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Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! You have been waiting on the edge of your seat to find out whether you have passed the entrance exam to attend a Japanese graduate school. If you don’t get in, you’re not sure what you’ll do. Maybe you’ll take the year off and travel around Japan or the world. Or maybe you’ll find a job and go to school later on. Until you find out, you cross your fingers and repeat the Japanese expressions you know about remaining positive, no matter what!

In this lesson, you’ll learn some set expressions that use the Japanese word 首 (kubi), which means “neck.” Our Japanese conversation takes place at a college and is between two friends; therefore, they will be speaking informal Japanese. You’ll also learn other useful Japanese phrases. Visit us at JapanesePod101.com, where you will find many more fantastic Japanese lessons and learning resources! Leave us a message while you are there!


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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2012 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Upper Intermediate Season 5 . 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.

6 Responses to “Upper Intermediate S5 #16 - What Does Neck Positioning have to do with your Fortunes in Japan?”

JapanesePod101.com says:

みなさん、this lesson was full of 熟語 (idioms)! What was your favourite? ;)

 

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Keith 健 平田 says:

I thought you all would be interested in knowing that 七転び八起き is actually from in the Bible. It can be found in the first line of Proverbs 24:16 that reads, “for the righteous falls seven times and rises again.”

I have wondered on occasion if this biblical proverb got incorporated into the Japanese language before the 16th century persecution of Christianity by the shogunate? (The shogunate and imperial government supported the Catholic missionaries at first, thinking that they would reduce the power of the Buddhist monks, and help trade with Spain and Portugal.)

Do you have any linguists at JapanesePod101.com who might be able to provide deeper insight in to this?

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JapanesePod101.com says:

Keith 健 平田さん

I looked into this in Japanese, and actually the origin of this proverb is unclear. However, the general consensus seems to be that it comes from the self-righting daruma dolls which became popular as good-luck charms in the middle Edo period (around the 17th~18th century) - no matter how many times you knock them over, they pop back up again. I found very few Japanese sources which link 七転び八起き to the Bible quotation.

Japanese has a number of proverbs which have very close English equivalents, but this doesn’t mean they’re explicitly linked in any way; it just proves the fact that human beings are essentially the same and think in essentially the same way. ;)

Kat/JapanesePod101.com

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Keith 健 平田 says:

thanks for checking out potential sources of the 七転び八起き proverb kat!

aloha, keith

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JapanesePod101.com says:

terjan notall san,
Do you have problems understanding the sites? We’re very sorry about that. Due to the volume of our contents, it might take sometime to get used to it.
Can we help in specific way? Please feel free to ask us! :grin:

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

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JapanesePod101.com says:

Thank you very much for your comments!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

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