Are you a maniac or an otaku? No, this has nothing to do with stalking or hikikomori. It has to do with levels of interest in a hobby.

I’ve been accused of being a maniac numerous times by Japanese speakers. The first time I heard the word, I thought, excuse me? It took me a second but I realized that I was not being accused of being some kind of ax-wielding killer but merely an enthusiast. Maniakku (マニアック) essentially means enthusiast, as in a sports maniac. In that case, I am undeniably a maniakku. I avidly collect movies and music, and when listing off favorite obscure movies or albums I am often laughingly called maniakku by the listener, who has not heard of any of them.

Where I draw the line, though, is being called otaku. Lately the word has become kind of cool, particularly in the West where it is equated with Japanese culture fandom, but the original meaning of the word (pertaining to fandom, not the original original meaning of “your honorable house”) contains an element of social awkwardness, of an unwillingness or inability to function normally in society. I may have spent one too many Saturday afternoons digging through dusty crates of vinyl while my less-obsessed friends went to the park or the beach, but it’s not like I prefer the company of my records.

I guess it comes down to semantics. Do you ally yourself with the current crop of otaku 2.0 who dance in the streets of Akiba and spend large portions of your paycheck on anime figurines, or do you spend large portions of your paycheck on vinyl and overseas DVDs, or re-enacting Civil War battles or playing Fantasy Football or building WWII models or… Hmm, I guess there’s not much of a difference after all.

What does everyone else think?

Languages are interesting because each one has its own unique features.

For example, double negatives like “I didn’t see nothing” are considered incorrect in English, although they’re perfectly permissible in Spanish. If you’ve watched some anime in Japanese or had dinner with a Japanese family, you may have noticed the word that’s spoken before eating, itadakimasu. Essentially meaning “I humbly receive the gift of this food” or less obsessively “let’s eat,” it’s a polite way to thank the person who made the food for you, and the word is interesting because it illustrates some of the “back end” of Japanese grammar.

There are two verbs for “to receive” in Japanese, morau and itadaku; the former is a neutral word, which you’d use when telling your wife about the movie tickets you got from a co-worker, but the latter is a polite word that basically means to receive something from someone socially higher than you, like your boss or a guest.

Since subjects are often left off of Japanese sentences, it’s conceivable that you might find yourself in a linguistic situation that called for you to understand the overall context of a sentence based on what verb someone chose to use.

For example, my mother-in-law might say to me, Itadakimashita yo, which essentially means “[we] received [something from someone].” It would be up to me to figure out the larger context, namely that we’d received some gift from someone that my mother-in-law wants to be polite to who’s standing nearby, and I should come and say thank you to that person for the gift.

Japanese can be a confusing language, but with practice, some of these situations start to make sense.

This might be more Japanese than you wanted to know. And if so, I apologize ^_^

Check out this photo of a vehicle that belongs to a budget rental outfit in Cairns, Australia, named Wicked Campervans, a company that seems to get a real kick out of thumbing its nose at just about everyone.

Outraged cairns.com.au reader Mark sent a photograph of the van to us after his Japanese wife spotted it parked in their Bayview Heights street while driving their eight-year-old daughter to school.

“It’s terrible. If you walked around in a T-shirt with that written on it in English, you would be arrested,” he said.

His said he and his wife had tried to stop their daughter, who can read Japanese, from seeing the van, which was parked in the street for several days before leaving overnight.

Via cairns.com.au

Mrs Overoften uncovered this KitKat in a local shop, and knowing I have a passing interest in these matters, brought it home.

This KitKat gives you a vocabulary lesson in various ben (dialects) around Kyushu.

For example, starting in the north, you can see that those folks in Fukuoka say すいとう for 好きだ (suki da), which will translate as anything from “I like it” to “I love you”.

Going west to Saga-ken you see that locals say がばい (gabai) for とても or 非常に, meaning ‘very’.

