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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 2 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
34 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S2 #13 - It’s Good to be the King”
at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, Happy Valentine’s Day to all! We hope you all have a great day and receive lots of chocolate! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
at 9:43 pm
Yoshikai-san, you are really, really talented! Did anyone catch the name of the 3rd person who gave the boss chocolate? Hint, hint…he was in the conversation and it wasn’t Yoshikai!
Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
at 9:53 pm
Yes, it was indeed the best day to teach morau !
Congratulations and thanks to the grammar sensei !
In the japanese grammar, there is often a “batsu” “X” or a “*” sign before incorrect sentences。I think it’s fine.
X 社長は私にワインをもらった.
*社長は私にワインをもらった.
at 11:01 pm
Happy Valentine’s Day Mina-san!
Hope you guys collect lots of flowers, chocolate, candy, and jeweley
etc….
Yes, Korea is same as Japan. All female will able to show their love to the guy who like… And on March 14h is White Days the guys will give Candy to female.
I’m badely waking up….hope I wrote it right.
Love you all~~~OXOXOX
at 11:03 pm
Oh yeah, my chocolate will go to one of Jppod crew, Take-san!!
Love you voice!!!
at 11:20 pm
Happy Valentine’s Day Mina-san!
While I was typing today’s lesson, I got a question.
At the beginning of the dialog when buchou said ‘旨い’、why use this ‘旨い’, rather then 美味い'’, or ‘甘い’, or something else?They all have the similar meaning as in ‘good/delicious’, right?
Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
at 11:37 pm
I will add my best wishes for a wonderful Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope everyone gets tons of chocolate.
Peter-san, Will we hear Chigusa-san and Yoshi-san in upcoming podcasts?
ネイト
at 5:08 am
Take Take Take…blah blah blah…
at 7:35 am
Peter-san,
Wasn’t the third person Take-san?
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
at 8:07 am
Has anyone seen the movie MirrorMask? There are cats with person-faces. More kimo than kawa.
http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/books/mirrormaskchildrens/mirrorgallery/sphinx/zphoto_view
at 8:10 am
This one is better - CG version:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/~pdeh/mm_evilcats.jpg
at 11:13 am
Alain-san,
Thanks for the tip!
Vicky-san,
Happy Valentine’s Day!
nanaka-san,
I’m not quite sure who chose the kanji, but I doubt that there was a whole lot of deliberation in choosing the kanji
美味い, 旨い, and 甘い all carry the meaning of good taste, as you mentioned. Of course, different kanji will give a different feel, nuance, etc. since they carry their own meaning. You’ll see this technique used often in literature - the author will choose a non-standard kanji in order to attempt to express a specific nuance or feeling. As for umai, I myself have not noticed 甘い used in this role yet, and because it is the same as amai, it’s hard to tell from Google how common it may be. 旨い has just a few more hits than 美味い. Since I am not Japanese and am still learning, I cannot really accurately comment on the nuances, but I read a number of opinions, and can’t seem to find a consensus. You can note that much like mazui can be used to describe a circumstance, so can umai, and in this case you use 旨い. 美味い, on the other hand, is only used for taste, I believe, and is ateji coming from 美味 (bimi) - good flavor. 旨い seems to be stronger from the opinions that I read, but more opinions are needed. Perhaps some of our Japanese listeners (I know there are a few out there) can chime in!
at 1:53 pm
Apart from Nathan’s last post above, all the kanji in the comment’s sections have suddenly become unreadable, appearing as ‘?????’. I tried all combinations of Text Encoding settings in the browser (both safari & firefox), but it’s still not working for me. This means I can’t read the transcipts in Miki’s blogs at the moment, which is a shame. Anyone else having difficulties or is this just me?
Since Nathan’s post above is reasonable, there’s a fair chance the following will be readable, but I can’t tell until after posting
漢字を読めませんか。「????」と読みますか。
at 1:55 pm
Interesting. I can read my own post, and Nathan’s, but all the kanji in earlier ones are still unreadable. Eranさん have any changes been made to the publishing system?
at 2:02 pm
Alan-san,
We are aware of this issue and are working on a resolution. Apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.
Eran
at 2:54 pm
Eranさん、Thanks for the reply. No worries
kimochi ga warui + kawaii = kimokawa (キモカワ)
Sort of horrifying, but you still kind of like it. It’s tempting to ask for more usage examples
at 3:05 pm
Alan-san,
We have rectified the character set issue (Kanji showing up as ????).
Thanks as always for being our eyes and ears
Eran
at 3:32 pm
Alan-san,
strange, no ???s for me.
at 3:36 pm
Laura-san,
I thought I had seen some ugly dogs!
at 4:43 pm
Nathan-san, thanks for your explaination.
