If you know the green t-shirt I have (and love) with the above "hi jou guchi" emergency exit sign, then you know something I bought from a cool online store. It's a company run by an entrepreneurial American that imports wacky Japanese stuff to Japan fanatics, mostly back to the US. He's actually a good writer, and I was reminded by the influence he had on my image of Japan after reading the "store news" email that's sent to customers. Here's a snippet:
I've always been fascinated with onomatopoeia in Japanese, with the differences in how "sound words" work between Japanese and English. Animal noises like "woof woof" (in Japanese: wan wan) are different, of course, but the mechanisms are the same, as with other words, like "twinkle twinkle" (kira kira) or "drip drop" (potsun potsun). The Japanese also assign sounds to odd actions, which we would never think of creating. The "sound" of eyes looking left and right is "kyoro kyoro," and this term is applied to a guy who is being unfaithful to his girlfriend by looking at other girls. The sound of snow falling has a sound word, too, "shin shin" ("sheen sheen") which summons up pleasant images of whiteness outside a frosty window. There is a "sound of silence" in Japanese, too, which is "shiiin" ("sheen," with a lengthened vowel). When someone makes a joke that isn't funny, it's common for someone to crack wise by saying "Shiiin!" to highlight the lack of laughter from the first person's joke. It takes time to get used to concepts such as these, but it's all part of the wonderful mystery that is Japan.The company is J-Box, and they have lots of interesting-to-strange stuff. But a word of warning: J-Box's parent site is J-List, which is aimed at foaming-at-the-mouth college boys. It's hard to find a T-shirt without some kind of sexual connotation. If you surf J-Box long enough you may be inadvertently switched to J-List.
Interestingly, because of the "over 18" content there, J-List is blocked to me from here in Japan, even though I can walk 100 yards to any convienence store and find worse! Still, J-Box is highly recommended. Especially when it comes to buying me gifts. :)
3 comments:
Just to add, my favorite sound word in Japanese is "goro goro", the sound of thunder.
Sound words are surprisingly common in colloquial Japanese, and they usually are the same word said twice, quickly. When written they're spelled in katakana.
What's your favorite sound word?
ヘロヘロ(hero hero)＝very tired, not a brave man at all!! (not so commonly used)
ペロペロ(pero pero)＝licking something moving one's tongue
ベロベロ(bero bero)= be dead drunk
"goro goro" huh ;)
The sounds is used for "purr" as well in Japanese. I personally think English purr sounds a lot more like what Taffy says but..
Btw, Happy Birthday!
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