over a cold.  I had to get some congestion medicine and found that these words were useful. 

congestion / stuffy nose = 鼻づまり　(hanazumari)　
sniffles / runny nose =  鼻水　(hanamizu)