In Nagasaki-ken やぐらしか (yagurashika) means うっとうしい (too much). Over in Oita-ken, they say どおくる (dookuru) for おちょくる (ochokuru), which is to make fun of someone.

Round these parts, Kumamoto-ken, もっこす means 頑固者 or わがまま (stubborn, obstinate).

Over in Miyazaki-ken, よだきい means 面倒くさい (too much trouble, can’t be bothered). Meanwhile people in Kagoshima-ken are said to say ぼっけもん for こわいもの知らず (brave, but closer to reckless).

And now with this vocabulary lesson firmly implanted in your memory you can sit back and reward yourself with a cup of coffee, and a KitKat. (I am not affiliated to Nestlé but will accept gifts from them should anyone from HQ be reading this.)

It’s funny how how tenuous the meanings of seemingly basic words can be. In English, the word “friend” is pretty straightforward, meaning someone you are somewhat well acquainted or friendly with.

Most of my English-speaking “friends” are close in age to me, but I certainly could have a friend who was 25, or 45, or 75 if I wanted to. It’s not uncommon for someone who is only a passing acquaintance to be labeled “friend,” too, for the sake of convenience or to avoid being rude.

In Japanese, however, the word tomodachi (which literally means “those who you go with”) and it has a more “close” feel to it than the English word friend. Tomodachi in school years are almost always the same age; otherwise you’d use the term senpai (for upperclassman) or kouhai (for underclassman), which are quite different concepts in Japan’s vertically-oriented society.

Once, my son was playing dodgeball with a boy he’d known since preschool — they’ve played together for years. I talked about the boy with my wife, using the word tomodachi to refer to my son’s friend. My wife corrected me, saying the boys weren’t friends in that sense, but were instead osana-najimi, translatable as “childhood friend,” a concept that comes up in anime and bishoujo games quite a lot, referring to someone you’ve been very close to since childhood, and it seems to be both more and less than the English word friend. “An osana-najimi is different from tomodachi,” my wife explained to me. “They’re always there, and you don’t even notice them after a while. You get so used to being with each other, it’s like air.”

In case you were wondering, here is a list of the 30 most spoken languages in the world and the areas in which they are spoken.

1. Mandarin / China, Malaysia, Taiwan
2. English / USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
3. Hindi / North and Central India
4. Spanish / The Americas, Spain
5. Arabic / Middle East, Arabia, North Africa
6. Russian / Russia, Central Asia
7. Portuguese / Brazil, Portugal, Southern Africa
8. Bengali / Bangladesh, Eastern India
9. Malay, Indonesian / Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
10. French Indo-European / France, Canada, West Africa, Central Africa
11. Japanese / Japan
12. German / Germany, Austria, Central Europe
13. Farsi (Persian) / Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia
14. Urdu / Pakistan, India
15. Punjabi / Pakistan, India
16. Vietnamese / Vietnam, China
17. Tamil / Southern India, Sri Lanka, Malyasia
18. Wu / China
19. Javanese / Indonesia
20. Turkish / Turkey, Central Asia
21. Telugu / Southern India
22. Korean / Korean Peninsula
23. Marathi / Western India
24. Italian / Italy, Central Europe
25. Thai / Thailand, Laos
26. Cantonese / Southern China
27. Gujarati / Western India, Kenya
28. Polish / Poland, Central Europe
29. Kannada / Southern India
30. Burmese / Myanmar

scattered around buddhist temples in the tohoku region of japan there are mummified bodies enshrined in . practitioners of an ancient set of rituals known as shugendô, these monks actually mummified themselves in a prolonged act of asceticism. believing that they could attain enlightenment in a mere ten thousand days (about 8 years, 2 months, and 19 days) by adhering to a strict diet, keeping a strict schedule of meditation and exercise, and slowly poisoning themselves.

The other day, Remora wrote in to alert us about a page he found that is selling a coffee cup that claims to be a “Japan Masturbation Day mug.”

