滾る

tagiru to boil over, to seethe

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I found it really interesting that the metaphorical connection we make in English between water rapidly boiling and an emotional foment is also present in Japanese.

邪な

yokosima na incorrect, inappropriate, impure

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I had never seen this character as a standalone noun. And I included the な na because it's important for me to remember which nouns use の no when becoming adjectival and which use な.
I have also been told that it is more common now to use 心が汚れている kokoro ga yogorete iru (a dirty mind (although literally, heart) where 邪な would have been used.

聡明な

soumei na wise

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I had never seen these two characters together like this. And I included the な na because it's important for me to remember which nouns use の no when becoming adjectival and which use な.

改め婆

aratamebabaa literally, the old woman who confirms accuracy

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For the first time, I will employ a visual aid.

During the Edo Period (1615 to 1867 CE), most women were not allowed to travel freely on their own outside of their community. It was therefore not unheard of for women to dress as men to travel somewhere, or to flee from somewhere.
But if you traveled on any of the main highways that connected cities in Japan (most readers might know of the Tokaido, the route between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto that ran along the coast, but there were many others), you would need to stop at the stations along the route (and there were 53 such stations on the Tokaido between Edo and Kyoto). The shogunate used the stations, known as 関所 sekisyo in Japanese, to check on the movement of goods and people, and at a certain point in history, to check on the gender of travelers. Persons appearing as young men needed to present themselves before an old woman, officially employed by the shogunate, so that she could review the equipment, as it were, and give them leave to travel on.
Imagine putting that on your résumé!
Oh, and let’s have one more look at that old woman, as she peers intently through her eyeglass (optics were introduced by the Dutch):

躊躇

tyuutyo hesitation, indecision, waffling, vacillation

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It's a simple enough concept, but I think the characters are amazingly beautiful (in their complexity). Interestingly enough, both of the characters can be used for the same verb, ためらう tamerau, written as 躊う, 躇う, or even as 躊躇う, meaning to hesitate or waver.

写本

syahon manuscript, codex

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It crossed my mind earlier today that I didn't actually know if there was a Japanese term for a manuscript, in the sense of a book copied by hand by trained calligraphers, and not in the sense of the original text which editors sink their teeth into when producing a book today (which, in Japanese, is 原稿 genkou, meaning somewhat literally, original copy or posting). As a long-time fan of illustrated manuscripts (from the Latin for written by hand), or codices (the plural of codex, Latin for ledger, adopted in the middle ages to refer to manuscripts as well), I wondered about the Japanese. I was happy to see that 写本 is used. That first character is also used in verbs like 写る and 写す (uturu and utusu) which refer to the act of copying, or transfering, or even describing. We see it in compounds like 写経 syakyou (the hand-copying of Buddhist sutras, which is why 写本 makes so much sense to me) and 写真 syasin (photograph, which is fascinating, because for us, based on its Greek roots, a photograph is writing with light, where as for Japanese, a photograph is a copying of truth). And let me end today's adventures in pedantry here.

免疫不全

men'eki huzen Immuno-compromised

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One aspect of the terrible fact that King County is now leading the US in COVID-19 cases is that my husband and I are sharing many more news reports. I hadn't realized that there was a simple Japanese term for immuno-compromised, but as written, it makes perfect sense. 免疫 men'eki is immunity or your immune system and 不全 huzen means imperfect or incomplete.

