This video is quite fascinating to watch. It's a product from Japan, containing various plastic parts plus a bunch of foil pouches full of crystals. If you follow the instructions, you end up with a microscopic burger-and-fries meal. Everything you need is in it, including tools and dishes. The only thing you have to provide is a pair of scissors to cut everything apart, and to open the pouches, and a few pieces of cellophane tape.

The video shows the process from beginning to end.

It's apparently edible, though I can't imagine that it's very filling. And all the cooking is done in low-power microwave ovens. (Does anyone really make a 500 watt microwave oven?)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 08:12 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I think the most difficult common word for subtitlers to translate must be sasuga. There isn't any single word in English with that meaning. There isn't anything even close, yet it gets used all the time in anime.

"Living up to our high expectations" is about what it means, but that's way too clumsy for normal use. "Just what we expect from..." is how it's often translated, but that feels stilted in English.

I noticed that in Mouretsu Pirates ep 15, at one point the translator made it "Way to go!" And that's really good. It obviously isn't literal, but that's about what Hyakume was thinking when he said it. (At 20:04.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 01:24 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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There's a word I've heard a bunch of times, which sounds like renshuu. It's used to refer to a group of students at a school. Is it 連衆? (which would mean "group of people"?)

練習 is pronounced renshuu but it means "practice". (renshuusei means "student", but that's not what they're saying.)

Just for reference, I just encountered it in Mouretsu Pirates ep 4, at about 14:45.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 07:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There's a word I've heard a couple of times that I can't find in the dictionary. One example is ep 9 of Mouretsu Pirates at 11:30. Another case is ep 3 of Railgun at 06:40.

It sounds like "surui" and it means something like "unfair". But I can't find it in the dictionary. What is it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 08:36 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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There's a phrase which is a very formal and abject apology which sounds to me like it's moshi wa ke arimasen but that's almost certainly not correct. One example of it is ep 11 of Daimaou at 18:44 (BD rip).

What is it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 09:34 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Think maybe that the reason for "Measurement day" is to aggregate all the numbers so that the stores can stock the proper amounts of various sizes of school uniforms?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 10:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 Do they measure boys also?

Posted by: Siergen at February 21, 2012 02:57 PM (3/gGt)

2 Yes, they measure the boys as well; it just shows up less in the sort of anime we watch. Search for 学校保健統計調査 (School Health Examination Survey), and you can find some of the data, such as this spreadsheet breaking down height and weight by grade over 1995-2010.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at February 21, 2012 03:22 PM (2XtN5)

3  Yeah, they do.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 21, 2012 03:22 PM (+rSRq)

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Just messing around and landed on this site: majutsu.net

Care to hear some utter crap?

The letters in the word Majutsu have meaning. "Ma” means pure and "jutsu” means art, so Majutsu means the pure art. The person who practices as a magician is called a Majutsushi. The letters "shi” mean user; thus, a Majutsushi is a user of this pure art.

真 ma does indeed mean "pure". But that's not the kanji that's used to write 魔術majutsu. The real first kanji 魔 means "demon".

UPDATE: 魔術師 majutsushi means "magician" or "sorceror". The final 師 shi doesn't mean "user". It means "expert" or "master".

This is like all those strange bad Chinese and Japanese tattoos that they used to post on the now-defunct "Hanzi Smatter". I really miss that site.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 03:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I'm working on a review of Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka and I'm including a section on the end about some of the language used in the show. One thing I wanted to talk about is Haruna's transformation spell.

As romanized in the subtitles of the versions I have, it goes like this:

nomobuyo yoshi hashitawa dokeda gunmicha de ribura

But to me the second word sounds like "oshi". Anyway, what they did was to convert a regular sentence into hiragana and then read it backwards. But I'm having a hard time parsing it. Here's what I got:

raburi de chamingu dakedo watashi ha shi oyobu mono

which I translate as:

Even though I am lovely and charming, I am a person who brings death.

Is that right? I think I've botched the last part of it.

The Kira-subs translated it as "Lovely and charming but a harbinger of death" but that seems stilted. And I can't figure out how they get "harbinger" out of the Japanese.

Help?

UPDATE: I just noticed that the seiyuu who did Sera's voice also did Junko in Daimaou and Brioche in Dog Days. I sure wouldn't have guessed.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 04:55 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There's a word or phrase that sounds like dokigenyou that means "Good day" or "How are you" or something. It's used as a greeting. One example is the first episode of Shukufuku no Campanella at about 06:40.

What is it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 09:06 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I'm a bit confused about the difference between suru and yaru. The dictionary says that they both mean "to do" but it's clear there must be some distinction between them.

Judging the language from how it's used in anime is a bit perilous because anime Japanese isn't really normal. But based on what I've been hearing, it seems to me that yaru is more like "to do to". One of the alternate meanings of yaru is "to kill", for example.

Seems like yaru is just a bit sinister, in fact. Is my impression correct?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 03:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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