So I have the first two volumes of Shirogane no Hana, 銀の華, by 田亀源五郎, Gengorou Tagame. It seems now that the last volume (in red) is out of print and is nowhere to be found.

Anyone know where I can groink this so I can complete my Japanese BDSM bear collection? ^_^

I'm spending it alone, again. Carl has to work, Jamie and Tim work, all my other friends are busy, and I'm broke. As sucky as that sounds, I'm accustomed to it, as that's how I've spent at least two of the last four new years.

I suppose that I should be lucky that the apartment complex doesn't have a repeat of the shootings we had when we first ( Read more... )

It's a short one today. Yes, still doing card work, which means it'll be late. Again. :: laugh ( Read more... )

A coworker's boyfriend is half-Japanese and asked me to translate something that he always tells her, thinking it was perhaps a term of endearment. It, unfortunately, meant "Shut up, fatty". Yeah, that wasn't awkward, not at ALL..

9_9

Last night reevis5 took me to his work's Christmas party as a "husband stand-in" since his ACTUAL hubby couldn't make ( Read more... )

One of the reasons I believe I excel at Japanese and not so much in Korean is that the Japanese still use Chinese characters, whereas the Koreans for the most part have gotten rid of Chinese characters as part of their orthography. Both languages maintain a HUGE stock of loanwords from Chinese, but both lack phonetic elements that exist in several ( Read more... )

It's a two-for-one today!

First up: the partitive case. Just what is this? I've first noticed this in Basque:

Ez dago libururik. "There are no books."
Badago lanik? "Is there any work?"

The suffix -ik (or -rik after a consonant) can translate to "any" in a positive sentence or as "none" in a negative sentence. Rather than having a separate ( Read more... )

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大足子熊と呼ばれている
大きな足からだけじゃなく
大きな足跡からも
愛すると大きく愛して
仕えると大きく仕えて
危険を冒すと
君は大きな子熊
と受け取られるも
時々、躓くいても
大きくで起こるぞ
大足子熊、 人々に
影響を与えるんだ

I'm still tinkering with it because ... yeah, I can't leave well enough alone. Seriously, I've modified this poem about 7572 times now.

(and yes, "子熊" was intentional!)

( Read more... )

Today we look at two popular English-language songs, covered in other languages:

Click to view

アンジェラ・アキ / Angela Aki - Kiss From A Rose

Angela is a popular singer, songwriter, and piano player in Japan, and here she covers Seal's song of the same title, with two thirds of the lyrics adapted into English. I say adapted as, though the basic idea of giving into ( Read more... )