囀り
さえずり [saezuri] – Although the kanji is rarely used, saezuri can mean either ① the singing of birds (especially mating season singing), or ② a whale’s tongue.
美人局
つつもたせ [tsutsumotase] – This word refers to a kind of con in which a man’s wife or lover seduces another man, whom is then coerced into giving up his money.
iPhone tip: add Japanese words to the dictionary
While I love my iPhone with a passion, I have to admit that the Apple team could have put a little more thought into what features would be needed in Asia. One of the major shortcomings of the iPhone for users in Japan (and I would guess other Asian countries as well) is that your input dictionary doesn’t learn.
iPhone-chan (or as I call my iPhone: ai-chan) tries to detect words contextually (I think…), but any non-standard character usages you manage to get into the system are quickly forgotten.
Fortunately, there’s a workaround. And don’t worry, you don’t need to jailbreak your phone to get it to work.
12 Japanese IME Tips
If you’re serious about learning Japanese, I’m sure you will eventually either want to or need to be able to type in Japanese on your computer. Typing in Japanese is done with software called an IME (Input Method Editor), which allows you to type Japanese phonetically (romaji) and have the your typing automatically converted to [...]
Japanese Proverbs: February 2010
It’s that time of month again! Here are all the proverbs I tweeted throughout February, along with readings, translations, explanations and other interesting notes. Enjoy! Follow me on twitter to keep up with the new ones. March might be the last month I do proverbs before switching to something else.
Puratto Kodama: Cheap Shinkansen Tickets
If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I recently went to Tokyo for the weekend. Living in Nagoya, I frequently get hit with the urge to get out and do something new, but one of the biggest blocks to doing so is the cost of travel. Trains are either slow (local), or expensive (shinkansen), and busses are slow and uncomfortable.
But recently I came across a very interesting deal the JR Tokai Tours offers: ぷらっとこだま (Puratto Kodama). I’m not the first to blog about this discounted ticket program, but it really is a great offer and deserves repeating, and I’ll also elaborate on things a little, since I actually tried out the program myself.
Japanese words for age
You may already know that Japan has the world’s longest life expectancy. But did you know that Japanese are also the most well prepared for their longevity with a vast array of special words for different ages? Although many (umm, almost all?) of these words are not commonly used, they’re still fun to know. And you never know what’s going to come up on a Japanese game show or in your izakaya parties. Here’s the list!
4 Major Japanese pizza chains compared
Oh the hardships, the ordeals I endure for the sake of this blog. But someone had to do it, someone had to stomach 5 whole pizzas in the course of researching a completely legitimate, informative blog post.
(Translation: Lloyd used his blog as an excuse to order delivery pizza 5 times in one month.)…
Using Pandora on a Japanese iPhone
Last fall, I purchased an iPhone 3GS through Japan’s official distributor for the device, Softbank, along with a two-year phone contract. But since my credit card is based in the US, iTunes kindly directed me to the US store for all my purchases. I was excited to download Pandora (which I had heard many great [...]
Japanese Cheat Sheet
After 2 months of planning and composition (okay, so I did procrastinate quite a bit), I now understand how Moses felt when he descended Mount Sinai with the holy tablets. Behold, Nihonshock’s newly revised and much improved Japanese cheat sheet!
More from Nihonshock…
