Woman's intuition = 女の直感

As in other cultures across the globe, women in Japan are perceived by many to have capable intuitive powers.  

woman's / women's intuition = onna no chokkan  (女の直感 、おんなのちょっかん)

体育祭 (たいいくさい)

For a lot of schools in Japan, this is the season of the taiikusai, or Sports Day, or Sports festival.
It's much like a Field Day back home; a day of games, relays, of being outdoors.  Taiiku (体育) is the word for physical education or physical training.

My school also features an Endan performance, in which students tell a story through dance.  The Endan is a pretty fair-sized production for us, but my Japanese colleagues have told me most schools don't make such a big deal out of it.  It seems that in Japan as perhaps in any place, schools have their own cultures, so how much emphasis is placed on arts, academics, and physicality depends on the institution and its people.

Anyway, here are some pictures from yesterday's 体育祭.  This is all the Endan.

neba neba (ねばねば / ネバネバ)

Just a follow-up to the natto entry a few days ago.  Natto is one of the neba neba foods in Japanese cuisine.  I have friends here who specifically seek out neba neba-ness.  I myself like it too.
I know  a few people who believe that neba neba food is generally healthy.  I can't think of any counterexamples to that, but I don't know if there's any scientific study to affirm it.

A lot of my students who look up ねばねば in their dictionaries come up with sticky, and it is that--but not like a piece of hard candy (say, a Jolly Rancher) that just flew out of your mouth while you were talking.  ねばねば is like gooey sticky, strings of thick fluid that follow the mouthful of food that you bring to your mouth with a fork or pair of chopsticks.  Okra would be a prime example.  In Japan, popular examples are yamaimo / tororo. . .

There's a great entry on neba neba foods on this blog:
http://umailabs.com/word-of-the-week-stickinessneba-neba%E3%81%AD%E3%81%B0%E3%81%AD%E3%81%B0%E3%83%8D%E3%83%90%E3%83%8D%E3%83%90/#more-1595

It has great pictures.

As with many other Japanese onomatopoetic expressions, neba neba is a word repeated and can be used as a suru verb (i.e. neba neba suru). . .

soba (そば)

Soba, or buckwheat noodles, is one of my favorite Japanese dishes.  It's very much due to the excellent sauce, but also to the texture of the noodles, which is pretty much like whole wheat spaghetti.  Soba can vary quite a bit in terms of price and quality.  The most inexpensive soba goes for a little over 200 yen; other places might charge in the neighborhood of 1000 yen.  The more expensive places are probably charging for atmosphere and for the fact that the noodles are fresh and handmade every day.  The cheaper places are fast-food versions where people pop in and out and don't linger much.  Ten or so years ago, I only ever saw salarymen in the cheaper soba shops, but now I see all kinds of people, men and women from whatever generations.

Years ago, I read in a travel guide that soba was for the poorer mountain people who couldn't grow or afford rice.  White rice was considered a luxury.

Below is sansai soba (sansai means "mountain vegetables"). You can buy it in pre-sealed packs at the supermarket.

納豆 (なっとう )

Nattō

One of Japan's many soy products to be experienced, nattō is fermented soybeans.  I think there's much to be said about it.  It generally isn't restaurant food.  It's quite economical, about a hundred yen for a three-pack (sometimes four).  It's gooey.  It's unpleasant to wash dishes that are coated in nattō remnants--at least for me it is.  It's an excellent source of lean protein.  It feels gross to some people to have nattō's texture in their mouth.  Above all, above all else, first and foremost and most predominantly, at least in terms of first impressions, is its horrid and wretched smell.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating about the smell.  

