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In English, we speak of “airtight excuses.” This is a strange idiom. “Airtight” means something so impermeable that air cannot pass in or out of it. But how could air pass in or out of an excuse? Are we talking about hot air? No, I think the point isn’t actually the air; the point is the sturdiness of the excuse. It’s so solid that you can’t poke a hole in it, deflating it like a flimsy balloon. Oh, dear, we’re back to air. Well, so be it.

If you’ve confided your most scandalous secrets to a friend, you might hope for something similarly airtight—a hermetic seal around those secrets. Here’s how you can say “airtight” in Japanese:

気密 (kimitsu: airtight)     air + tight

Sample Sentences with 気密 …

At first glance, this compound might seem to be about secrecy. As we saw last week, 密 (MITSU) can mean “secret,” as well as “dense” and “detailed.” But there’s actually another meaning; as a suffix, -密 can mean “tight.” That’s the case above, as well as in the next, unusual word:

油密 (yumitsu: oil tight (seal, joint, etc.))     oil + tight

It’s tempting to read this as “the secret of oil,” which might mean “the secret location of oil under a vast desert” or something politically hard-edged. But 油密 is again about a hermetic seal, one that keeps oil in place.

If you’re looking for words in which 密 does mean “secret,” you needn’t despair. (Were you despairing? I couldn’t tell. Given the strange medium in which we’re conversing, your feelings seem inscrutable, as if you’ve protected them with a hermetic seal. From time to time, you might consider breaking the seal, much as a character jumped off the movie screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo, interacting with the audience. I might enjoy some company on this side of the screen. Did you ever stop to think of that?)

Sorry … got a bit off track there. At any rate, let’s look at 密 as “secret.”

We’ve already seen one kimitsu (気密). Here’s another:

機密 (kimitsu: secrecy; highly classified information)
     occasion + secret

On the Breakdown of 機密 …

Sample Sentence with 機密 …

Other Types of Secrets …

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Back in November, Dr. Matt Wachsman contacted us about his mnemonic system for learning Kanji using captivating and enjoyable flash movies. These movies involve multiple parts of the brain simultaneously, reinforcing memory linkage with visual associations, sequence associations, humor and rhymes. We hope these will appeal to people with a variety of learning styles and that you enjoy them. We plan to introduce about 6-12 new Kanji per week to cover the Kanji taught in the first 6 years of school in Japan and the JLPT levels 4 and 3.

This week’s animation is titled woman!

In Part 3 of the unagi road trip series (a recent beginner’s lesson in the main part of JapanesePod101.com), the PDF contains this great sentence:

君の秘密を皆に話してしまったよ。
Kimi no himitsu o mina ni hanashite shimatta yo.
I have revealed your secret to everyone.

Breakdown of the Kanji …

Another Way to Betray Someone’s Trust …

When would you ever say something like this? And with what tone? Perhaps you utter it in a state of complete disgrace, just before ending your life. You’ve got the sword in hand (since you’re a Japanophile and want an old-timey, Japanese method of suicide). You hang your head and quietly say, “Kimi no himitsu o mina ni hanashite shimatta yo,” then fall on the sword. (Your use of shimatta would express regret, but at that point, no one would be parsing the grammar.)

Or maybe you’d say this sentence just before walking out on someone: “Hey, guess what. I’ve taken all the money out of our account. I’ve taken your Metallica CDs. The cat’s coming with me. And oh, by the way, I’ve revealed your secret to everyone.” (In that case, shimatta would express the thorough way in which you’ve hurt and humiliated your ex. Again, no one would be analyzing grammar at that moment, but it’s always wise to know just what you’re expressing….)

Hours after I encountered this thought-provoking sentence, I learned the word 密度 (mitsudo: density, dense + degree). I was trying to tell my language exchange partner that, as I recently learned, Singapore has the world’s second highest population density of all independent countries. (It’s second after Monaco!) My partner taught me this word:

人口密度 (jinkōmitsudo: population density)
     population (1st 2 chars.) + density (last 2 chars.)

