JapanesePod101.com Blog

In an email I recently received from Japan, the first sentence contained an intriguing compound:

お元気に活躍されている様子嬉しく存じます。
O-genki ni katsuyaku sarete iru yōsu ureshiku zonjimasu.
I’m happy to know you appear to be healthy and doing well.

What the Words Mean …

Actually, before 活躍する intrigued me, it stumped me, because I didn’t know 躍. Then I looked it up and discovered this great breakdown:

活躍する (katsuyaku suru: to flourish, do well, be actively engaged)     lively + to leap!

More Sentences with 活躍 …

The first character, 活, means “active, lively, energetic, moving” here. All that makes sense in the context of the sentence.

But 躍 involves leaping?! I didn’t expect that. In truth, I don’t do a great deal of leaping, so I’m glad to find that I have somehow accomplished that in the parallel universe of kanji.

(Speaking of parallel universes, a friend just emailed to say that he saw me on TV a few days ago! Strange how I could have made my way inside his TV and had a presence there for a split second without having any idea! He had seen me at the Lunar New Year celebration, where I had my “Fun with Kanji” table. More on that experience at the link.)

My First Attempt at Peddling Kanji in the Real World …

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Konnichiwa!

I’m sure everyone is waiting in anticipation to hear who the next Mailbag Contest winners are, but until we decide the final results I’d like to introduce another listener.

This week’s story comes from Richard Murabayashi, age 71 in Hawaii.  Murabayashi-san shared a story with us about how he started studying Japanese and how he currently studies.

“I’m a soon to be 71 year old nisei and sansei, born and raised in Hawaii.
Though I picked up some Japanese as a child, after the war broke out I didn’t have
a chance to study any longer. After that it was one thing after another, and
Japanese was on the back burner until I retired at age 64. I started with 3
adult education classes in Japanese.
And that was right about the time I also started listening to your podcasts.
Thanks to your podcasts, I think I’m up to 700-800 kanji and think my
vocabulary is up to about 2000 words.
I like to listen to your podcasts for entertainment value, if nothing else.
I especially liked some of your intermediate lessons, such as the one where
a teacher was talking to her class about preserving the environment. I went
over that one several times to learn the new kanji and vocabulary.
Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone to converse with, so I’m mainly
concentrating on listening and reading. That’s what is so great about your
podcasts.
I’m happy with the level of Japanese that I’m at now, but will try to keep
learning because everything else will be gravy.”

Murabayashi-san has quite a fascinating journey in learning the language!  Studying Japanese certainly is a lifelong task and so that makes me feel really great to hear that he can continue studying with the podcast and also get a kick out of the team and their antics

For those of you who may not know what the terms “nisei” or “sansei” mean, it refers to the generation of Japanese born outside of Japan. So “nisei” would be second generation and “sansei”, third generation.
Keep those stories coming!

This week, as the United States ushers in a new president and a new era, it seems appropriate to focus a bit on politics. Here are three political words that intrigue me:

共和党 (kyōwatō: Republican Party)
     together + harmony + faction

The breakdown gives us “harmony together”! And the first two kanji mean “cooperation”! Sounds like socialism to me!

進歩的 (shinpoteki: progressive)
     to progress + progress + adjectival suffix

The Japanese word for “progressive” actually involves “progress,” 進歩. Strangely, the progress seems to come not from running but rather from walking (歩)! (Although 歩 generally means “to walk,” it means “progress” in this case.) That sounds like very slow progress indeed. After all, “snail’s pace” also involves the “walk” kanji, as well as the character for “cow”: 牛歩 (gyūho: snail’s pace, slow progress, cow + to walk). Actually, that brings us right back to politics. Check out this word:
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Konnichiwa listeners!

Welcome to the new section of our blog, The Mail Bag. This is where we’ll share stories from our listeners about their endeavors with Japanese. We hope stories from fellow students can help motivate and inspire you to learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com or give you that extra needed push and renewed sense of strength when you think it’s impossible to get become more proficient in Japanese!

This week we’d like to introduce you to Jalees, the winner of  the Mail Bag Contest and recipient of a free 1 year Premium subscription.  She had this to say about her Japanese studies:

“My Japanese story is as simple as this.  I felt like my brain was MELTING!

Why, you may ask? Well to make a long story short, I’m a stay-at-home-HOMESCHOOLING-mom of 5! I home school my children from pre-K up to seventh grade.  Before I decided to home school, I was a biology major in university.  So I was used to my brain functioning at a pretty intense level ( I hope ).  As of today, I’ve been on hiatus from school for about five years :(  I only need 4 more classes to graduate. Last year, after 8 years of ABC’s and 123’s over and over and OVER again, I thought I was going to lose my mind!