Actually, I like nattō.  I eat it.  I don't like the smell, but I enjoy its taste and don't really mind its texture (in my mouth, at least.  Getting it on my hands is something else).  But the part about not wanting to wash nattō-coated dishes will probably not change in this lifetime.  The first time I ate it was in curry, which was quite a mistake.  The second time was simply over hot rice, which was quite good.  It's called nattō gohan.  You put yellow mustard on it and pour the sauce on.  Much less commonly, the yellow mustard can be replaced with wasabi, Japan's horseradish. (I've only seen this once, in a supermarket.)  A lot of people will mix a raw egg with the nattō.  (I find that just about all of my friends who grew up in Japan have an unshakable trust in the eggs produced here and will eat them raw anytime, any place, without fear of salmonella.)  You can also put on top of it okra, shirasu (tiny, tiny fish), or strips of nori (dry roasted seaweed).  You can eat it as sushi (the nori maki, or makizushi version); 7-11 usually sells it.  I know some who eat it on toast, and one of my students eats it plain and cold, just out of the fridge.

The Wikipedia article on nattō goes on to detail some of its health benefits, as promoted by the industry and other proponents of nattō.  It contains a compound known as pyrazine, which is supposed to deter blood clots.  It’s said to be rich in Vitamin K and calcium, both helpful in maintaining bone strength and preventing osteoperosis.  I like that the article states that nattō "may be an acquired taste."  In fact, I do know a fair number of Westerners (and foreigners from the East, as well) who eat it willingly.  My friends who can't stand it watch me consume with disbelief.  One of them, one of my best friends here, always felt that Japanese people who like nattō do so with a measure of pride, as they expect most foreigners to find it unendurable.  I remember this one time he had a little taste.  As he slowly chewed, savored, contemplated, he said, "No.  No.  Usually, even if I don't like a food, I can kind of imagine what someone else would like about it.  But no, not with this."  It was a wall that he would not be climbing, though he wished otherwise.  "I want to like it.  I wish I liked it.  I just. . .can't!"  As I tried to assure him that things would be okay, that it was no big deal, he eyed me with caution.  He said that he suspected I carried a bit of pride myself in being a foreigner able to eat fermented beans.   So far as I can tell, to the extent that I am aware of myself, I don't.  In the company of foreigners, I actually feel a tad embarrassed to be eating these stinky beans, but—oh well!  I gotta think it’s okay to like healthy, inexpensive, bad-smelling food.  

Some pictures of an eatery that serves nattō, and the dish called nattō gohan:

文化的多元主義 (ぶんかてきたげんしゅぎ)

I hope I have the right kanji; to tell the truth, after the bun, this one's far beyond my reading abilities. I'm trying to write bunkatekitagenshugi, which is a mouthful that means multiculturalism, to the best of my knowledge.  The bunka means culture, and shugi is the word for -ism.  I'll have to learn the other syllables.  This is one of those words that I don't often have a chance to use, but I remember it because I like the concept.

きもい！(kimoi!)

Yet another example of word/phrase shortening, きもい is the abbreviated version of 気持ちわるい.  Definition:  gross, disgusting, creepy, makes me sick, ewww. . .

Although a good deal of my older and/or more socially conservative students and acquaintances would never use this word, viewing it as somewhat improper, I hear it spoken repeatedly by the teens and twenty-somethings of my world.  There's even an abbreviation of this abbreviation:  きもー!

 I should add that even with younger people, it can be a sensitive word.  A few years ago, I had a friend who was teaching a speech/presentations class.  One of his students had a habit of choosing one member (at random, so far as I know) of her audience and staring at that person during the entire speech.  It started to freak people out.  So the teacher tried to explain this with "It's kind of kimochi warui--"  As soon as those words came out of his mouth, the student hit the ceiling.  She complained to her parents and, since it was a private school where her family had some influence, it was a rough situation for the teacher.  He didn't mean anything offensive, but offense was taken.  I guess it isn't much different from English.  I can tell a friend that s/he makes me sick or creeps me out, but I'd be careful using the word around people I don't know very well. 

スタバ (Sutaba)

スタバ  is short for Starbucks.  The full word in katakana is スターバックス, but colloquially people usually leave out the -クス.

