5 Down...

and it only took me 5 hours... I've got to streamline this process, but the examples and translations are really hurting... and so are my eyes. Going to sleep now.

Tomorrow: 預, 汗, 遊, 値, 与

浅 - The Shallow Side of the Pool Is Always 3 Feet Deep

Readings & Meanings:

あさ　(−い）

せん

shallow, superficial

Common Usage:

adj: 浅い

Examples:

眠りが浅い

経験が浅い

Translations:

shallow sleep/light sleep

having little experience

My thanks to http://www.jlptstudy.com/2/index.html and http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/a.htm for great JLPT sites with better navigation than I can manage here.

商 - Traders Seem To Have Four Mouths

Readings & Meanings:

あきな　（-う）

しょう

To sell, trade

Common Usage:

verb: 商う

noun: 商い

商業

Examples:

活発な商いで
(copied from http://eow.alc.co.jp/%e5%95%86%e3%81%84/UTF-8/)

中国で大規模な商業が営まれるようになったのは、唐王朝後期のことである。
(from http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%95%86%E6%A5%AD)

Translations:

in brisk trading

It was in the last years of the T'ang Dynasty in China that large-scale commerce came about.

My thanks to http://www.jlptstudy.com/2/index.html and http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/a.htm for great JLPT sites with better navigation than I can manage here. Also to http://www.alc.co.jp/ for the translation of 活発な商いで.

合 - Fit Together Like Two... Kanji?

Readings & Meanings:

あう

ゴウ

カッ

To fit, to be together

Compounds:

合 is used in pretty much everything. Here are just a few:

場合 ばあい

具合 ぐあい

意気投合 いきとうごう

Examples:

採用が決定した場合は、後日電話でお知らせします。

お腹の具合が悪い。

飲み屋で隣り会わせた奴と意気投合しちゃってさ、朝まで飲んじゃったよ。

Translations:

If we decide to hire you, we will let you know via phone in a few days.

I feel sick to my stomach. (lit., my stomach's condition is bad)

I got along so well with the guy sitting next to me at the pub that we ended up drinking together till dawn.
(copied directly from http://home.alc.co.jp/db/owa/s_kaydic?num_in=8&ctg_in=2)

Important:

If you want to say to your friend "Let's meet," this is not the あうyou're looking for.


My thanks to http://www.jlptstudy.com/2/index.html and http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/a.htm for great JLPT sites with better navigation than I can manage here. Also to http://www.alc.co.jp/ for a great translation of that 4-kanji idiom example.

愛 - I Love You

Readings:

あい - love

いと - love

Common Usage:

愛している

愛しい

Examples:

愛していると言ってくれ

愛しい猫

Translations:

(Please) Tell Me That You Love Me
(a TV series: Amazon.co.jp link)

darling cat
(although it could be a pet name for a girlfriend, I guess, one look at the page where it comes from and you know it's not: http://leonchan.exblog.jp/7275367/)


My thanks to http://www.jlptstudy.com/2/index.html and http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/a.htm for great JLPT sites with better navigation than I can manage here.

相 - Ministers of Sumo Make an Appearance Together

Readings:

あい - each other, mutual, together

そう - appearance, aspect

しょう - minister of state, councilor

Compounds:

相変わらず　 あいかわらず　

血相　 けっそう　

首相 しゅしょう

Sentences:

相変わらず、東大生は、難しく考えるねぇ
(from http://revilog.com/2008/01/011108.html)

血相を変える

首相の正式名称は各国で異なるが、それが首相に相当する官職であれば、日本では一律に「首相」と呼ぶ慣習になっている。
(from http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A6%96%E7%9B%B8)

Translations:

As usual, Tokyo-U students make simple things difficult for themselves

Change his/her expression

The formal title of a "prime minister" is different in each country, but in Japan the media is in the custom of calling all of them "Shushou" if their positions are equivalent to prime ministers.
(Did you see the other compound in this sentence? 相当, そうとう, means suitable, fair, tolerable.)

Bonus:

Sumo contains 相 as well! In 相撲 it takes on an uncommon す sound.