One night as my husband and I were watching an old Japanese movie, I realized that I could actually understand some without reading the subs!  The idea just came to me out of the blue….I”M GOING TO LEARN JAPANESE!  I’ve always loved Japan and Japanese culture since I was very young.  I watched anime,  read manga, and watched all the old samurai movies and without realizing it I must have picked up on some of the language!  I don’t know why I only realized this last year but better late than never, I guess.

I started searching the web for free sites where I could learn for free because in this economy, I don’t have the money to pay for classes and with 5 children, and all of their activities, I definitely don’t have the time to go to a class!

So first I started learning from some videos that someone posted on Youtube, Let’s Learn Japanese Basic I, and I went through that whole series. Soon after that, my sister gave me her old ipod. I eventually learned about podcasts and searched for a podcast that taught Japanese and guess who popped up?

Japanesepod101.com (*^_^*)

I subscribed, listened to the the first lesson, and I’ve been hooked ever since!  I cannot express in words how much you all have literally saved my sanity!  Itsumo doumo arigatou gozaimashita!

This past November marked my 1 year anniversary of studying Japanese. My study time became, and still is, my sanctuary!  I began to feel more relaxed and calm and a happiness that I had been missing from not being in school myself.

Last year is the first time I’ve been through the entire first half of the Newbie Series with Naomi-sensei and Eric-sensei, and the first half of the Beginner Series with Peter-sensei and Naomi-sensei.  I enjoyed them both immensely and learned so much that I’ve started teaching my 4 year old some Japanese!  He has a very good ear for the sounds and he loves the fact that he knows something that his older brothers and sisters don’t.  I hope to continue on with you all and when my husband and I finally make it to Japan, I hope to be able to communicate with everyone in fluent Japanese.Thank you all so much and I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn in 2009!”

Wow, that’s truly amazing. Jalees uses her Japanese studies as stress relief of sorts!  We’re happy she has a hobby that she can enjoy while taking care of her kids at home yet still connects her to another country and culture.

The Mailbag is an ongoing project, so please share your stories! You may send these to contactus@japanesepod101.com with the subject line: “Mailbag Story.” Our favorite stories will win one month of free premium service and be posted here to be shared with others!

Until next time, Ganbatte Kudasai!

If English speakers talk about seeing something quickly, they usually mean that they glimpsed something as it whizzed by but couldn’t study the image in detail. In Japanese, looking at something fast has an entirely different meaning:

早見 (hayami: chart, table)     fast + to see

An alternate way of writing this compound features another “fast” kanji: 速見 (fast + to see). In both compounds, notice the kun-kun construction. This is old Japanese.

A chart organizes the bare bones of information, enabling you to find what you need quickly!

And what would it mean to look at something slowly in Japanese? Think of quintessential Japanese creations such as gravel gardens, suiseki (水石: comprehension of nature through the appreciation of stones, water + stone), and the tea ceremony. To understand and enjoy these seemingly cryptic cultural expressions, one has to cultivate a deep stillness of mind and spirit, delving far beneath surfaces and finding something important below. (Or so I’ve heard!) In this way, one can see the essence—which is to say the “inherent quality”—of a thing:

本質 (honshitsu: essence)     inherent + quality

Isn’t that lovely? To grasp the essence of a person, you need to see and understand that person’s inherent qualities.
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Let’s start with a quiz today. What do you think the following equation yields?

excess + talk

a. headache, earache
b. gossip
c. insincerity
d. digression

While you think about it, I’ll share some photos from my recent trip to New Zealand (so as to block the answer).

The Japanese writing is fuzzy. But you can blame any fuzziness on the millions of New Zealand sheep. The sign says this:

キウィ・サウス (Kiui Sausu: Kiwi South)
羊の国のセーター (hitsuji no kuni no sētā:
     knitwear)      sheep + country

I love how “knitwear” turns into “sheep country sweaters”!

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Happy New Year! Or is it so happy right now? Quite possibly, you’re home with one of these:

宿酔 (shukusui: hangover)

And how would I know that you happen to be at home with your hangover? Well, if you’re feeling sick, it’s likely that you’ll want to stay home. But beyond that, the “ingredients” in 宿酔 more or less mandate that you be at home:

宿酔 (shukusui: hangover)     home + to become intoxicated

Actually, it would seem from the breakdown (the kanji kind, not the bodily sort) as if you had gotten drunk at home, too. But I’ll leave such matters to your discretion. You could probably succeed in getting drunk in any number of locales.
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