チャレンジする and チャレンジャー

The way that "challenge" is used in Japanese seems to have its roots in English, but in application can be a bit different. 

チャレンジする (charenji suru), which is generally a transitive verb in English (e.g. "I challenge you to a contest"), is often used as an intransitive verb in Japanese.  This can lead to problems in direct translations, since in English it would be awkward to say, "I'll challenge!"  A better translation, one closer to its intended meaning, would be to say, "I'll try something new" or "I'll do something I've never done before."

From this comes the word チャレンジャー, which describes a person who is willing to try new things.  The first time I came across this word was seven or eight years ago.  I saw a product in a hundred-yen store that, according the picture on the packaging, seemed to be a kitchen deodorizer.  It looked like I was supposed to put it in my drain, but I wasn't sure.  I asked someone at work what  I should do with it, and she explained its function to me.  That night, she emailed me to say that she was perplexed at why I didn't know what to do with this thing that I myself had bought.  "You bought it, didn't you?  Why didn't you know what it was?"  I replied that, from the picture on the packaging, I had an inclination that it was for my kitchen, but I wasn't quite sure what it was but wanted to try it.  She wrote back, "I understand.  You are チャレンジャー!"

I think that it's generally seen as a good thing to be a チャレンジャー.

Apparently it's the name of a video game, too. Interesting how people post themselves playing video games. You Tube has just about everything! The other day I met a guy who learned how to solve the Rubik's Cube on You Tube.

あけおめ！ことよろ！

「明けましておめでとうございます！　今年もよろしくお願いします。」
 　あけましておめでとうございます　　　　      　ことしもよろしくおねがいします
Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!  Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

These are of course the traditional phrases for the New Year in Japan, to be said after the clock has struck twelve.  Although we're sort of past the New Year grace period -- I'm told that the first few days of the year is the time for such well-wishing -- people still use it when they have their first January encounters with friends and family.  ( I think February would be a bit late in the year.)  I'll go back to work tomorrow, and I expect that I'll be exchanging these phrases with a number of people, both students and colleagues.

Akeome (あけおめ ) is the shortened form for 「明けましておめでとうございます」 and
Kotoyoro ( ことよろ ) stands for 「今年もよろしくお願いします。」

People taught me the shortened versions during my first New Year holiday in Japan, back in 2002.  At the time, I think these were considered new expressions, even "trendy," as my younger students told me.  My older students had no idea what they meant; when I explained what had been explained to me, I had the tacit impression that they didn't approve of this new language.

The next New Year, when I tried using あけおめ and ことよろ, my younger students were like, "Don't say that any more, it's old.  We don't say that any more."  But then the next year it came back, and folks all around me were saying it.  Over the years these abbreviations seem to have become part of the lexicon and I hear them everywhere.

Below are a few example usages: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n28VXMjL90

 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ldt9f8h2c

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDwj4s2PvU
 

 And some English explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhV3xbiu3qk

 

浮かれる (うかれる)

浮かれる, ukareru    

According to my dictionary, it means "to be very happy, to be in high spirits, in top form. . .to be delighted, be tickled pink, to make merry. . ." This term came up the other day, when one of my friends and co-workers saw that I was wearing my "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" necktie, and she noted that I was in the Christmas spirit.  The connotation, she noted, was that being caught up in anticipation of something allows one to leave behind the drudgeries of reality.      

やりそう (yarisou)

やる (yaru) means do, same as する。
そう (sou), in this situation, means something akin to "seems like".

So やりそう means "It seems like you'd do that,"  or "It seems like something you'd do.

To illustrate, there was a class in which one of my students said this, and it made me laugh uncontrollably.

We were discussing an article about child discipline.  I asked everyone how they felt about corporal punishment.  After some small group talking time, we went around the room for people's views.  One member of the class said, "I think it is okay, if it is on a soft part of the body."  I think we all understood what she meant: spanking a child's bottom was okay, but hitting him/her, bruising, etc. was not.  Striking bone onto bone was not okay.  (I would like to mention that this student is a very nice person, having known her for two years, and I would bet all the money I have in this world that she wouldn't abuse a child.)

But, just as a joke, I asked her, "So this is okay?"  and I mimed someone hitting another person in the stomach.

The student immediately shook her head no.  Her friend, sitting next to her, shouted out, "Yarisou!", meaning that she thought the student would do something like that.  Punch her kid in the gut.  Of course, the friend was kidding, and we all shared a nice laugh.

音姫 (オトヒメ, the Sound Princess)

Have you ever felt embarrassed by the natural gaseous and liquid sounds we all make while doing Number 2?  For anyone who has, the public restroom in Japan is the place to be.

Witness the Otohime:


The first time I saw one was in 2001 or 2002, at an Italian restaurant in Ochanomizu.  Back then you had to press a button to make it work.  Its function is to make a bit of noise so that others in the restroom can't hear yours.

Apparently, In the past, people who wanted to cover up their bathroom sounds used to flush and flush as they went.   This would obviously result in a tremendous waste of water.  Enter the otohime (音, or oto, means sound and 姫, hime, is princess, e.g. Mononoke-Hime, the Miyazaki Hayao movie), literally, "sound princess"  (or Princess Sound?), which has been said to save 20 liters per use.  One of my students taught me this term.  I asked why they thought the device included princess in its name, and they said probably to lend it some cuteness.

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.