パートナー

paatonaa partner

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As is the case in English, this term’s meaning can vary in context. I’ve only rarely encountered it in business contexts, but it’s not unheard of to talk about a client or a company that you work together with as a パートナー. I also sometimes encountered it in musical contexts, when I was performing in choruses in Japan, to refer to accompanists. But the most common use of パートナー within the circles I run in is within the romantic partner context. I know that in English, my fellow rainbow dwellers began to use partner, or sometimes life partner, in the 1980s to start reminding society at large of the permanence and significance of our relationships, and although the frequency of its use diminished as, here in the United States, domestic partnership and marriage became legal and recognized, it is still commonly used in Japan (in part because marriage rights have not yet been won). But there are a variety of ways to refer to one’s romantic partner in Japanese, in relationships that exist outside of marriage. 相棒 aibou is somewhat casual, but also intimate, depending on context, and can refer to a buddy, a compatriot, or a romantic partner. 愛人 aizin and 恋人 koibito refer to lovers and paramours, and can be used both to refer to the person you are committed to, but also to someone you are involved with outside your committed relationship. I tend to use 旦那 danna (husband) to refer to my husband, but because Japanese does not have marriage equality yet, it can ring odd. People expect that because I use that word, that there must be a wife for my husband, so I admit the challenge. Personally, I don’t like パートナー, because it has a cold feel to me. To judge by the way it is used by my coevals in Japan, however, that feeling is unwarranted.

兎角亀毛

tokaku kimou A Budhhist expression for things that do not exist. Literally: horns on a hare, hair on a tortoise

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I really love the imagery here. This will remain one of my favorite four-character aphorisms, although admittedly I have a lot of them.

月経

gekkei menstruation

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I wasn’t quite expecting this word to show up in an article on COVID-19, but in addition to panic buying of toilet paper (which I believe the Japanese have been doing since the OPEC oil scares of the early 1970s), there is panic buying of women’s hygiene products, including sanitary napkins and tampons. Admittedly, menstruation is not a common topic in a household of two gay men, though I had been aware of the term, 生理 seiri, for menstruation. I also admitted to some confusion as to why the 経, sometimes written 經 in older texts, was used. Because interpreted literally, 月経 means monthly sutra. Taken together with the fact that one term for menopause is 閉経 heikei, which can literally mean the closing of the sutra, there seems to be a poetic connection between the sutras and the female external reproductive anatomy, perhaps in that both are to be thoughtfully contemplated (if one is so inclined and I am admittedly not).

ガラケー

garakei An ordinary cellphone, without smart features, specifically designed for the Japanese market

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This also came up in work today, and I initially assumed two things. It was an abbreviation for a longer term (that was correct), and that the longer term was ガラガラ携帯 garagara keitai, a cell phone devoid of additional features (that was not correct). It is an abbreviation for ガラパゴス携帯 garapagosu keitai, an ordinary (non-smart) cell-phone designed specifically for the Japanese market. But why is the reference to the Galapagos Islands in there? Because there is a tendency for Japanese manufacturers to develop a much wider range of features and products for the domestic market than they would for the export market, and as we see in examples of evolution in the Galapagos, the level of specialization for niche environments can reach extreme levels. This is pretty clever, linguistically.

Ⅴ形回復

buii-gata kaifuku a financial turnaround, a sudden change from losses to gains

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This came up in work today. The temptation is to include the V in the translation somehow, but it's not needed, IMHO. What we're talking about is a company whose profits were steadily declining suddenly change to be on the increase. So when charted, the profits trend line appears as a V, heading down and then back up.

春眠暁を覚えず

syunmin akatuki o oboezu proverb: we sleep more soundly (literally, we sleep through the sunrise) in spring

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I asked my husband to teach me some new phrase in Japanese this morning and I suspect his choice reflects the fact that it is indeed spring here and he was his usual sleepy self, wanting to crawl back into bed. That he managed to pulled out a poetic turn of phrase (based on Chinese poetry; I am guessing the original might be something like 春眠暁不覚) in that state was impressive.

匙加減

sazi kagen dosing a prescribed amount of measurement, a process of cooking where you season, taste, and adjust as you go, or, the ability to make changes and adjustments in work or life based on your overall skill and experience

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I was discussing an earlier post with a colleague and he mentioned that this idiom was the only one that he had been aware to use 匙 sazi. And although it can be used in the first two literal senses, I love the image of being able to make minor course corrections in your life because you've already lived and learned enough to know when to add or subtract a spoonful of whatever here and there.