My thanks to http://www.jlptstudy.com/2/index.html and http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/a.htm for kanji compounds.

Plans

This year, the JLPT2 test is mine. Last year was a warm-up.

There are about 750 new kanji on the 2-kyuu. I'm a little shaky on the 181 JLPT3 kanji, so together that's 931. I want to learn these by September, so I can focus on review and grammar by then. I don't want to learn new ones on the weekend, though. There are 185 weeknights left until 9/1.

931/185 = just over 5 kanji a day.

I can DO that.

New words

shibui - cool, old & cool, nostalgic/retro. Like a Meiji-era house that is better-looking in its old age, or like tea ceremony pottery over 100 years old.

unchiku - trivia

ryokai - "over", like when communicating over radio

Japanese Idiom: Something's Wrong with My Ki...

Get it?

Look at the kanji.

What's wrong with it? Other than having been drawn by a 外国人.

長いですね。だから、気が長い。

き が ながい is an idiom for having a lot of patience. You can use it when your friend buys a Bonzai tree kit, or in the negative when you go to a Japanese post office.

Japanese Diary: Susumu

昨日、僕はチャリティマラソンをする申し込みしました。
「マラソン」がちょっと違いますけど。本当はウォークです。

11月17日、僕はHelp the Homeless Walkathonに参加して歩きます。

もしよければ寄付してくれませんか。
興味があったら、下記のリンクをクリックしてください：

http://www.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=238022&u=238022-195787805

よろしくおねがいします。

(Checked by a real Nihonjin.)

Japanese Diary: Samu

夏から毎日自転車で事務所へ通っています。最近寒くなりました。今朝２℃でしたが、自転車に乗りました。すごく寒かったけど、基本的に大丈夫でした。顔だけ凍えました。

(This Japanese has been verified by a certified Japanese person.)

Strange English: Crispy English

You can use "crisp" to describe many things. Food, weather, paper, people's personalities...

• I like to eat my cereal quickly, while it's still crisp. If it sits in milk too long, it gets soggy.
  
• It's finally fall! The air is crisp and cold.
• You can tell this book has been well-loved. Its pages are soft and curled, no longer crisp.
• Her attitude was crisp when I told her I was coming in late.
  

But you can only use "crispy" for foods--maybe only a few foods.

• Potato chips, lettuce, deep-fried foods, and maybe apples can be crispy.
  

Why? I have no idea. But if you call anything else other than food "crispy," it sounds totally weird.

A Blog for Japanese Learners?

I'm always looking around for good study materials. When I got my Google Reader account, I searched and searched for good, daily Japanese-oriented blogs. Blogs that were in elementary Japanese, or that dealt with little pieces of grammar that I hadn't read yet, or that would teach me a word or two each day in a way that would stick with me.

I know too much for a basic level, and I don't know enough to easily read real Japanese blogs. So I decided to make this site, since there was obviously a need for something like a bridge between beginner Japanese and advanced.

Are you beginning to see the problem? If I'm so lazy that I want a daily blog to teach me Japanese, I'm probably too lazy to keep up my own version.

Of course, I blame my work, but if I really felt strongly enough about it, I could set aside an hour or so each day to study. I'll try to do that from now on.

I'll try to record something every day in Japanese. I can't guarantee the grammar will be good. If I have time later, I'll edit my entries for grammatical exactness.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to keep up this blog and my studies, I'm listening.

Japanese I'm Learning from My DS

I recently bought a Nintendo DS Lite. It's awesome. I've got a kanji dictionary for it, and also a kanji game.

Things I'm learning:

right-handed = みぎきき
left-handed = ひだりきき
screen = 画面（がめん）
assignment = 課題（かだい）
stroke order? = 書き順（かきじゅん）
learning = 学習（がくしゅう）
drill = ドリル　(this katakana is really confusing for us English speakers!)
to check = 確認する（かくにんする）

And that was just in the opening explanation!

Daily Japanese Phrase: 注意

注意を払う

Look for the (once again familiar) translation and the hiragana in the comments.