According to the text on the page, the number version of the date July 21 (which is a Japanese holiday known as “Marine Day”) is written as 0721, which “by a quirk of the Japanese language” can be pronounced o-na-ni-i. . . a Japanese word for masturbation.

Is this just a stretch by someone out trying to sell mugs, or has anyone out there ever heard about this before?

Last year was my first time to write the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I wrote level 4: it was too easy. I received my certificate in March, and as I thought, I passed with flying colours.

Since I thought level 3 was quite similar to level 4, I thought for this year’s JLPT, I would be best to simply skip 3 and write level 2!

I went to Toronto last Sunday and wrote the exam. It was a big mistake. My derrière got served to me on a silver plater. Plus, I didn’t study a lot of kanji this year, so I’ve been punished for that too. At least, the listening part was a bit funny.

One interesting note, we’ve been warned if ever we reveal any information about the JLPT, the Japan Foundation will disqualify you. Since the test happens in the morning of the same day around the world, I heard some people in Japan, for example, are giving out answers to people in other countries. (Because of time zones, the exam starts later than Japan in many countries.)

Did you write the JLPT this year? If so, which level, and how was it? I’m also interested to know how you prepare yourselves for such an exam. I’m thinking I’ll simply learn and practice a new word everyday, starting New Year 2008!

One thing you don’t hear very often when speaking English is someone saying, “Wait, what’s the subject of your sentence? Oh, okay.” But in Japanese, a language that often omits the subject since it’s understood by both parties anyway, it’s possible to be in the middle of a conversation and suddenly need to verify what the other person is actually talking about.

While cutting down a sentence like “Shall we go to lunch now?” to just “Go?” may sound odd to English speakers, it’s usually not a problem in Japanese — if you were talking about someone specific going somewhere, you’d put that in the sentence, but if the meaning is obvious from the context, it makes sense to shorten things.

I’ve noticed that when Japanese speak English they sometimes use the wrong third person singular pronoun, saying “she” when talking about a man and so on, and this seems to be related to the fact that in their native language they never have to consciously specify a gender-based pronoun for a person when referring to them.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than when the invisible Japanese subject causes you to lose the thread of what’s being said around you, and one skill smart learners master early on is how to B.S. others, making them think you’re following along when you have no idea what’s being said. Phrases like so desu ne, which should mean “Yes, that’s so,” but often means nothing at all, are a good place to start.

What Japan Thinks reports on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into portable electronic dictionaries used by the average Japanese. Since only 8% of the sample was even in their 20s, the survey mainly reflects the habits of those who aren’t formal students.

Most use both a printed (59%) and online (57%) dictionary, but a significant number use portable electronic dictionaries (30%), their mobile phones (25%), or dictionary software on their PC (21%). Only 6% never use any dictionary at all.

The top makes of portable electronic dictionaries were Casio (56%), Sharp (34%), Seiko (19%), Sony (13%) and Canon (8%). Most sue their dictionary to translate English to Japanese (87%) but 61% use to translate Japanese to English or just look up Japanese words (56%).

Only 18% use a portable electronic dictionary for kanji and 13% use one for languages other than Japanese and English.

Publisher Jiyu Kokuminsha has announced this year’s 60 words and expressions nominated for “Japanese Buzzword of the Year, according to Pink Tentacle. They provide an interesting look at some of the events, people and trends that had an impact on Japan in 2007. A panel of judges will choose this year’s grand prize winner and 10 runners-up. The final results will be announced on December 3. Here are some specimens but the whole list can be browsed on the Pink Tentacle site.

• Monster parents. The term refers to Japan’s growing ranks of annoying parents who make extravagant and unreasonable demands of their children’s schools.
• Factory moe. This year saw a mini-boom in the off-the-wall genre of factory moe (koujou moe) photo books focusing on the functional beauty of large-scale industrial plants.
• Dark website. Yami sites are online networking sites where people can take out hit contracts on others, make illegal transactions (drugs, fake bank accounts, hacked cellphones, prostitution, etc.), and meet suicide partners. Japan has seen a recent rise in the number of murders arranged through these web-based hotbeds of criminal activity.
• Net cafe refugees. An expression used by the Japanese media to refer to the growing number of day laborers who spend their nights in 24-hour internet cafe booths. The Japan Cafe Complex Association (JCCA) opposes the media’s use of the word “refugee” to describe these important customers. A government survey this year estimates there are about 5,400 net cafe refugees in Japan.