The first two kanji, 人口, break down as follows:
person + number of people (i.e., number of mouths to feed).

Then he gave me the wording for what I wanted to say:

シンガポールは世界で二番目に人口密度の高い国です。
Shingapōru wa sekai de nibanme ni jinkōmitsudo no takai kuni desu.
Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world.

Aha, I thought: 密 again! Why do the words for “density” and “secret” share a kanji? Here they are again:
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After weeks of development, we’re happy to announce the launch of the much anticipated My Feed. This fully customizable RSS feed lets Premium members decide exactly what lesson content they want on their Premium feed.

Setting up My Feed is a a simple 3 step process.

1. Choose the lesson types you want (e.g. Beginner, Newbie, Audio Blog, etc.)
2. Choose the type of content you want (e.g. Main Audio, Dialog Clip, Review Clip, PDF, Video Vocab, etc.)
3. Add My Feed to iTunes or other iTunes compatible feed readers like Juice, and just watch the content you want come rolling in.

To learn more about My Feed check out the video below or if you’re a Premium member, click here to get started now.

Thank you all for your continued support and feedback! Without it we simply could not do what we do. We hope you like this new feature and as always, if you encounter any issues with this new functionality or wish to see it enhanced in some way, please post a comment here or shoot us an email.

For kanji lovers, the word 果実 (kajitsu: fruit, fruit + fruit) is so ripe with possibilities that it’s ready to explode. As we saw last week, 果 and 実 each mean “fruit,” both literally and metaphorically. We investigated the juicy, literal sense last time. Now we’ll see how these terms can refer abstractly to the fruits of one’s labor—the rewards for hard work. Let’s take these kanji one at a time.

The Rewards of 実

The following word captures both the literal and metaphorical aspects of 実:

実入り (miiri: (1) crop, harvest; ripeness; (2) earnings, profits, gains)     fruit + to enter

The breakdown brings to mind James and the Giant Peach. But with 実入り, no one is entering a huge piece of fruit! Rather, fruit seeds enter the ground. And later, the earnings from the crop enter the bank account! (It’s “seed money,” you might say, only it comes after the financial venture, not before.)

As you know from this word and others, 実 can have the yomi of mi. A close cousin is the yomi mino(ru):

実る (minoru: to bear fruit, to ripen)

This term can refer to either dripping-good fruit or the fruits of one’s efforts.

Sample Sentences with 実る …

Here’s a related noun:

実り (minori: ripening (of a crop); crop, harvest)

This literal word gives rise to a phrase involving metaphorical fruitfulness:

実り多い (minori ōi: fruitful, successful)     ripening + many

Minori resembles “minority.” As a mnemonic, you could associate 実り多い with “many successful minorities.”

The Rewards of 果

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Back in November, Dr. Matt Wachsman contacted us about his mnemonic system for learning Kanji using captivating and enjoyable flash movies. These movies involve multiple parts of the brain simultaneously, reinforcing memory linkage with visual associations, sequence associations, humor and rhymes. We hope these will appeal to people with a variety of learning styles and that you enjoy them. We plan to introduce about 6-12 new Kanji per week to cover the Kanji taught in the first 6 years of school in Japan and the JLPT levels 4 and 3.

This week’s animation is titled Pole!

If someone said, Konomi wa konomi desu, would you know what they meant? Maybe it would help to see the kanji and kana:

好みは木の実です。
Konomi wa konomi desu.

Or perhaps things remain unclear. If so, a translation should help:

My preference is nuts.

If you still feel a little confused, thrown off, discombobulated, or miffed without quite knowing why, it’s probably because the yomi didn’t shake out as you expected. The kanji here have atypical yomi, compared with what one usually sees for these characters. Here’s the breakdown:

好み (konomi: preference)

This kanji often appears as 好き (suki: liking, taste, choice).

木の実 (konomi or kinomi: nuts, fruits, berries)     tree + fruit

You may have been tempted to read 木 and 実 as complete words with the yomi of ki and jitsu, respectively. But in this case, you need to take 木の実 as a unit. There are two possible yomi here: konomi and kinomi. The latter is actually more common, but only the konomi yomi allowed for the wordplay above! I also like konomi because it’s a permutation of kimono!