恋路

koizi romance

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I discovered this word when searching for a more romantic to the katakana form: ロマンス (romansu). The literal meaning is a path of love, which is an exquisite image for a romance.

歪に聞こえる

ibitu ni kikoeru to come across strangely, to sound wrong, to not make any sense

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Maybe it's because it's spring, but I'm suddenly hearing and learning a lot of new words and phrases in Japanese. I was talking about the challenge I face linguistically when I want to convey my ambitions and career needs in Japanese, something I normally would very rarely do. I've not heard many people do this in Japanese anyway, so issues like word choice are additionally challenging. Things that I would normally say in English don't necessarily make sense in Japanese, and trying to translate my thoughts from language to language can puzzle the listener. I was sharing this frustration and discussing new ways to talk about the future I see for myself with my (Japanese) husband, and as he commiserated with my challenge, he used the phrase above to surmise that the mentor I was working with would have had a hard time understanding what I wanted to say. As I investigated this, I realized that although I often run into the first character, it is usually in the context of a physical product deformation, because the Japanese verb associated with that character is 歪む (yugamu). So the phrase could literally be taken to mean: to sound twisted or deformed, to sound broken. This is one of the many times when I marvel at the ease with which you can paint incredible verbal pictures in Japanese.

匙を投げる

sazi o nageru to abandon, to give up in despair

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I was explaining the English idioms to throw a wrench in the works (to throw a spanner in the works in Britain) to my husband this morning when it reminded him of this idiom in Japanese, which I had never heard before. He quickly noted that the Japanese idiom, whose literal meaning would be to toss the spoon, has a completely different meaning. It can be commonly used in two disparate situations: medicine and love affairs. When a doctor has concluded that there are no more viable treatment options for her patient, she tosses the spoon. And when a paramour decides that the relationship is no longer worth pursuing, he tosses the spoon. There are therefore frequently uses in passive voice:

医者に匙を投げられた isya ni sazi o nagerareta, The doctor gave up on me

彼氏に匙を投げられた karesi ni sazi o nagerareta, My boyfriend ended it

謙虚さ

kenkyosa humility, modesty

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This term came up frequently in a conversation I was having, and because I hadn't ever heard it in conversation, I took a note to look it up later. It reiterates a common struggle for interpreters. Japanese, like English, has native words (called 大和言葉, yamato kotoba, in Japanese) as well as words that entered the language from Chinese (introduced by Chinese and Korean monks and diplomats during the latter half of the first millennium, CE). This is akin to words in English based in Saxon roots and words based in Latin and Norman French roots. As a listener, it is almost always faster to comprehend the native word. For Japanese, I think one of the reasons is that you are not struggling to recall the specific characters for the loan word to make sure you know the meaning, given the large number of homophones there are for loan words in Japanese. However, there are times when there is no simple native word or phrase to replace the loan word, and this is one of those cases. Now that I'm aware of how the word is used in a conversational context, however, it will be less of a struggle the next time it comes up.

雲蒸竜変

unzyou ryouhen, and also unzyou ryuuhen
to allow your talents to shine through

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I don't normally like to include four-character aphorisms in this list (although given the lassitude on display by not posting for three years, I don't think I can use the word normally with any justification), but this was inspiring. It literally describes a transformation into a dragon within masses of roiling clouds, but metaphorically it can refer to a leader or hero who, given the opportunity, lets her talents and abilities shine forth.

過疎

kaso
to suffer from a (new or existing) lack of popularity, particularly as a video game

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I had only ever encountered this term in reference to discussions of Japan's rural areas, where it refers to the depopulation that occurs as younger people move away and the older remaining residents gradually pass away. But I encountered it in metaphorical use today, to refer both to video games that never attracted a fanbase to begin with, as well as to video games whose players depart (depopulating the fanbase, as it were) once the game has been played through.