One question I’ve been asked by my ESL students in Japan is, just where is “standard” American English located geographically?

Most countries define a given region as the “official” dialect of their language, which is then used in textbooks nationally. In China the standard language is the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, in Italy its based on the regions of Florence and Tuscany, and in Britain it emanates from the twin pillars of “Queen’s English” and the BBC. The “official” English used in the U.S. is a bit harder to pin down, and it’s sometimes referred to as Standard Midwestern, since it tends to flow from that part of the country.

In 1868, Japan’s capital was officially moved from Kyoto to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo meaning “east capital,” in imitation of China’s cities of Beijing and Nanjing, the “north” and “south” capitals. This meant that the “standard” Japanese language changed from the colorful, intoned speech of the Kansai region to flatter, more robotic-sounding dialect of the Kanto Plain, something that Osaka hasn’t quite forgiven Tokyo for yet.

Like the U.S. and Great Britain, Japan does not have an “official’ body to define its language is like the Académie française, and it’s generally up to the publishers of the Kojien, Japan’s answer to Oxford and Webster as the most prestigious dictionary, to bless new words by including them in its pages.

Sometimes it can seem that the Japanese use of creative English is totally random. I mean, how can you quantify the giant sign near J-List that says “SPLUSH IS NOT ONLY THE PROBLEM OF AGE”?

But there do seem to be subtle rules for what words get brought in, if you pay attention. Obviously, words for modern technology tend to get imported a lot, and you’d be hard pressed to talk about routers, servers or internet packets without using loan words.

Another use of English is to capture a particular emotion, which you see with words like like skinship (the feeling of a mother or father holding their baby in the bath), love-love (a mushy word for being in love) or my-home (a person fulfilling the dream of building their own home).

One thing I’ve noticed is that “positive” words tend to get borrowed more often than negative ones, which goes hand-in-hand with the idea that English is the language for optimistic people, an opinion I’ve heard expressed here several times over the years. This positive thinking can be seen in product and company names like “Cook-Do,” a line of easy-to-prepare Chinese food for housewives; “I’ll,” a travel company who’s name makes you think of all the wonderful things you’ll do when you reach your destination; “Power Up Coming Life,” the slogan of a computer store chain; and “Try,” a school that sends tutors to your home to teach your children.

Let’s all level up our happiness with English!

Richard Chmura (no relation, I think, and creater of GoStats) writes in to point us to an interesting article in The Mirror about Toujours Tingo, “a new book which draws on more than 300 languages exploring the areas where English fails us.”

Kaelling - Danish: a woman who stands on her doorstep yelling obscenities at her kids.

Pesamenteiro - Portuguese: one who joins groups of mourners at the home of a dead person, apparently to offer condolences but in reality is just there for the refreshments.

Okuri-OKAMI - Japanese: literally a “see-you-home-wolf”. A man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to try to molest her once he gets in the door.

Jayus - Indonesian: someone who tells a joke so unfunny you can’t help laughing.

Spesenritter - German: a person who shows off by paying the bill on the firm’s money, literally “an expense knight”.

Kamaki - Greek: the young local guys strolling up and down beaches hunting for female tourists, literally “harpoons”.

Kanjus Makkhicus - Hindi: a person so miserly that if a fly falls into his cup of tea, he’ll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away.

Giri-GIRI - Hawaiian pidgin: the place where two or three hairs stick up, no matter what.

Pelinti - Buli, Ghana: to move very hot food around inside one’s mouth.

Dii-KOYNA - Ndebele, South Africa: to destroy one’s property in anger.