So compared to ’美味い’、’旨い’ has a wider range of usage. Say, if you were invited to a dinner party, you hated the food there, but you can still use ‘umai’, either because you liked the atmosphere there, or just for better etiquette. ^_^
Laura-san, that human-faced dog is really horrifying, although other combinations of animal-human can be cute.
ななか
at 6:04 pm
I got some 手作り世話チョコ from one of my students today.
He’s one of my special ed students and before he came into the teacher’s office, I could here the tannin sensei coaching him on the appropriate Japanese to use. But, he could pull out the “Thank you very much” on his own.
at 12:56 am
良かったぞ!
i got really lucky this year.
i got a mystery チョコがいっぱい袋 (bagful of of chocolate) and girlfriend made 手作りチョコ for me….
今からホワイトデーのplan考えるよ!
at 1:09 pm
Yoshi-kai’s portrayal of the boss was so vivid! I could just picture him gobbling up the chocolates as he was talking! And then the strange fact that the hand-made chocolates were from Take, and his extreme difficulty to get that name past his lips. I had to refrain from rolling on the train carriage floor with laughter!
at 2:22 pm
Yes, it is the same in South Korea. It’s amazing how many similarities there are between South Korea and Japan. ^_^
at 12:19 am
what is キモカワ
is it just like かわいい?
at 7:17 am
I looked for opportunities to use “きもかわ” today, but none came up.
I shall stay on the look-out.
at 12:56 am
I wiki(ed) it. In Korea it’s the same as in Japan.
In Taiwan it’s the opposite, men give choco on valentine and get a reply on white day.
But in Korea, if you don’t get choco, you go eat black noodle ‘’mourn'’. To mourn at the fact they are still single.
But Korean woman give an considerably bigger amount of choco.
And the confectionary’s sell about half there annual sales.(According to wiki)
there are also a couple of countrys where it’s forbidden to celebrate valentine.
at 7:02 pm
wout-san,

Love that!!
wow, I didn’t know any of those
Thank you very much for interesting information!!
Korean culture of eating black noodle is really funny
So, how did you spend this year’s St. Valentine’s Day?
Did you eat chocolate or black noodle?
Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com
at 8:02 pm
Black noodle
, but then again I don’t live in Korea.
And I don’t think we have those black noodles.
But now something else if I want to say ‘’I caught myself a local that’ll show me all the nice food'’ how do I say that? or something alike (with local in it)
My guess for local is inakajin, cause inaka is rural region and jin makes it a person from around there.
Or is this incorrect?
wout
at 8:52 pm
wout-san,
“local” as “local person or people”, ….it doesn’t necessarily “inaka” person.
Local means where you are, so if you want to say something like
“person in rural region” or “someone in small town”, okay, you can say
“inaga no hito”.
Did you find a local person who showed you all the nice local food?? Sweet!
You can say, “jimoto no hito ga, jimoto no oishii ryouri o oshiete kuremashita.”
This “jimoto” means “local” and usually “jimoto no hito” is someone who lives
locally. If this person took you to restaurant, instead of “oshiete kuremashita”,
you can say “jimoto no oishii ryouri ga taberareru resutoran ni tsurete itte
kuremashita”.
This literally means that s/he took you to the restaurant where you can eat
a delicious local food.
Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com
at 6:00 pm
thanks that helps
at 12:40 am
wout-san,
Glad I could help!
Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com
at 3:55 am
Hi Peter,
I wouldn’t say: “guys give chocolates to girls” sums up Valentine’s Day in the west. In Ireland, although men do spend a lot more than women, typically lovers give gifts to each other.
Cards (or love letters) are mandatory for both parties. Chocolates are typically given by men and often given by women. A survey this year (2013) showed in certain parts of Ireland, women were spending more on chocolates for their lovers than men. Men often give flowers, mostly roses. It’s also very popular to go for a romantic meal. Often other gifts are exchanged e.g. jewellery.
Weekends away are also very popular with the weekends closest to Valentine’s Day being some of the busiest in hotels and at the airport. Paris & Rome are popular destinations from Ireland.
On Valentine’s Day I always get a minimum of a card from my girlfriend. I typically received chocolates, and sometimes I have received other small gifts like: a watch, a book, etc. I typically give a card, chocolates, & flowers. Sometimes I might do something specially e.g. one year I brought my girlfriend to Venice.
All the best,
Macky
at 11:13 pm
Macky-san,
wow, someone is very sweet and romantic!
We have this “chocolate from girls to boys” boosted by chocolate companies’
campains. We have “white day” when boys should give typically candies or
cookies in return. This might be a very Japanese thing: giving something back
as “thank you”.
Spending Valentine’s Day weekend in Paris or Rome seems to be really sweet!!
But maybe too far for Japanese??
Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com