眼福
がんぷく [ganpuku] – Combining the character for eye (眼) with fortune (福), ganpuku means ‘the joy of beholding a beautiful/rare sight’.
七光
ななひかり [nanahikari] – Literally: “seven lights”, this word refers to a person whose success or fame is owed largely to their powerful/influential parents (or spouse).
ため口
ためぐち [tameguchi] – Refers to speaking to someone else as an equal (without using humble/honorific or formal language).
Kangoku izakaya: a dinner in prison
Have you been a bad boy or bad girl lately? Well, maybe you should turn yourself in for your heinous crimes at a kangoku izakaya.
Kangoku (監獄) means prison, and izakaya (居酒屋) is a Japanese style drinking restaurant. So a kangoku izakaya is a Japanese restaurant/bar that has been styled to look like a prison! And if the thought of vicious felons and dirty prison cells doesn’t whet your appetite, I don’t know what will.
東雲
しののめ [shinonome] – Composed of the kanji for ‘east’ and ‘cloud’, shinonome means “early dawn” (the time when the eastern sky starts to become visible).
Nihonshock’s new vocab section
Following on yesterday’s graphical tweak of the site, I’ve added a new feature: Vocabulary.
These are basically short posts (just a paragraph or so) about a specific Japanese word that I thought was either interesting or worth talking about. The words included will (for the most part) be…
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 […]
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