By the way, due to a scheduling conflict, Naomi is playing the part of Natsumi today. Tomorrow Ushijima’s parts will be substituted and re-uploaded. So you might want to re-download tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience!

秋さんは可哀想ですね！！！！ Poor Shuさん ! I sincererly hope he gets a happy ending, he sounds so forlorn….

Nice bit about the “dead body =ある”,”dead person=いる”. You never know when that might come in handy .

haha first off laff you guys wrote “do you think shu will get a happy ending”…. you gotta be careful with that phrase =D. of course do you think this story will have a happy ending means something entirely different.

Second… video vocab rocks my socks. Question ..how come there isn’t video vocab for miki’s blog ? Next on the video vocab note. Please please consider going back and doing video vocab for at least the intermediate and lower intermediate lessons. Even if it is only 1 extra video a weak. I just feel like there is tons of great vocabulary in there that is difficult to retain and feels like it is being lost. The beginner lessons are constantly using the same vocabulary over and over (which isn’t bad) I just don’t feel like the the beginner series is growing much? which after what 250+? beginner lessons… I think it is for the most part covered? perhaps it might be time to start concentrating on lower intermediate and up lessons? or maybe start on some jlpt lvl2 or 1 grammar. Just feel like there hasn’t been a whole lot as far as grammar progress for a while.

Anyway… still love Japanesepod big time. Not complaining. anyways thanks!

About the intro, I always thought おかげさまで was only for thanking someone, but the dictionary also has ‘thanks to God’ as a definition, so can you use it where you would use ‘thank God’, in the usual less-than-religious way, e.g. ‘thank God my girlfriend didn’t find out!’. Or does the nuance better suit the translation in the PDF, ‘fortunately’?

I have a book that mentioned おっす as ‘hi’, and ういっすー as ‘what up’. Could you answer them with 元気だぜ with some modifiers like めちゃやべぇ, or すっげぇ

ジャブちゃん、 you can use おかげさまで like “thank god” or “fortunately.”
おかげで would be for thanking a person.

a typical greeting i hear is
元気ですか？
元気ですよ。おかげさまで。

i think the response to おっす （押忍） is the same. at least that’s how i use it when i see my friends.
おっす!
おっす!

みなさんこんにちは。Mina-san. Konnichiwa.

I remembered that my brother used to love the anime called “Dragon Ball” and in that anime, the protagonist (the main character?) always says “オッス　オラ　ゴクウ!/Ossu! Ora Gokuu = Yo! What’s up? I’m Gokuu.”
I don’t personally recommend girls to use it …

Rhysーsan!!!
The line by line for the iPod says “Monkey? Oh don’t worry about that. I have free tickets.”
It was me!!! Sorry!!!!!!
I’ll fix it! すみません。and thank you!!!!

皆さんこんにちは。ニックケーブのファンがいるのはうれしいですね。私は、特にThe Boatman’s Callとういうアルバムが好きです。
Hi everyone.　 Glad to hear there are some Nick Cave fans out there! I just love The Boatman’s Call album.

On the iru verus aru distinction, プチクレア raised a good point when they wrote:

>By the way, as いる used for animate objects and ある(在る）for inanimate objects,
>how come “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) is translated 我思う、うえに我在
>り (Sanseido Crown French-Japanese dictionary) ?

According to the Kojien dictionary, in addition to being used of inanimate objects aru （在る）can also be used to describe whether someone exists in an abstract sense (this meaning is related to the word 存在（そんざい）) . This is the usage of “aru” in the translation of “cognito ergo sum.”

You often come across this usage of “aru” in classical Japanese with “ari” at the end of sentences. Reading all the interesting things written in classical Japanese is something to look forward to in your Japanese studies!

Rebekah