Sample Sentences with 木の実 …

Whether one reads 木の実 as konomi or kinomi, 実 has the yomi of mi in this word. With that yomi, 実 means “fruit.” (As we saw last week, 実 can also have the yomi of sane, which means the seed or pit inside fruit.) Take, for instance, this term:

実がなる (mi ga naru: to bear fruit; produce a crop)

The meaning is simple and clear. As なる (naru) means “to become,” this construction means “to become fruit” or “to become a crop.”

Playing with Fruit …

I should say that if you send 実 out into the world on its own with the yomi of mi, it won’t necessarily conjure up images of peaches or grapes for native speakers. To accomplish that, you’ll need the following word:
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Back in November, Dr. Matt Wachsman contacted us about his mnemonic system for learning Kanji using captivating and enjoyable flash movies. Unlike any other system out there, Dr. Wachsman’s uses advanced mnemonics features that involve multiple parts of the brain simultaneously, reinforcing memory linkage while at the same time appealing to people with a variety of learning styles.

Mnemonics is the way of tying information together in a way the the brain likes to receive it. There are a large number of ways to do this. The most basic one is putting information into a story. Dr. Wachsman’s system uses short Flash movies that tell a story using visual associations, humor and rhymes. His system covers all the Kanji taught in the first six years of school in Japan (~1,000 Kanji). Each week we’ll be releasing a new flash movie introducing 6-12 new Kanjis.

In this week’s animation, Dr. Wachsman covers the earth!

Last week we looked at ways in which 実 and body parts combine in compounds. My investigation of one such word took me in an entirely unexpected direction, and as I went farther and farther down that path, I decided to present my findings as a separate blog. So this week we’ll detour from the 実 examination (an examination of the facts!) to take a look at melons. (Seems appropriate to jump out of sequence on Leap Day!)

Here’s the word that took me so far off track:

瓜実顔 (urizanegao: oval or classic face (e.g., of a beautiful woman))     melon + seed + face

Pronouncing Urizanegao …

This word combines the characters for facts (実) and face (顔, kao). One might assume that the compound had to do with absorbing facts through one’s face (or facing facts!). But things don’t quite work out that way.

In 瓜実顔, the yomi of 実 is zane, the voiced form of sane. As sane, 実 refers to the seed or pit inside fruit. The first kanji, 瓜, gives us “melon,” so we’re definitely on the right path in ascribing a fruity definition to this 実.

But then what do we have? A face shaped like a melon seed is the classic oval face of a beautiful woman?! Yes, a melon seed has a pleasing oval shape, but what woman really wants to be called a melon head? Does nature offer no better source of comparison?

Well, maybe I’ve imagined the wrong sort of melon (if that’s possible)…. No, I’ve just looked in Breen, and 瓜 (KA, uri) appears in the following compound:

西瓜 (suika: watermelon)     west + melon

West melon? Is this like West Orange in New Jersey, only in Japan? Seems that this SUI should have been 水 (SUI, mizu: water). Indeed, that’s a second possible way of writing this word. Halpern tells us that the SUI in 西瓜 is a “special reading,” which is to say ateji. But I still want to know why 水瓜 (water + melon) isn’t the primary way of writing “watermelon”!

Wikipedia to the rescue! The Wiki-article presents these useful facts:

• “By the 10th century AD, watermelons were being cultivated in China, which is today the world’s single largest watermelon producer.”

• “In Vietnam, legend holds that watermelon was discovered in Vietnam long before it reached China…. When the Chinese took over Vietnam in about 110 BC, they called the melons ‘dura hảo‘ (good melon) …”

• “According to legend, watermelon was discovered by Prince Mai An Tiêm, an adopted son of the 11th Hùng King. When he was exiled unjustly to an island, he was told that if he could survive for six months, he would be allowed to return. When he prayed for guidance, a bird flew past and dropped a seed. He cultivated the seed and called its fruit ‘dura tây’ or western melon, because the birds who ate it flew from the west.”

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