Tuesday, 23 September 2003

Tokyo on Six Words a Day: I don't have a lot of juicy details to report from my week in Tokyo's Roppongi district (if you want The Gweilo Diaries, you know where to find it)—and, alas, I've spent almost all my time here working round the clock, and have no pictures either. On the other hand, my Japanese vocabulary has almost doubled: There are now two Japanese words that I can speak, and perhaps five that I can understand. (Reading is still out of the question, though.)

Arigato

"Thank you." Domo arigato means "Thank you very much." I learned this from the Styx song Mr. Roboto sometime in the mid-Eighties. This is the only word I can use successfully with native Japanese speakers, and may be the only one I know that translates directly into English without pages of explanation to follow.

Hai

This word is often translated as "yes," but really means something closer to "acknowledged" or "understood." It does not mean "agreed," which (I'm told) is a source of frustration to all of us Romance-language speakers, whose yes and si and oui all mean essentially the same thing. I've managed to use this correctly on occasion (okay, once) when trying to tell a taxi driver to take me back to the hotel.

Konishi-wa

(pronounced koh-NEE-SHE-wa) When I arrived I thought this meant "hello," but apparently it's closer to "good afternoon" or "good day." I've never actually heard it used in practice. I think I picked up this phrase many years ago from a documentary about Victor Kiam, owner of the Remington shaver company, who did his own commercials ("I liked it so much, I bought the company") and even did a commercial in Japanese which started out with this phrase. Don't ask me why this stuck in my memory, but it did.

Moshi moshi

The version of "hello" used to answer a telephone. I've never tried to answer the phone with this, because it would almost certainly invite the caller to begin speaking to me in Japanese, which would be a disaster for both of us.

-san

Suffix equivalent to "Mr." or "Mrs.", used with the person's last name. Last names are the preferred from of address in Japan for everyone except intimate family members, I think.

receipt-o

Not surprisingly, this is the Japanese word for "receipt." It comes in handy when you're on a business trip.

Next month I'm supposed to be here on vacation, at which point I'll have more time to explore and take pictures. At the moment I'm here because of my highly prized written English skills (ha!) and my technical background, both of which are being put to use.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 8:42 am. comments.