JapanesePod101.com Blog

In my first blog for JapanesePod101.com, I sought compounds with a neat repetition of shapes, such as 宝玉 (hōgyoku: jewel, gem, treasure + jewel).

Soon afterward, I found repeating shapes inside 読売 (to read + to sell), which says Yomiuri, as in the prominent newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. As Yomiuri isn’t a real word, I can’t help wondering if the founders coined 読売 partly for its visual appeal.

Repeated shapes within a compound can be visually arresting. Just look at all these words containing two or more instances of 力 (RYOKU, chikara: power):

Compounds with repeating shapes can also be dizzying, particularly when viewed in a clump, as with this cluster of suns and moons:
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You’ve likely heard of “voiding the check.” Well, today we’ll be doing the inverse—checking the void. That is, we’ll look at more ways in which 空 conveys a sense of emptiness … or even a yawning void!

A Mind Is a
Terrible Thing to Empty

Empty the mind, empty the mind. That’s supposed to be the goal of meditation. But what if people really were empty? That wouldn’t be optimal, according to this compound:

空け者 (utsukemono: fool, idiot, dunce)                 empty + person

On Options for
Insulting Someone …

When 空 has the kun-yomi utsuke, it means “empty-headed” or even “dumb”! Here’s that yomi as a verb:

空ける (utsukeru)

This word has two meanings:

1. to become empty or hollow
2. to relax from a tense situation into a vacant or absent-minded state

I knew bad things were bound to happen with relaxation. That’s why I’ve never tried it!

Oh Dear ….

Seemingly, another compound also refers to emptying the self:
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Hi, everyone!
Nowadays, there are many fantastic ways to learn Japanese with modern technology like JapanesePod101.com! One good way to learn and experience Japanese culture and language is to surf YOUTUBE! There are many excellent things, and many not so excellent things, you can find on this website.

For example, this video can help you remember some adjectives.

This is an actual TV commercial in Japan. This commercial uses i-adjectives in a very simple and funny way! You can find many other ads if you search “Japanese Funny Commercial”.

If you are learning Japanese outside of Japan, it is sometimes difficult to find very authentic material, but YOUTUBE provides you with the opportunity to access updated authentic information! If you are a teacher and have good facilities at school, you can even use it in a classroom.

Some of the commercial elements might be too difficult to understand, but you might find it interesting to watch. Could you get all of the i-adjectives introduced?
Please let me know if you know any good YOUTUBE videos!

Have a nice week, and see you next week!

Musically and astronomically, we know about the dark side of the moon. But what about the dark side of the sky—or rather, the dark side of the “sky” kanji, 空? As I mentioned in my last blog (when discussing 空々しい　(sorazorashii: false, hypocritical) and 空手形 (karategata: bad check; empty promise)), 空 has a seamy side. This kanji often means “fake” or “sham.”

Take, for example, these words:

空名 (kūmei: empty name; false reputation)             fake + name

空夢 (sorayume: fabricated dream)                          fake + dream

A lie about a dream?! Who lies about their dreams?!

空相場 (kūsōba: fictitious transaction)          fake + market price
                                                                                      (last 2 chars.)

For a Further Breakdown …

空景気 (karageiki: false or superficial prosperity)    fake + scenery                                                                                                + spirit

On Changing the Air …

Daydreams and Pipe Dreams

Making stuff up isn’t always a bad thing! Without inventiveness, we wouldn’t have fiction or the light bulbs to help us read that fiction. In the following words, 空 means “unreality,” giving off the sense of an inventor’s dreaminess or visionary tendencies:
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Hi everyone!
Do you have difficulty remembering the counters for small animals (匹・ひき・hiki) and minutes (一分・いっぷん・ippun)? When you count these, as you might know, sound changes as below.

When just starting out, one might think, “Oh my gosh! What a complicated language!” However, don’t worry. That’s not the case anymore! “Peter” can help you remember the sound changes when counting small mammals and minutes.
Just remember this sentence:

“Peter Has Brown Hair Hi Pi Hi Pi Hi Pi…”

What does this sentence do?? Let’s break this sentence down word by word, and look at the sounds in each word.