Hanyauku - Rukwangali, Namibia: walking on tiptoes across warm sand.

Tartle - Scottish: to hesitate when you are introducing someone whose name you can’t quite remember.

Vovohe Tahtsenaotse - Cheyenne, US: to prepare the mouth before speaking by moving or licking one’s lips.

Prozvonit - Czech and Slovak: to call someone’s mobile from your own to leave your number in their memory without them picking it up.

Hira Hira - Japanese: the feeling you get when you walk into a dark and decrepit old house in the middle of the night.

Koi No Yokan - Japanese: a sense on first meeting someone that it is going to evolve into love.

Cafune - Brazilian Portuguese: the tender running of one’s fingers through the hair of one’s mate.

Shnourkovat Sya - Russian: when drivers change lanes frequently and unreasonably.

Gadrii Nombor Shulen Jongu - Tibetan: giving an answer that is unrelated to the question, literally “to give a green answer to a blue question”.

Biritululo - Kiriwani, Papua New Guinea: comparing yams to settle a dispute.

Poronkusema - Finnish: the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a comfort break.

Gamadj - Obibway, North America: dancing with a scalp in one’s hands, in order to receive presents.

Baling - Manobo, Philippines: the action of a woman who, when she wants to marry a man, goes to his house and refuses to leave until marriage is agreed upon.

Dona - Yamana, Chile: to take lice from a person’s head and squash between one’s teeth.

Oka/SHETE - Ndonga, Nigeria: urination difficulties caused by eating frogs before the rain has duly fallen.

Pisan Zapra - Malay: the time needed to eat a banana.

Physiggoomai - Ancient Greek: excited by eating garlic.

Baffona - Italian: an attractive moustachioed woman.

Layogenic - Tagalog, Philippines: a person who is only goodlooking from a distance.

Rhwe - South Africa: to sleep on the floor without a mat while drunk and naked.

Shvitzer - Yiddish: someone who sweats a lot, especially a nervous seducer.

Gattara - Italian: a woman, often old and lonely, who devotes herself to stray cats.

Creerse La Ultima Coca-COLA EN EL DESIERTO - Central American Spanish: to have a very high opinion of oneself, literally to “think one is the last Coca-Cola in the desert”.

Vrane Su Mu Popile Mozak - Croatian: crazy, literally “cows have drunk his brain”.

Du Kannst Mir Gern Den Buckel Runterrutschen Und Mit Der Zunge Bremsen - Austrian German: abusive insult, literally “you can slide down my hunchback using your tongue as a brake”.

Tener Una Cara De Telefono Ocupado - Puerto Rican Spanish: to be angry, literally “to have a face like a busy telephone”.

Bablat - Hebrew: baloney, but is an acronym of “beelbool beytseem le-lo takhleet” which means “bothering someone’s testicles for no reason”.

Vai A Fava - Portuguese: get lost, literally “go to the fava bean”.

Rombhoru - Bengali: a woman having thighs as shapely as banana trees.

Tako-NYODU - Japanese: a baldy, literally an “octopus monk”.

Snyavshi Shtany, PO VOLOSAM NE GLADYAT - Russian: once you’ve taken off your pants it’s too late to look at your hair.

Mariteddu Tamant’e Un Ditu Ieddu Voli Essa Rivaritu - Corsican: a husband must be respected even if he is very short.

Bayram Degil (SEYRAN DEGIL ENISTE BENI NIYE OPTU? - Turkish: there must be something behind this. Literally “it’s not festival time, it’s not a pleasure trip, so why did my brother-in-law kiss me”?

Every language is constantly evolving, and while the English major in me isn’t always happy about the LOLification of my own native tongue or seeing teenagers going weeks without typing an upper case letter or using punctation, I know that it’s natural for language to be pulled in different directions by its various speakers.

