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Level: Yojijukugo

Learn Japanese with Japanese Idiomatic Phrases at JapanesePod101.com! A life lesson from a Japanese idiomatic phrase.

Imagine yourself a samurai on a journey in Japan to the ancient capital of Kyoto. You are traveling by foot, and crossing through a big open field. It’s late, the sun is starting to set, and your stomach growls. Just as the thought of supper pushes it’s way to the forefront of you mind, you spot two rabbits. As they snack on a head of lettuce, they don’t notice you creep up. As you near striking distance, you feel your foot crush a twig. The rabbits’ heads turn; you’ve been spotted. You take off toward them, and they take off in two different directions….You look left, you look right. And your supper has just sped away.

What went wrong? Should you have went left? Or perhaps, right?
Well, we know what went wrong, and the answer to that is inside today’s lesson.

To be able to think in Japanese is an important process in mastering Japanese and progressing faster. You’ll probably be surprised to know that you’ve done it many times before! There are many Japanese proverbs and idiomatic phrases that have entered the English language. Today we’ll learn several more phrases to help get you thinking like a Japanese person.

Impress Japanese friends and colleagues with these 2 yojijukugo, 4 character kanji compound that forms an idiomatic phrase. And progress faster by learning to think like a Japanese Person!

Learn Japanese Kanji and master Japanese!



This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Yojijukugo . 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.

16 Responses to “Yojijukugo #6 - Japanese Wisdom to Live By”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Mina-san, do they have the expression “Two birds, one stone.” in your language?

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Eric says:

何時も一心不乱にJPODを聞いてます。 :mrgreen:

今週もまた勉強になりました。

ありがとうJPODチーム :dogeza:

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Tadako says:

In Russian this expression sounds like “Two rabbits by one hit” (or by one shot). Poor little animals :)

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A person says:

Great lesson :)

Please check the English translations in the PDF.

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Gabriele says:

In Italian we say: “to catch two pigeons with one bean”.
We don’t actually kill the birds (well, I guess what you want to do
after you caught them is up to you!!) :grin:

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Peter says:

Gabriele-san, thank you for sharing! And for the laugh. :lol:

A person, thank you for letting us know. We’re still working out a few issues from the move to the new host. :dogeza: Things should be fixed shortly.

Tadako-san, thank you for sharing! :grin: We’ll be sure to use this with RussianPod101.com! :grin:

Ericさん、聞いてくださいましてありがとうございます! :dogeza:

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プチクレア says:

In French, we say ” faire d’une pierre deux coups”, which means ” to strike twice with one stone”…

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Jens-K says:

このレッスンはすごい!いつも聞いてます。ありがとうございます。

In danish we say “to fluer i et smæk” which translates to “two flies in one strike”.

Thanks to everyone at JPOD. You’re the best.

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MATT says:

Very enjoyable and useful!! Thanks again! :smile:

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Hiroko says:

プチクレアさん>”to strike twice with one stone” oh, from a different angle! interesting! I’m going to start using that french version with the french pod101 members!

Jens-K san> Thank you for listening! Haha, two flies! That sounds even harder than killing two birds with one stone!

MATT san> Yeeey! I’m so glad you like the lessons!

Nils san> Hahaha! That’s funny because Peter’s totally opposite from that description! Maybe the problem is that these female hosts DO actually have cute voices and lovely laughs :mrgreen: Maybe I will start hosting more lessons then he would stop saying that! :lol:

Mina-san> What kind of “Isseki Nicho” experience have you had?

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jackals says:

in Philippines “isang bato dalawang ibon ang tatamaan” but icant say that one stone hit two birds cuz the other bird go in the right and the other on is in the left how come hehehhee :roll: :lol:

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ゼン says:

このレッスンはすごい~!教えた四字熟語は日常生活によく使えるね。

とにかく、in chinese we have something that’s very close to yojijukugo–it’s called 成语, which is basically 4 syllable proverbs/sayings!
for killing two birds with one stone, it is 一举两得(yi ju liang de), which is really similar to the japanese 一挙両得(: basically the chinese characters for the chinese version are the more modern and simplified ones that we use as standard chinese today, and the 漢字in the japanese version is exactly how the words used to be written a long time ago(:

i take chinese as my second language here in singapore, so it’s really fascinating to see how deeply entwined the roots of 日本語 and 中国語 are! :smile:

thanks so much for the weekly lessons on 四字熟語 :lol: they’re really enriching and i’ve recommended this series to my japanese teacher as well!

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Phil says:

A fun lesson and it’s wonderful to have Sakura back! More Sakura please! :dogeza:

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大苔 says:

こんにちは。

新しい四字熟語のレッスンとても勉強になることですね。ありがとうございます。

でも、ちょって提案をしてもいいですか。説明をするとき、音読みも訓読みも言ってもらってもいいですか。
いつも、新しい単語を習ったら、両方を調べるから。しかも、PDFを読まないとき、(ジョッギングとか)よく「見る」ことできると思います。
「しん」って何でしょう? あっ、「こころ」ですね。

Keep up the good work guys!

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KaleNagasaki says:

I know it’s too late to matter, but I have such a hard time figuring out an appropriate situation to use these words because I can’t understand the sample sentences in which they are used.

Maybe I’m just too newbie? :\

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Mayumi says:

KaleNagasaki-san,
I think Yojijukugo is often used to explain a complexed situation in a simple way by using yojijukugo. So, I’m afraid that the situation tends to be more difficult to understand. :sad: But, I hope you can enjoy learning about the meaning or the story behind it. :wink:

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