365 Days of Japanese Day #16, #17, #18

 

One of the issues of trying to write a “daily” blog is that occasionally one entry expands in scope so much that it drags the others behind it.

Unfortunately, this is what has happened with the most recent entry – which was going to be #16 – on Magic terms.

The header for today shows two cards side-by-side with the keywords highlighted for comparison.

Pretty neat, isn’t it?

The entry I’ve been working on needs to feature over thirty such images and that has meant getting a couple of days behind.

However, at the same time, I have been accumulating Japanese to use for other entries. So, really, the monster Magic post doesn’t need to hold anything back. It will be ready when it’s ready, and I’ll keep posting in the meantime. To catch up, here are three short ones.

I hope that doesn’t seem too much like cheating!

#16

Do you get the joke?

卵 (たまご)
“tamago”
egg

This was posted on my friend Daniel Knox’s Facebook “wall” by one of his friends (Christopher Leung).

I find it hilarious, and it led to a string of eggcellent puns in the comments.

Daniel was a good buddy when I lived in Japan and he is still there, I think working at a university. He is great at Japanese and gave me lots of helpful language advice when we hung out together!

#17

This is another image from Facebook.

My friend Jack Webb “tagged” me in the comments:

I think he is saying “why are they doing this?!?!” and he thinks perhaps it is in Japan and I could explain.

I have no idea!

But let’s translate what is in the Japanese caption!

きのう
“kinō”
yesterday

哀れな姿
“awarena sugata”
pathetic appearance

に
“ni”
preposition often meaning “in“

So one (loose) translation for the Japanese could be:

きのう哀れな姿に
“kinō awarena sugata ni”
yesterday, it looked rather pathetic

I read the other comments on the Facebook post and it turns out that it was not in Japan.

Do any of my readers know where it was?

I will reveal the location in a future entry and discuss the Japanese for “rubber duck”!

#18

Finally, again on Facebook, last night a friend mentioned that he has been collecting names of people with amusing double entendre surnames. The two examples he gave are far too rude for me to mention here, but he asked if I knew any that worked in Japanese.

I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head, but I did share something that I knew would amuse him and the others in the group chat:

I oversold it for comic effect and for full accuracy perhaps should have stuck to a formal definition of “penis” rather than the slang “cock” and “dick”. Those definitely make it sound funnier in the explanation, though.

ちんちん
“chin chin”
penis (slang?)

Does anyone reading this have an insight into the best translation for chin chin?

Well, that’s us all caught up. I really hope I can finish my Magic entry for tomorrow, but if not I will post something else!