Senryu (川柳, senryuu) is somewhat similar in structure to Haiku (俳句), which is Japanese poetry with 5-7-5 (go-shichi-go) syllables. However, Senryu is lighter in its content and is made primarily to have some fun. It can be funny or even outright ridiculous. Here’s a website containing children Senryu that I found.
Let’s translate some!
がっこうは
みんないるから
すごいんだ
gakkou wa
minna iru kara
sugoi n da
School
Because all my friends are there
It’s wonderful
I particularly like the one below:
ゴロゴロと
かみなりどうし
けんかする
goro goro to
kaminari doushi
kenka suru
Rumble rumble!
The thunders are
Having a fight
My first encounter with senryu is on Morning Musume DVD Magazine vol. 14 where the topic is “eco” (e.g., environment). Morning Musume, v-u-den, Berryz Koubou, and C-ute members all have to make an eco senryu. It’s quite interesting.
この機械のおかげで大いに手間が省けた
This machine saved us a lot of time
When I found 「大いに」, I misread it as 「おおきいに」 (ookii ni) and thought, “Wow, you can attach に to i-adjectives!”. But it turned out to be a set word 「おおいに」 (ooi ni, much/greatly). 「おおきいに」 would have been 「大きいに」 (notice the okurigana difference). [gtj forum thread I made]
I’ve actually encountered 「大いに」 before when doing a Routledge dump:
大いに自戒せねばなるまい。 ooi ni jikai seneba naru mai
No doubt we must take great care [not to repeat the same mistake].
But it’s evident from my mistake that I haven’t got it pinned down on my ready-to-use memory.
Anyway, the Routledge sentence has suite some funky Japanese grammar there with せねば and まい… It’s equivalent to the simpler 「大いに自戒しなければならないだろう」.
Do you know KY? It comes from 空気を読めない (Kuuki o Yomenai) which means not being able to read/grasp the situation. KY itself refers to the person not being able to grasp the situation (and presumably does silly things). You can also use KY to whisper that person to “Get grasp of the situation!”. See the Zokugo Jisho entry.
Well, with all those slangs and acronyms being invented all the time, it seems natural that even a Japanese person can’t keep up. In a Gaki Kame episode (a radio show), Kamei Eri had a good laugh because Niigaki Risa didn’t know KY. Go listen to the 1 minute clip below! (or download it, 679 KB)
I have written on my old blog about how important it is to practice kanji writing using Mnemosyne. Here I will describe the process in more detail, not about the way questions are crafted (that’s for another post) but about the physical process of it.
The basic equipments are a pen and a book. I prefer books with Cartesian lines in it but a more common horizontal-line-only book works fine.
WOLF RPG Editor (WOLF RPGエディター) is a Japanese program to make 2D RPG games like Final Fantasy. The editor itself includes a sample game which can be finished in quite a short amount of time:
It’s a quite nicely organized grammar collection. For every grammar entry, after an explanation there will be wealth of example sentences each with their kanji, romaji, and English translation. Here’s one example sentence under the entry about the classical copula なり (なる in its noun-modifying form):
日本の方が豊かと考えるのは、大いなる誤解だね。 nihon no hou ga yutaka to kangaeru no wa ooi naru gokai da ne
It’s a grave misunderstanding to think that Japan is more affluent [than China].
I use it to look up new confusing grammars I find while reading, but most importantly, I try to exhaustively read it from the start to beginning with the method I will outline.
It’s good to be healthy again, because that means we can start learning Japanese again
Novel reading - 月下の恋人たち #2 - Lovers under the moonlight
I’m still on chapter two. Believe me, the chapters are incredibly long. I found a rare grammar here, the ばかり to indicate as if someone might do something!
In the scene, the protagonist was talking to another person through a window:
彼は窓を突き破らんばかりに顔を近づけ、わたしを睨みつけた。
He brought his face close as if going to break through the window, and stared at me.
