鯛の尾よりも鰯の頭 [たいのおよりもいわしのかしら] – It’s better to be the head of a sardine than the tail of a sea bream.
This saying is akin to something like “Better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion” in English. While I don’t agree with the “don’t be too ambitious” slant of the saying at all, it’s still pretty cool. Plus, there are the names of two fish in there, so hey… free vocab!
Note also that 頭, which is often pronounced あたま is, in this case, read かしら.
痛車 [いたしゃ] – a car painted with cartoon/anime characters (lit: “painful car” because it is painful to look at)
捗る [はかどる] – to make progress (i.e. with schoolwork, etc.)
研究論文は捗ってますか？
How is your research paper coming along?
苦あれば楽あり [くあればらくあり] is a favorite saying of mine. But in looking around the internet, I think that some of the translations into English that I see (e.g. “every cloud has a silver lining” or “no pain, no gain”) don’t quite cut it. Granted, they may be the closest native English proverbs we have available, but my goal isn’t to get you to understand Japanese in terms of English equivalency, but rather in terms of understanding Japanese as Japanese.
苦 has a variety of meanings, but all tend to fall into the area of bitterness/hardship/suffering. あれば simply means “if exists” or “if (one) has.” 楽 is often used when describing music (e.g. 音楽) but also has connotations of fun, ease, or comfort. All this taken together, the phrase really means something more like “if you struggle through bitter hardship, you will have ease.”
There’s a flavor (pardon the pun) to this that, in my opinion, isn’t quite there in either of the aforementioned English versions. “Every cloud has a silver lining” seems to be too fairytale-ish and passive for me, and “no pain, no gain” doesn’t really talk about what the “pain” is. I mean, you can hit yourself in the face with an ice pick repeatedly and cause pain, while experiencing no demonstrable “gain.”
A related phrase is 苦は楽の種 [くはらくのたね] or “bitterness is the seed of ease.”
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sharing some nice conversation over a bowl ramen with my friend 朱可利 and one of her friends. During our 4 hour chat, Akari told me that the younger generation of Japanese have adopted using abbreviations in conversation not unlike the ones we see in English (e.g. OMG, LOL, etc.). These “new” words are called ジャパ造語 or “Japa Coined Words.”
If you’ve been studying Japanese for a while, you might be familiar with CM [commercial], H [Hentai], NG [No Good], GW [Golden Week], or BGM [BackGround Music]. I thought I’d share a few more with y’all.
Here are some other fun ones that I found online:
Should you want to investigate some of these newly-coined Japanese words–as long as your Japanese is pretty solid–please check out gengoya.com.
陰口 [かげぐち] – gossip; talking about someone behind their back
If you have a secret, shady mouth, you might be talking about people behind their backs.
You’ve like already seen 陰 in the form 陰陽. In Japanese, it is pronounced いんよう, but you’re probably more likely to recognize it as it’s read in Chinese: Yin/Yang.
辰年 [たつどし] – year of the dragon
Happy 2012 from nihongo à gogo!
認知症 [にんちしょう] – cognitive impairment; senility; dementia
偽旗作戦 [にせはたさくせん] – False Flag
The phrase “False Flag” refers to a covert action, often of a military nature, that is designed to deceive the public into thinking that the action was taken by another country or party. It comes from the military concept of raising a flag other than one’s own to deceive the enemy. (偽旗 is a literal translation of “False Flag.”)
乾坤一擲 [けんこんいってき] - to play for all or nothing; throwing all into a task; to stake everything (on something)
乾坤 [けんこん] – heaven and earth; universe
一擲 [いってき] – cast off