今日の単語: できちゃった婚

I haven't done this in a while, but the new word I learned yesterday is way too good to not do a post about. I just had my first private lesson with one of the teachers from our Tuesday group lessons. It was pretty much just girl talk in Japanese for an hour with her occasionally pointing out my grammatical errors or teaching me new words. It was like therapy and a Japanese lesson rolled in one. All for just 800 yen! Best deal in town.

Word: できちゃった婚 dekichatta-kon
Meaning: shotgun wedding

できる is a verb that usually expresses possibility (I can do something), but also sometimes means that something was made or created (for example a building, or in this case a baby). ちゃう is a verb ending that means you accidentally did something which you regret; it kind of imbues the verb with a general sense of "oops." 婚 is from 結婚, "wedding." I am sure you can work the rest out for yourself.

今日の単語：やばい

Today's word: やばい (yabai)
Meaning: crap, lame, this sucks
Probably everyone in Japan already knows this one. やばい isn't quite as strong as 災厄--the former tends to be muttered under one's breath, while the latter is screamed and accompanied by wildly dramatic gestures. やばい is used when you forget your evaluation sheet for a speaking test or get so pumped for the test that you slam your textbook down on the teacher's desk and knock over all the evaluation sheets*, and figures heavily (along with 無理, "impossible") in the students' pre-test mumblings. Like many い-adjectives, the ending frequently morphs to create the even slangier やべ.
 
Example sentence: 教科書見ないで？やべ！ぜんぜん無理です！
 
*This happened yesterday and I couldn't stop laughing at the poor kid. Despite his pre-test nerves, he got a perfect score.

今日の単語：災厄

Today's word: 災厄 (さいやく saiyaku)
Meaning: calamity, disaster
Commonly used in the following situations:

• Not receiving a sticker
• Being told "No" when you ask if you can wear the ALT's glasses
• Being required to write a sentence in English
• Taking a speaking test
• Breaking a pikopiko hammer

Example sentence: さいやく～～～～～～～！！！！！！！ (Okay, I've never actually heard this used in a sentence.)

I think I might start posting these regularly, using only words I've learned from my students. They certainly make up the most colorful portion of my Japanese vocabulary.

Setsubun and Chinese New Year

The road home at sunset. I didn't actually have this landscape in mind when I named my blog Sunset in Snow Country; I meant for it to refer to the Sunset District in San Francisco, where I lived for five years. I miss the pastel-colored houses and the dim sum shops and the ocean in constant view, and I feel as if I still carry it with me wherever I go. My life is a little piece of the Sunset in snow country, hence the name. So the picture doesn't have much to do with anything, but I still pulled over on the shoulder and jumped out of the car to take it. We don't see the sun much these days.

For the past two weekends I've been going to cooking classes sponsored by the international exchange network, which has ended up being really great. The first one was for a Japanese holiday called Setsubun. When I was a kid I had a book of Japanese holidays and traditions, and over the years I got to experience most of them in some altered form (the mall in Japantown does Tanabata trees every year, I went to an Oshogatsu event at the Japanese American National Museum last year, and of course there's the Cherry-Blossom Festival), but Setsubun was the one that never made an appearance in the U.S., and so going to the event had the weird effect of yanking me out of the commute-work-home cycle and reminding me that I am, right now, doing something that I've dreamed of since childhood. I'd say this happens about once every two weeks these days, and it's an amazing feeling.

Setsubun isn't really a major holiday; it's supposed to be the last day of winter (ha!), and the traditional ritual is to cast out demons by throwing beans. Apparently the Setsubun food we made, ehommaki (a long sushi roll), originated in Western Japan and has only made it to Niigata in recent years. But hey! I was in the newspaper!

If you can't read that, feel free to imagine that I am quoted saying something really cool and insightful and not "HURF DURF MAKING TAMAGOYAKI IS HARRRRDDDD."

Also, despite reading that Japan book over and over, I somehow failed to internalize the fact that people don't just toss beans around randomly on Setsubun. So I was completely surprised when the lights suddenly went out and Suzuki, the university student who did the presentation at the beginning, rushed in wearing a demon costume and roared at the kids, who screamed and pelted him with beans and candy.

Apparently someone in the household (usually Dad) will dress up as the demon and everyone else throws the beans at him. Most of the schools also did bean-throwing, and more than one of my ALT friends actually had to dress up as the demon and get mobbed by bean-throwing 12-year-olds. We just had do-it-yourself ehommaki for lunch:

You take the nori (at the back) and put the rice (it was sushi rice!) inside with whatever you want and roll it up. The choices are tamagoyaki, cucumber, cheese and a cold sausage. There's also miso soup with meatballs, tuna and corn salad, and milk. Believe it or not, this is about as good as it gets.

The most recent cooking class was making Chinese-style gyozas for Chinese New Year, which was great for several reasons. The first, obviously, is that I now know how to make and properly fold gyoza!

It turns out that most of the people there were Chinese exchange students at the local university. Japanese was the only language we had in common, so that's what we used. I got a lot of practice and met some cool people!

Now I'm looking at my notes for what I wanted to write about and wondering if I was on a food high from eating all those gyoza, but what the hell, I'll try. Since being in Japan, I've met people from Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Korea, and most recently Italy and China. Now, I'm from a very culturally diverse city, and at home I also met people of all national origins. But I recently read somewhere (I think it was a comment on Metafilter, of all places) that "Americans see all foreigners as potential Americans," and that really hit home. When I think about people back at home, particularly with my Asian friends, I sometimes have to think pretty hard to remember whether they were actually born in the U.S. or another country, just because everyone was sort of in various stages in the process of becoming American and it didn't really make much of a difference anyway. The most conspicuous foreigners I ever met were two white British guys in my newswriting class who, when we had an assignment to write about somewhere out of our comfort zone and the teacher nixed their plan to go to Hooters, moaned in their posh accents, "But we would NEVAAAHHH go to HOOTERS! It's so TACKY!" (Second place goes to all the French tourists who would pitch a fit because we didn't sell sweatshirts with the GAP logo on them. Seriously, get a life.) Here, though, most of my friends have never been to the U.S., and of course we're all on neutral ground, and living in Japan has suddenly thrust me into the realization that other countries are not just America with some history and funny customs tacked on as an afterthought. Because of these things I'm finding that I'm learning a lot more from them than I ever would have at home. 

Anyway, LONG POST IS LONG. Sunday deserves its own entry, so I think I shall end there.

誕生日おめでとう

Last year my birthday was my first day of Japanese class at Soko Gakuen.* I was in Beginning 3.

This year, my birthday was the day of LA's pre-departure orientation for departing JETs. I got to dress up,

and eat a fancy lunch with people from my region in Japan (including two going to Niigata Prefecture).

Sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm moving forward at all in life, but sometimes I'm surprised by how far I've come. 25 days till Japan.

*I highly recommend Soko Gakuen for anyone wanting to learn Japanese in San Francisco! The books they use (Basic Functional Japanese and Situational Functional Japanese) are a little ridiculous, but the class sizes are quite small (7-12 people) and the teachers are great. They're quite reasonably priced, and not nearly as overwhelming as the 5-unit classes at CCSF and SFSU, for people who want to learn but aren't able to devote their ENTIRE LIFE to studying.