It’s normal for words to be borrowed from other languages and adjusted for meaning to fit new situations, too, and fully half of all English words come from French — for example, words like beef, pork and poultry came to indicate the meat of cows, pigs and chickens through the interaction between French-speaking landowners (who ate the meat) and their English-speaking hired help (who tended the animals).

The Japanese borrow words from other languages too, and not just silly phrases like SUPER HAPPY LUCKY. While most foreign loan words are 20th Century imports, quite a few came into use in the Edo Period and before, including tempura (from the Portuguese word for spice), garasu (window glass), ko-hi (coffee), and kirishitan (Christian). In fact, these words have been in use for so long they have kanji assigned to them, which violates the rule that katakana be used to write foreign-based words. Since these kanji words have old-world charm associated with them that’s not unlike archaic spellings of words in English (”Ye Olde”), it’s common to see these kanji words used to create a unique atmosphere in coffee shops, etc.

According to a survey by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, more young people are now checking kanji on their mobile phone than by using a dictionary.

In the survey of nearly 2,000 people, 80% of Japanese 20-somethings revealed that a quick check on their mobile’s email function was their preferred method.

For all folks in general though, cell phones are still in second place to print dictionaries, though the gap is closing, and cell phone use (for kanji checking) was way ahead of computers, electronic dictionaries and the internet.

The Asahi article raises an interesting point about the difference between passive and productive understanding of kanji.

The survey found that 78.9 percent of the respondents use hiragana for the word “utsu” (depression) when they write it.

But 71.5 percent said they use the 29-stroke kanji character, arguably one of the hardest to write from memory, when they type the word on cellphones or other devices.

Try that one yourself. The report finishes by saying -

“For young people, kanji is something they type (from the cellphone pad or the personal computer keyboard) rather than write with their hands,” said author Tatsuro Dekune. “The ability to write correct kanji may be considered inconsequential someday.”

The photographer says this is probably an unfortunate romanization of getto (moon light). Pretty close though…

Uploaded to Flickr 02/06/07 by Nemo’s great uncle. Some rights reserved.

Just for fun, since my last two posts complained a bit about automatic translation (which is better than nothing for maybe making sense of an otherwise impenetrable Web site, but still regarded as no good), I tried running some sample text through AltaVista’s notorious Babelfish.

Not content with mere technical text that Babelfish could butcher perhaps semi-accurately (although all those instruction manuals argue otherwise…) I decided to put a haiku through it and see how it would do with that.

It bombed out on a few words in the first few haiku–and strangely these were all Japanese words like keitai, aikidoka, ukemi. I think it must have been working from an English dictionary (duh…)–which is worth remembering, since what should be the easiest terms for Babelfish will be the most impossible for it.

I know there are linguists, translators, and interpreters out there, as well as bilingual types. So, how well do you think it did with this one about capsule hotels:

Saving your money
Buried in a living grave
Missed the train again.

The Japanese becomes:

あなたのお金を救うこと

生きている墓で埋められる

列車を再度逃した。

Running that through Babelfish again to get an English translation of the Japanese it comes up with something I find rather superior to the original–or at least intriguing anyway (although except for the first line the syllables are way off):

Rescue your money

It is buried with the grave which has lived

The train was let escape for the second time.

That is all my original research for today. Although I did run the English haiku through Babelfish once again for the benefit of those of you interested in Hangul. Is the following Korean any good or way off the enlightened and elegant sensibility of the poet’s original?

너의 돈을 저축함

살아있는 무덤안에 매장하는

기차를 다시 놓쳤다.

Disclaimer: It should be emphasized that I am not a lawyer, not a medical doctor, and have no knowledge of the Japanese language. Japundit readers experiencing their unique issues should consult with their own professional translator or interpreter.

* Note:  Title changed from “Le traducteur est un traître” on the advice of Chas. The Italian is shorter and altogether better. Thanks Chas!

Check out this video of a Japanese comedy skit that includes English subtitles of what the actors are saying. You can also find supplementary information here.

Funny?

Many thanks to Edmund Wong.