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kawaii

Sadness, Depression, and Hope

Anime sometimes makes me think. Most of the time, I don’t think it’s supposed to, being honest.  I think it’s generally supposed to be light entertainment, or tell a story, or basically fill the same role that live-action TV does in the west.  I think it may be a character flaw of mine that I think as hard on it as I do, and I’m pretty sure that most of the time, this makes me something of an outlier at best, and a pariah at worst. Nonetheless, it does.  It… Read More »Sadness, Depression, and Hope

The Three Japanese Cultures

Hi!  It’s been a while since I posted here, so I have a lot to say.  Truth be told, I don’t really think I’m fond of the blogging method of expressing myself, but I haven’t come up with anything better yet.  I’m working on it, though!  First, an update. The Lily project (https://lovelylilylives.com, in case you didn’t know) is almost a year old now!  In that time, the story has progressed from a sweet but confused girl who didn’t know who she was, to a sweet but confused girl who… Read More »The Three Japanese Cultures

Kawaii

Kawaii may be the only real Japanese word many people know. And they really don’t know what it means. It’s usually translated as “cute”. And that’s one of the meanings, for sure. Maybe it’s even the primary meaning. But that’s not really what it means. They actually have another word for cute, “aikurushii” which seems to have a more pure meaning of “cute”. Not pure innocence-wise, but it seems to be more of a direct translation to our word “cute”. I think a better translation of kawaii is “childlike”. That’s… Read More »Kawaii

I Think I Messed up.

… but I’m not sure I could have done it any differently. This blog originated with a single premise: a Gaijin learning Japanese. Not much more to it than that. I was learning Japanese, about the Japanese culture, and for some reason I wanted to share it. Probably something to do with ego and a misplaced idea of what people might be interested in reading, but here we are. This was at least two years ago, probably closer to three. As I started learning Japanese, I learned about their idol… Read More »I Think I Messed up.

Kawaii Aidoru

YouTube is an incredible distraction throughout most of the issues that have been going on in the world, and in my country. One thing I’ve been watching is Babymetal reactions.  It’s quite amusing to see someone reacting for the first time – “Well, this is a band with… three girls?  And they’re Asian?  Korean maybe?  Well, I have no idea what to expect…”  “SOMEONE GIVE THOSE GIRLS SOME CHOCOLATE”  Anyway, I find it amusing. There’s this one guy, NeonReaperGaming, who has been really going down the foxhole – to the point where… Read More »Kawaii Aidoru

Loanwords

One thing I find fascinating is that a large fraction of the Japanese language is made up of loanwords, I’ve heard about ten percent of their language being of English origin.  But they take our words and adapt them to their syllabic structure, making them Japanese words.  Most English speakers wouldn’t even understand them.  There’s a hilarious music video called “Japanglish” that makes fun of that, and I still can’t hear “ma-ko-do-ru-no-DO” without laughing to myself. English has very few loanwords from Japanese.  There are a few, “skosh”, from “sukoshi”,… Read More »Loanwords

Pronunciation

On a YouTube channel I watch, the person who made a video mispronounced the word “Hitachi”.  He pronounced it “Hai-TA-chi”.  I posted a helpful comment telling him the correct way to pronounce it. Someone “took me to task” for correcting his pronunciation, with the rationalization “we aren’t Japanese”.  Of course, he devolved to calling me stupid in a roundabout way, so I ended the chat  But I’m going to explore that here. He’s right about one fact:  we aren’t Japanese.  But that’s not important.  I think there are circumstances where… Read More »Pronunciation

Japanese Food and Stores in Austin, part 3.

I had some errands to run this morning up in Cedar Park.  On my way back, I decided to stop at Lakeline Mall to see what they had to offer.  I was not disappointed. However, I was indeed disappointed by their “Japanese” fast food restaurant in the food court.  It was kinda sorta Japanese food, but just barely.  I had a chicken bento, and while nothing in it was particularly bad, it was just not of any quality at all.  Basically, Japanese food of mall quality.  I’ll pass. So after that, I… Read More »Japanese Food and Stores in Austin, part 3.