Daily Japanese Phrase: 発明

必要は発明の母

For the surprisingly-familiar English translation, please see the comments below. Also below is the hiragana.

Correct My Japanese If You Please #1

I left this message on my roommate's voicemail. Can you figure out what's wrong with it? If so, please leave a comment with the correction.

あひた、車が必要じゃありません。Westminsterへいきないから。

妹が８時半でひっこしするになります。早すぎると思います。だから行きません。

今ジョージと遊びます。１時間ぐらいの後で会いましょう。

I will follow this post up with the correct Japanese later, so check back in 12 or so hours for the correction (and the English translation) in the comments.

Daily Japanese Phrase: について

学校で日本語試験についての説明を受けた。

Hiragana and translation are in the comments below.

Daily Japanese Phrase: 期限

いつも期限ぎりぎりまで宿題を引きのばしにする。

(Hiragana and translation are in the comments below.)

Japanese Grammar: Tokoro vs. Bakari

I am taking two* Japanese courses at the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC (JASWDC). In both classes, we use the Genki II textbook. Last week, we were doing an exercise with pictures and making sentences with みたい, a word that you append to the end of a plain-form verb to add the meaning of "seems like." I saw a picture of a woman with a big smile and rays shining off of her ring, kind of like this picture from mfshadow's Flickr stream on the left.

When I saw this kind of a picture, I thought, it looks like she just got engaged. But then I realized that, in the textbook, the ring looked more like a wedding ring than an engagement ring. So I said:

結婚したところみたいです。
She seems like she's just gotten married.

So, first, let's look at ところ. ところ doesn't mean place, here, but it sets the action of the verb in a limited location. In other words, adding tokoro means either "just about to do something" or "just did something."

食べるところ - just about to eat (in a few minutes)
食べたところ - just ate (finished eating a few seconds/minutes ago)

With the progressive form, ところ emphasizes the action being incomplete.

食べているところ - I'm still eating just now (I can't talk, go out, etc., because I'm in the middle of eating).

The teacher explained that 結婚したところみたい is incorrect. In the picture, she didn't have a wedding dress on, so she didn't just literally get married a few minutes ago. Therefore, I should use ばかり if I want a looser interpretation of "just."

正：　結婚したばかりみたいです。
　　　She seems like she just (recently) got married.

ばかり can have many meanings. It can mean "only," as in limiting to one kind of thing, but a lot of it:

お菓子をばかり食べたら、病気になる。
If you only eat sweets, you'll get sick.

But when you put ばかり on the end of a plain-past verb, the meaning is totally different.

さんかげつ前に二本に着いたばかり
I only just arrived in Japan three months ago

Though three months have passed, it still feels like a short time. ばかり connotes this feeling of recentness, along with an emotional perception of that short time. ところ would not make sense. My teacher contrasted this with this sentence:

今９空港に、着いたところなので、迎えに来てくれない。
I'm at the airport now... I just arrived, so could you pick me up?

ところ is objective and measurable; the speaker really just arrived within the past few minutes. Note that you could use ばかり with the airport example, too, I think.

My teacher showed me another case where both are technically and grammatically acceptable, but one is preferable due to politeness. Imagine that you've been offered some coffee, but you don't want any because you just had some. Which do you use?

さっき飲んだところなので、けっこうです。
さっき飲んだばかりなので、けっこうです。

The answer is ところ. As explained above, you can use ばかり with a 3-month time period because it feels short to you. Therefore, ばかり emphasizes your personal feeling. In coffee refusal, it's more polite to be objective and say ところ.

A common word associated with ところ is たった今 (just now).
ばかり gets used with まだ a lot:

さんかげつ前に二本に着いたばかりで、まだ日本のことはよくわかりません。

Both words are often used with さっき and さいきん.

For a JapanesePod101.com lesson on ところ and ばかり, go to this early Intermediate lesson.
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*I'm taking Intermediate 3 and Intermediate 4. Yes, this is crazy. It's also why I haven't been keeping up with my mainichi posts.