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Hi, my name is Hachiban and this is my podcast, Ramen, gyoza and a bit of chaos.
Today I want to talk about some language stuff. I got three podcasts including this one,
one or two other ones, Japanese. And my main podcast, Ramen, gyoza and a bit of chaos.
I started it almost a year ago and the total number of episodes is now about 80.
And compared to this one, this is just, I think this is my sixth episode for this English podcast.
And I come up with so many topics to talk about for Japanese podcasts,
but not for the English one and I found it interesting. And then I thought about why.
One reason is, I think in Japanese most of the time, unless I'm talking in English or reading
or watching something in English. And I have started my parental leave. So when I'm working,
so when I'm working, I do speak English at my work. So for most part of the day,
I think in English as well. But then once I started my parental leave at my home,
I talk to my kids in Japanese. I use English to my husband most of the time, but
since I started using Japanese to my kids, I, because I use Japanese to my kids, I think in
Japanese and then if I'm talking to both my kids and my husband, then my brain doesn't switch
quickly enough and sometimes I just use Japanese to my husband too.
I, my husband has been learning English, not English, my husband can speak English
from the beginning, but he has been studying Japanese. So he understands quite a few Japanese
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words. So when I accidentally use Japanese to my husband or if I'm using it on purpose,
I normally use short sentences or just a few words. So most of the time, I think he can
understand me when I'm using Japanese to him. And if he doesn't understand, I'm assuming he
asks me. But anyway, my point is, since I started my parental leave, I've been thinking mostly in
Japanese. Therefore, I come up with lots of things I want to talk about in my podcast, but
they are mainly things I want to talk in Japanese. Another reason of this, me coming up with
more topics in Japanese, or I want to talk about more things, a lot more things in Japanese,
the reason is that my vocabulary in Japanese is a lot better than my English vocabulary.
I took a vocabulary test online, it's random one, some time ago, and according to that,
my vocabulary in English is similar to that of, that of native English speakers,
if they are like 12 years old. So yeah, I don't know how many words I actually know,
but yeah, I'm about the same as people finished year six, is that year six? If it's age of 12,
yeah, something like that. But then I checked my Japanese vocabulary some time ago as well, and
my vocabulary was pretty good, considering I came to Australia straight after my graduating
my Japanese high school. Because I have more, well, better vocabulary in Japanese,
I can think about words to describe what I think a lot more in Japanese, and related to that,
I can translate from English to Japanese pretty easily compared to translating Japanese to English.
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Because from English to Japanese, I can come up with lots of words I can use to translate, but then
the other way around, so from Japanese to English, I can't come up with the word often, so
I have to think about it, I have to look up on Google, and often, like, I do that quite regularly
to my husband, so I read or hear or watch something in Japanese, then I try to describe that to my
husband in English, but I can't really come up with good words to describe, and then
end up not being able to explain well, and I get annoyed. Related to the vocabulary and words,
there are so many words in Japanese, but there's no direct translation in English.
And I might talk about a few words like that, and I get annoyed, because, like, I come up with
those expressions in Japanese so many times, but then there's no direct translation, so I can't
properly explain to... I can't properly explain in English.
The first word is 暑い展開 in Japanese. 暑い means hot, normally, and 展開, 展開, what is
展開? Let me explain. I use this expression 暑い展開 when I'm watching anime
quite regularly, when... yeah, it's sort of exciting,
like, I might use it for very exciting situation, but it's not just exciting. Exciting is not
a direct translation of 暑い. 暑い is sort of hot, but then why do we use this 暑い for
describing a situation? Because hot has lots of other meanings too, like, hot can be sexy, but
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there's no sexy bit in 暑い展開. My English vocabulary is too poor to explain this 暑い
展開, so I might just google it, and if I can find any good link, I'll just put that in the show
notes. The next one is ありがた迷惑, and hopefully I can explain this one. ありがた迷惑's
ありがた part is from ありがたい or ありがとう. ありがとう means thank you.
迷惑 is like trouble, trouble caused by someone else, not me. So ありがた迷惑 is
kind of like thank you, but no thank you in a sarcastic way. We sometimes say thank you,
but no thank you in a polite way, but not like that. It's when someone does something for you,
thinking it's such a good thing for you, but then you totally don't want it, and it's annoying.
One example is when you are driving, or you can be walking or whatever, just imagine you're driving,
and then someone gives you a way, but they totally have their right of way according to
the road rules. So if they give a way to you, and then if you follow that, you end up breaking
traffic rules. It is heaps ありがた迷惑, especially if that person is holding up other people
and then giving you a way. When it happens, it's so annoying. They think they're doing such a good
thing to you. They think you should thank them so much. They've been nice, but no, they're not
being nice. They're just being stupid.
So yeah, you can use that word in that sort of a situation. People are thinking they're doing
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good things to you, but no, no thank you. You're being stupid. That sort of situation. The last
one I want to talk about today is 神. 神 literally means gods or deities.
Japanese people like to call so many things 神, but then it's hard to understand
for Western people, especially if they are following Christianity or something with
one god. In Japan, we have Shinto or Shintoism, where there's so many gods, like we call them
やおよろずの神. やおよろず literally means what's that? It's 8 million?
When Japanese people use like 8 million or 800, that means there's so many.
So it doesn't literally mean there are 8 million of gods. They're just loads of gods.
We even have things called つくも神. That means if you use your whatever possessions,
like your phone or your mirror or your bed or your books, whatever, if you use them
nice and carefully for a long time, traditionally we believe, well not anymore, but people used to
believe there'll be like some sort of soul in that thing, and then it becomes a god.
It might have emotion and stuff. So yeah, potentially you might be surrounded by so many
gods in your house, and Shintoism is also like animism. So we think everything might be gods,
or everything might have soul or emotions or whatever.
Because we are used to that sort of way of thinking, I think that's partially why we
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like to call so many things gods. So for example, there was a case
my podcast friend, podcast friend, well I belong to a podcast community, and a person in there
called Shoma-san, he has been drawing, drawing, he has been drawing, drawing, illustrating
illustrating other podcast presenters, and then he said he can do it to me as well, and I'm like
wow that's so cool, are you kami? So we can use that term kami for someone way cool or someone
really nice to you. We use the term kami to describe someone really talented in something.
So for example, the author of Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka, he is called
kami of manga, so that means the god of manga. Then, well he is like the best manga artist
in Japanese history sort of person, but then not just such really, really, what's that called,
historic, historic. So not just someone in the history, but then also whoever really good
in the current society, whoever talented, we can call them kami too. Like for musicians for example,
we can call kami ongakuka or illustrators kami-eshi. We can just put kami on top of
the occupation title, and then we can describe how they are so good at whatever they are doing.
It doesn't have to be for people, it can be used for objects or animals.
So if I eat some really, really good ice cream for example, I can then,
oh this ice cream is kami!
このアイスは神だ! I can use in that sort of way.
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So this term kami is so versatile and we can use it for anything pretty much, anything you think
awesome or nice, but then I don't really know whether people from other culture,
culture other than Japanese, I don't know whether people like that can truly understand
this concept or people can probably understand, but maybe people find it weird.
Thanks for listening, see ya!
