Mina-san, Shikoku is the home of old the feudal domain of Tosa. Many samurai who played important roles in the last days of the Shogunate. The most famous of whom are Sakamoto Ryoma, Takechi Hanpeita and Yamanouchi Toyoshige. Sakamoto Ryoma is particularly loved in Japan for his vision and patriotism.

The Kitty-chan Yakuza guys are back? I didn’t see that coming! As Marky says “aw yeah!”

thanks for the historical comment on Shikoku !

And maybe the ramen-ya is over-staffed because all the customers fled to Shikoku ? Or they are stuck at the airport ?

The audio track number is not right. It is 62, not 63. May someone correct it. Thanks

According to Wiki it’s called southpaw because (baseball) batters face east, so a left-handed pitcher’s arm will be aiming south as he winds up to throw. I’ve never heard it used in a baseball game (although I’ve only seen 20 or so), it seems to have been taken over by boxing. You hear it all the time, both about lefties, and righties who switch stance ‘fighting southpaw’. I always thought it was because the usually leading (right) hand is down low in a lefty stance.

I commented on Naomi’s pronunciation before when she said すごい with a hard ご. I read that it was a Tokyo dialect thing, I didn’t know people just chose how they wanted to say it. I try to do it the nasal way, since I sound a bit more natural doing it like that. I picked it up from Sachiko and Yoshikai. If anybody else prefers this way, the rule is が-row sounds *within* a word and the particle が itself. You still use a hard sound for starting syllables.

watermanさん、

I’m sure Marky was counting on you noticing that.

ジャービジさん、

While boxing adopted southpaw, it is definitely still used for baseball. In fact, with boxing’s decline in popularity, I’m sure it’s used more often in baseball settings.

Also, I think you’re safe going with なおみさん’s pronunciation.

I could understand 50% or more of it. Sounded very yakuza to me. BTW - they are writing the intro scripts in the PDF these days. I think it’s great, the intros really challenge me hurry up and progress so one day I don’t have to read the PDF. Still have a little bit of work to do!

みなさん こんにちは　Mina-san Konnichi wa.　
みなさんは、右ききですか？　左ききですか？
Mina-san wa migi-kiki desu ka? Hidari kiki desu ka?
Are you right-handed or left-handed?

ジョン-san
Thank you so much for pointing out!!!
The mistake in the PDF has been corrected.

I’m seeing something strange, Yakusa are taking the control of japanesepod… strange restaurants, secret doors… don’t you think?.

PS to my above comments: During my youth “Southpaw” was used exclusively to mean a Left-Handed baseball pitcher (or person); it was seldom used to describe any other Left-Handed activity until the relatively recent past. This should be taken with a ” grain of salt”. The reporter is relying on a memory that now exceeds 77 years.