JapanesePod101.com Blog

Let’s start with a quick quiz. We’ve seen that 味 (MI, aji) means “flavor,” among other things. Given that, what do you think this compound means?

一味     one + flavor

a. the best possible flavor
b. unique or peculiar flavor
c. gang, clan
d. monomaniacal

To block the answer from view while you think about it, I’ll share something cool I saw in LA recently:

The orange thing in the car is the setting sun! You may remember how I said awhile back that accepting my new age was as difficult as looking at the sun? I saw this sunset during an endless traffic jam on my birthday. So I guess I managed to look straight at the sun after all!

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Today we’ll learn how to be pretentious in Japanese. If you’ve ever watched the show Frasier, you may have heard the character Niles order cappuccino with “just a whisper of cinnamon.” And if you saw the movie Sideways, you heard the wine snob protagonist refer to one red wine as having “the faintest soupçon of asparagus and just a flutter of a nutty Edam cheese.”

These characters used an important bit of syntax when they indicated “a touch of” or “a smidge.” How important? Well, it’s the difference between calling a movie Evil and A Touch of Evil.

In Japanese, 味 (MI, aji) enables you to indicate when something has just a hint of this or a touch of that. This kanji performs that function in the following words, where it means “sensation, feeling”:
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Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, (Formal I know, but “G’Day mates,” might be a bit too casual.)

Sam (AKA Jkid) here. I have been listening to JapanesePod101 since its debut on the web. Its purpose was simple. To make learning Japanese interesting and fun. As a long time learner of Japanese I was, of course, interested in what it might have had to offer.

Since that time I have listened to almost all of the lessons here. At first, that is all I did. However, it didn’t take me long to find my way over to the forums and into the comment section of each lesson where I then began to interact regularly with the great community of people that’s been established here. (Although, it should be noted that in the lesson comments I posted as “A Person” just to change things up a bit.)

The community is in fact the main reason behind my decision to approach JapanesePod101 about the possibility of assisting in some capacity with the running of program when I came to Japan to undertake a year of university studies as an exchange student. Yep, I am here in Japan now!

To my surprise they accepted my offer, and I am writing to you all now. To introduce myself as the latest staff member of JapanesePod101. I will be, as always, interacting with the community through the lesson comments and forums and now as an Administrator I will endeavor to take my involvement one step further and do my best to make sure this wonderful website remains spam free and the community continues to prosper!

To the other staff of JapanesePod101, I would like to thank you once more for this great opportunity and for making such a fantastic website through which people can discover how fun learning Japanese can be!

See you all in the forums and lesson comments,

- JKid

It often seems that food is the best entryway into learning Japanese. Without even taking a Japanese class, most of us know words such as sushi, tempura, miso, and so on. Ah, but do you really know all there is to know about miso? Here’s the word in the way you already know it:

味噌 (miso: fermented bean paste)     tasty food + boisterous

On the Ateji in 味噌 …

味噌汁 (miso shiru: miso soup)     miso (1st 2 chars.) + soup

Because miso is usually white (shiro, 白), I always want to call this miso shiro. (Plus, that rhymes.) Maybe it would help to associate this shiru with the verb “to know” (shi(ru), 知), using the mnemonic, “If you knew miso like I know miso …” For young’uns who don’t know the reference, it’s from a 1925 song that sometimes includes this lyric: “You’ll get woozy, after just one day with Susie.”

In these cases, 味噌 has a literal, food-related meaning. But that’s not true of the following type of 味噌:

味噌 (miso: key (main) point)

Hope you don’t mind if I cease to define the individual kanji in 味噌 each time they show up. It’s best to view this ateji term holistically.

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If a man tastes something bitter and then runs away, what do you get? A man in discomfort? A disappointed (that is to say, bitter!) man? No, you get a “sternly handsome” man, whatever that is!

苦味走った (nigamibashitta: sternly handsome)
     bitter + taste + to run

The first two characters form the word 苦味 (nigami or kumi), meaning “bitterness” or “bitter taste.” Meanwhile, 走った (hashitta, voiced here as bashitta) looks like the past tense of the verb 走 (hashi(ru): to run). But actually, 走った functions here as a participle, a verbal adjective describing the implied 男 (otoko: man). That is, he’s a man who ran after he ate something bitter. Sounds like a wuss to me, but maybe some people find such behavior attractive in men.

Grammar aside, it’s hard to know what’s going on in this compound! I mean, I understand why the man is stern. But was he handsome before eating the bitter food? Or does the severity of his expression add to his good looks?
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I recently rented the Japanese movie 茶の味 (Cha no Aji, tea + taste), thinking it might actually be about tea. After all, someone translated the title as The Taste of Tea, so I don’t think I was off base in hoping it might be at least partly about Japanese tea. Out of all the uncontrollable passions in my life, tea runs a close second to kanji. If you want to know just how crazy I am about tea, take a look at my tea cabinet.

Green teas fill most of the upper shelf, with teabags to their left.
Black teas are on the lower right. Decaf teas are on the lower left.
There’s more at the office.

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