So what do you think? Was this helpful?

A Japanese friend wrote a tongue-twister and presented it to me in rōmaji, challenging me to convert the words into kanji and hiragana. I did fine until I encountered this line:

Kono bin itsu kara kara, kinō kara kara, ototoi kara kara?

I associate kara with “from” and “because,” so I thought the repeated kara kara phrases might have meant “because it’s from.” Wrong! For every kara that appeared before a punctuation mark, I should have written 空, meaning “empty” in this case.

For The Answer to
the Kara Kara Puzzle …

Just as kara has multiple personalities, so does 空. Look at all its yomi!

KŪ: sky, empty
a(keru): to empty, leave blank
kara, kara(ppo): empty
muna(shii): empty, vain, futile
sora: sky
su(ku), a(ku): to be empty, unoccupied
utsuke: empty-headed
utsu(ro): hollow, blank

The kun-yomi sora sounds like “to soar” (and sora is even an anagram of “soar”), so it’s easy to remember sora as “sky.” Despite that, I frequently fail to recognize 空, perhaps because its meanings don’t seem to match its shape.

On the Shape of 空 …

Because 空 can mean both “empty” (for instance, with the kun-yomi kara) and “sky” (with the kun-yomi sora), we can concoct the fun phrase 空の空, kara no sora, “the empty sky.”

On Repetition Compulsion …

Air and Space

The most common words containing 空 involve the concepts of air:
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皆様、こんにちは。Hi everyone!

My name is Miho　「美帆」, and I live and teach Japanese in Australia, Melbourne. I am also currently studying at renown Monash University.

Since JapanesePod101.com began, I have been keeping track of its progess, as I see it as such a fun and interesting way of learning Japanese. I find the pedagogy of the program interesting, and as a teacher of Japanese, I would like to blog about “Japanese teaching”. It sounds quite broad, doesn’t it? I will basically talk about useful tips for both learners and teachers of Japanese over the next 10 weeks. My advice and tips will probably focus on students with an English Speaking background since I am in Australia, but you are always welcome to comment about other language backgrounds!

This week I would just like to take the opportunity to introduce myself.

I graduated from Ibaraki University (Japan), and majored in Music education. I took two years off from my studies and spend one year in Thailand to study traditional Thai music and dancing. Then, I spent another year in Melbourne working as a Japanese language assistant teacher at a secondary school.

These experiences led me to become interested in teaching Japanese as a second/foreign language, and I wanted to study more about teaching Japanese. I came back to Melbourne after I graduated Ibaraki University and worked as an assistant teacher again for another two years. In 2004, I earned a Masters of Applied Japanese Linguistics at Monash University in Australia. In 2007, I returned to Monash University and am studying to become a Japanese teacher.
I look forward to sharing my advice and ideas with you!

よろしくお願いいたします。

When a Japanese friend emailed me a recipe, one ingredient jumped out at me: 玉ねぎ (tamanegi: onion). I hadn’t realized that “onion” contains 玉 (GYOKU, tama), the character for “jewel.” I momentarily enjoyed thinking of onions as the gems of the vegetable world!

As I soon found, though, 玉- is also a prefix meaning “spherical” or “round.” That’s the sense 玉- conveys in 玉ねぎ.

On 玉- as a Prefix
Meaning “Spherical” …

Oh, well. Seeing the 玉 of 玉ねぎ as “round” is a little more mundane than imagining a white onion as the pearl of the produce store, a yellow onion as a topaz, or a red onion as a ruby!

On Jewels of
Many Colors …

The “onion” compound isn’t the only food word containing 玉. These do, too:

玉菜 (tamana: cabbage)       round + vegetable

You can’t get more straightforward than that breakdown!

玉藻 (tamamo: seaweed)       exquisite + seaweed

As a prefix, 玉- can mean “beautiful” or “exquisite.” One dictionary says that 玉藻 and 藻 (SŌ, mo) have identical meanings but that 玉藻 is the more elegant way to say “seaweed.” So I’m guessing that 玉 means “exquisite” here, though I have no idea. (I’m also struggling to imagine seaweed as beautiful, exquisite, or elegant!)

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