JapanesePod101.com Blog

I’ve never liked the term “passing away,” perhaps because it’s euphemistic or … I don’t know. I’ve just never liked the way it sounds. But this week, as my grandmother has been lying in a semi-conscious haze, close to death, I’ve taken comfort in the idea of a passage. That is, I like to think that she’s not passing away but rather passing through. I imagine that she’s going through a tunnel.

Much as we come into this world through a birth canal, I choose to believe that she’s working her way down a “death canal.” And that somehow makes the idea more palatable. Death is about stopping: 止. It’s about going no farther. But if she’s in a passage, then she’s still moving along, still headed somewhere, possibly floating on waves of hallucinations. Maybe it’s a trippy kind of trip, a kaleidoscope of images from a long life. She might be seeing the faces of people she loved, people who “passed through” before.

All week, I’ve visualized this kanji:

通

It means “to pass.” Not “pass away” but “pass through.” I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with this character, never knowing quite how to read it. The on-yomi can be either TSŪ or TSU, and the kun-yomi can be tō(ru), to(su), or even kayo(u). But just this week, I’ve developed a fondness for this kanji.

It even looks like a tunnel at its core:

用

The top, マ, strikes me as an ornamental crest that dresses up the tunnel. The movement radical indicates progress through that tunnel. And the main part, 用, well, that’s an opening, 冂, with bars that close the tunnel to the rest of us until our time comes. When it does, the bars lift briefly, admit one, and swiftly shut again.

The following links represent more passageways. Choose your destination carefully. The first three “doors” will take you farther into kanji-land. And the fourth meanders down memory lane with only the faintest sprinkling of kanji. If you have no interest in hearing more about death, elderly relatives, and personal memories, it might be best to leave that fourth door bolted. (Of course, you’ll miss photos of some hot girls in swimsuits!)

The Real Meaning of the Components …

A Whale-Fish Compound…

A Passage to Words About Passages ..

Passages and Memories …

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Some of you may have noticed that the “Contains” and “Ends with” search methods of the word dictionary in the Learningcenter are gone. We changed the way the dictionary works to improve performance, and to take a large step closer to providing you more accurate search results. Therefore it now returns results ordered by relevance. The order is not perfect, processing natural language with computers is difficult, but it should be much better than before

Now I will explain by example how the remaining search methods work:

The default “Is” method will now also search inside English phrases. A search for “way” for example will still find “途中 - on the way, en route, midway”. It will also find “one-way traffic”, but will not find “always”.

The “Starts with” method works on top of the “Is” method, with the same behavior. Searching “way” with “Starts with” will add “道草 - (n,vs) wayside grass, loitering on the way, (P)” to the results for example.

We are always looking for new features to add to our site, or ways to improve existing features, and in most cases ideas for new features come from the feedback you provide. So please keep the feedback coming!

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 Ear!

We saw two weeks back that 密 has three disparate meanings:

1) Close, dense, thick, compact, tight
2) Minuteness, carefulness
3) Secret, private, illegal, stealthy

Thus far, we’ve only explored meaning #3.

As I’ve said, it’s odd that these meanings appear to be so far apart. But are they really? Maybe not. Let’s look at some takes on secrecy:

He’s obviously linking secrecy (meaning #3) with closeness, density, compactness (meaning #1). OK, let’s try another:

This Walpole fellow clearly linked secrecy (meaning #3) with careful, highly detailed exploration (meaning #2). And I’m pretty sure that this quote espouses a deep love of kanji, while also advocating general curiosity. So … kanji curiosity is a good thing, right?

Let’s hear words of wisdom from one more source:

Oh, dear. Why do I have a terrible feeling that this, too, refers to Kanji Curiosity?

OK, without further ado, let’s look at meanings #1 and #2.

1. Being Dense

Here are some examples of 密 as “dense”:

密林 (mitsurin: dense forest, jungle)     dense + forest

Not much to say about this word, except that I like its straightforward logic!

過密 (kamitsu: overcrowded)     to exceed + dense
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Mina-san, our friend Tajee and her team have started a new short video series starring a Ninja Girl who offers insight into different Japanese things and events.

You can see Ninja girl in action here.

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 Child!