As in むずい, one might see a penchant forth shortening of words, but whereas むずい is a contraction of a Japanese word, スタバ is an easy-to-say version of an imported word, as is マック (Makku,), the Kanto region's abbreviation for McDonald's.  (I'm sorry, I can't recall the Kansai word for McDonald's, but I remember that it is different.)

Well, in the end, it sounds reasonable to suppose that abbreviations are all there because they're easier to say.  I have wondered how Kentucky Fried Chicken became ケンタッキー(Kentakki-); is it really easier than saying KFC?  Maybe for speakers of Japanese. . .

I came across someone's blog entry about his experience at a Starbucks in Ginza.  Having had some similar experiences, I understand what he's saying, but other Starbucks (and cafés in general) can be quite different.  Much has been written to help foreigners to the country in developing a set of expectations, the better to navigate the culture, but I've found more variety and diversity here than I've read.

Anyway, the blog entry is here:
http://www.japaneseruleof7.com/navigating-a-japanese-starbucks/
The writer, a man named Ken Seeroi, has some things to say. . .I haven't read much of it, but I'll have to go back and check it out again.

むずい (muzui)

Some of the students in my high school taught me this one.  It was in the middle of a composition class, and we were practicing the future perfect tense.  This led to the question (naturally, I think) as to why one would use the future perfect instead of the future tense.  As my team-teacher and I determinedly attempted to demonstrate through example situations the usefulness of being able to conjugate verbs in such a way, someone in the front row said to the girl next to her, "むずくない？(Muzuku nai?)"  I repeated the phrase to myself, as I often do when my students say things that I don't understand but want to remember for my own development with the language.  The girls laughed in good humor and went on to explain, "むずかしくない？(Muzukashiku nai?)"  i.e. "Geez, that's hard!" or literally, "Isn't it difficult?"

As one of the characteristics of modern Japanese is a shortening of terms through the discarding of certain syllables, so muzukashii has become, for many native speakers of this language, muzui.  When I narrated the incident to one of my older students (a nice lady who just turned 80), she deemed this to be "young people's Japanese."  ("I don't understand!" she exasperated, shaking her head.)

天使 (tenshi)

tenshi = angel.

The first kanji character, 天 (ten), is quite useful. It appears in the word for heaven (天国, tengoku)
and in 天ぷら (tempura, the deep-fried Japanese dish).


Below, a blast from the past:
"Angel" by Aerosmith

おたく/オタク (otaku)

At first, I thought that "otaku" was the direct equivalent to the English terms nerd and geek. But I've since heard it used in other contexts. For example, I was team-teaching a conversation class in a high school, and the textbook unit was about music. It offered several photographs and challenged students to find the appropriate genres to match the pictures. Among the genres were: pop, rock, rap, country/western, and classical. As we went through the genres, I tried to think of a few examples from past and present for each genre. When it came to rap, I mentioned some of the old school Def Jam artists (Public Enemy, the Beasties, LL Cool J) in addition to some of the newer faces. My team-teacher, by way of teasing me, whispered "Otaku!" to the class. She meant that I was into the genre more than the average, or perhaps normal, person would be into it. (I am not a hardcore rap fan, but I like a lot of the old school and some of the new.) According to Wikipedia, otaku is "a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly (but not limited to) anime and manga." The article goes on to explain the word's origin as "derived from a Japanese term for another person's house or family (お宅, otaku). . .often used metaphorically, as an honorific second-person pronoun. In this usage, its literal translation is "you". For example, in the anime Macross, first aired in 1982, Lynn Minmay uses the term this way." For people of my generation, this might seem like news; in America, Macross was the first of three generations in the cartoon called Robotech (which was adapted from three different anime series). This is from Macross, the Japanese movie: I thought about putting some pictures or video of "otaku" dudes, but I'd rather not contribute to stereotypes. Not that people who strongly resemble such stereotypes don't exist; I see them pretty frequently. (The legendary Akihabara, with its many maid cafes, is supposed to be the mecca of otaku culture.) I'm sure Google and YouTube have millions--millions!--of links for you to check out, if you're interested.