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It's cold today. So cold that I turned on the heater in my room. It's the end of June, and so it should be summer, right? The chill reminds me of the terrible summer we had last year. No more such ones!
Hey, who the hell said it's good to stay in Hokkaido about this time of year?
Junior and senior high students here are now busy doing some last minute stuff for the term-end exams. In case you don't know...Japan's school year begins in April, and almost all schools adopt a three-term year system. The first term ends in late July. Students have to go through the tough exams before enjoying the sweet summer vacation. That said, a lot of kids are busy even during the vacation attending club activities or juku (cram schools).
Two high school juniors e-mailed me yesterday asking for an extra lesson for the English grammar exam given on Monday. So, I found time for them this morning. They were struggling with the "Relative Pronoun."
The relative pronoun is generally taught by combining two sentences into one, which seems to make the tough stuff more complicated for the students.
I know the boy. Taro is talking with him.
I know the boy with whom Taro is talking.
I know the boy whom Taro is talking with.
I know the boy that Taro is talking with.
I know the boy Taro is talking with.
Which would you prefer? :)
Oh yeah, let me give you a question that is typical in high school English exams, just for fun:
Fill in the blank using a relative pronoun:
Mr. Smith is a lawyer ( ) I think is trustworthy.
Well, so I answered their questions and gave some important points to learn. The girls are to e-mail me if they have more questions. Of course, they do so via their cell phones. They are...
今時の女子高生 imadokino joshikousei (high school girls nowadays)
Oh, just got a mail from one of them.
Inspired by Rudolf's kind advice on how to post in Japanese here, I finally raised my heavy hips ...By "raising one's heavy hips," can you guess what I intend to mean? It's a direct translation of a Japanese phrase: omoi koshi wo ageru.
Actually, it doesn't matter whether, in reality, your hips are heavy or not. It's a metaphor that means something like this: A person (or an institution) who is generally too inactive or lazy to do things finally starts doing what should be done promptly, spurred on by someone or something. In this case, I think the 「腰」(koshi) will actually mean buttocks, rather than hips. Maybe, it could be a kind of euphemism.
So, I raised my omoi koshi anyway.
My understanding is that Japanese characters can't be displayed correctly if you don't have a Japanese font set in your PC. Am I right? If so, typing in Japanese wouldn't be what I'm happy to do in this blog.
So,
A 4th grade boy talked to me in Japanese while practicing the alphabet during class yesterday.
"Sensei! Which country's English do you understand?"
"What? English is English. Oh, you mean English is different from country to country?"
"No, no! ...ah, I can't think of good Japanese for what I want to say!"
He's learning Japanese, his native language, for sure. But what on earth did he want to ask of me? Maybe next time.
Yeah, it's been spring here in Hokkaido. It's awesome. Really. Above all, I don't have to whine about snow shoveling. Ha! Well, I like this time of year in Hokkaido. Blue skies and mild temperatures. It's free from the nasty Tsuyu (rainy season) that the rest of Japan suffers.
Living in Hokkaido, you'll be able to enjoy the clear changes of the seasons. It feels like the winter here is more winter-like than winter in general. And so, spring comes dramatically. Everything seems to spring up, literally, and everything looks bright. The brief, comfortable summer follows. The scenery in autumn is stunning to look at.
Sounds like I love Hokkaido, huh? I dunno.
Well, my wife has been in Nagoya as a yearly event. Deciding when to go there seems to be a tough matter for her. Once she did it in December, but caught a bad cold because it was too cold there. She went there in August, but it was too hot. She's thoroughly accustomed to the climate in Hokkaido.
She's back this afternoon.
Yeah, it's been spring here in Hokkaido. It's awesome. Really. Above all, I don't have to whine about snow shoveling. Ha! Well, I like this time of year in Hokkaido. Blue skies and mild temperatures. It's free from the nasty Tsuyu (rainy season) that the rest of Japan suffers.
Living in Hokkaido, you'll be able to enjoy the clear changes of the seasons. It feels like the winter here is more winter-like than winter in general. And so, spring comes dramatically. Everything seems to spring up, literally, and everything looks bright. The brief, comfortable summer follows. The scenery in autumn is stunning to look at.
Sounds like I love Hokkaido, huh? I dunno.
Well, my wife has been in Nagoya as a yearly event. Deciding when to go there seems to be a tough matter for her. Once she did it in December, but caught a bad cold because it was too cold there. She went there in August, but it was too hot. She's thoroughly accustomed to the climate in Hokkaido.
She's back this afternoon.
Rudolf's comment on the word "pretty" is very impressive, suggestive and instructive to me. His explanation puts it that the word is practically used as a de-intensifier rather than an intensifier, and it can mean "worse than good" depending on the situation. Hey, is it great to learn something profound on languages that dictionaries don't tell you? My vague image of the word was that, in most cases, it falls on somewhere between "fairly" and "very."
I personally have thought "pretty" is a word that is hard to use as compared to "beautiful" and "very." Now I want to get to the heart of it, and I'm curious to know if there are regional or personal differences on the images of the word. So, please enlighten me: If you made something and someone rated it as "pretty good," how would you feel in the first place? I know, of course, the connotations it can make will be different depending on how it is said, but I'd like to know the probabilities.
A couple of visitors recently posted comments in my past entries seeking for information.
One is from jim, who wants to know how to write the following greetings in Japanese. If you know a good website that lists this kind of expressions for non-Japanese, please let me know.
hello - konnichiwa
bye - sayo(u)nara
thanks - arigatou
regards - Hmmm, I can't think of good Japanese for it. But yoroshiku or yoroshiku onegaishimasu can do the job in most cases.
keep in touch - If you want the person to keep in touch with you, it would be renraku kudasai or renraku shite kudasai.
The other guy is Nels, who lives in Seattle and wants information on how to get Ramune drink that comes in large sizes and different flavors. Wow, I didn't know Ramune has evolved into various flavors. Glad to know it's sold in the US. Oh, if you guys know something about it, please comment here for him.
I used to keep parakeets as pets. Unlike most other birds - though I don't know much about other ones - , they are friendly, funny, and entertaining. They learn to say some words and that's very cute. The typical one I first taught them was "Pee-chan." Well, don't look to its English meaning. Birdsong can sometimes sound like "Pee, pee" (Um, again, the sound, not the meaning, fellows) to our (Japanese) ears.
I happened to find an interesting and funny article in a local newspaper the other day.
A parakeet called "Chibi" flew away from his owner's house. After several hours, he came down on a man's shoulder, and the man took him to a police station. He kept silent for a few days after that, but suddenly started repeating his address and name like "North Avenue, Hatano Chibi-chan." The police looked up the phone number in the directly and, whew, found his owner.
The owner's comment: "Next, I'll teach him the phone number."