書き初め！

It's that time of year again—kakizome, first writing! The tradition, I gather, is to write happy thoughts for the new year with ink ground from the first draw from the well. A faucet will have to do—or maybe an unopened bottle of water. Hmm. (I think the thing is to write on Jan 2, so I could make a water run, to do it right.) Then burn the writings, on the 15th or so; better apply for a bonfire permit. I've read that the festival in which 書初め are burned is 左義長, Sagichou, the major shrine being Tsurugaoka-Hachimanguu, in Kamakura.

I wonder what might be the history of 左義長—any connection with the ancient government post of Minister of the Left? Or with the (now defunct) 1000-year-old ginkgo tree to the left of the temple stairs? The ja.wikipedia page is helpful, but it's tough reading for me....

Dancing the 単語.

chatting at the store

somehow turns to business cards

「名刺」 count: 1

嘗て。

かつて。That's a new one. I've been encountering lots and lots of vocab that's new to me, but you'd think, in studying 短歌 (tanka) and 昔話 (folk tales), I'd have some across かつて somewhere. Once, used to be. (The classic start to a folk tale is 昔々, mukashi mukashi, equivalent to once upon a time—different sense of once? I do see examples of it as interchangeable with 昔. かつては、ここに教会があった。There used to be a church here.) Apparently, with a negative verb it can refer to something that hasn't happened yet, never has, I guess as もう can. かつて僕のだった、これ。これはかつて僕のじゃない？ I have seen (negative) かつてない; Weblio.jp says for katsute nai, 「今までにない、過去に前例がない、といった意味の言い回し」—not up to now, not so far, no such precedent.

From 嘗て. Henshall doesn't list the kanji; the MS IME does substitute 嘗 for かつ in "かつて". Variant kanji is 甞. katsute　嘗て, nameru, kokoromiru... なめる and licking? To be followed up on, sometime when it's not (already) almost 7am...

会社で働くのは、frei macht か。

Hmm. Turns out アルバイト (arubaito, part-time work, from German Arbeit) isn't the only Japanese loan-word from German. Must follow up (when not still working on work at 3am).

Category:Japanese_terms_borrowed_from_German

Who left the light in (the branch)?

Someone on a message board has just pointed out, in an example sentence, a difference in meaning between the intransitive る and transitive す verb forms. Recalls a tanzaku (短冊) haiku I've had around the house for years:

一枝に	hito eda ni	in one branch
光のこして	hikari nokoshite	light remains
里の春	sato no haru	spring in the village (back home)

The straightforward reading is that (sun)light just remains, but shifting to transitive—what?—implies a subject, someone who is leaving the light there? Certainly, a new way of looking at the poem.

Proverb:

虎は死して皮を留め
人は死して名を残す

tora ha shishite, kawa o todome;
hito ha shishite, na o nokosu

a tiger dies and leaves its skin;
a person dies and leaves their name (o nokosu)

The person (人) leaves (残す) the object (名を).

を vs が: "結果だけが残る！！！"
—only the results/consequences remain (ga nokoru)!

That light, in that one branch—has someone left it there?

才, 材, オ.

才, 材. オ. 歳.

才能, 才気, 才女, 才子, 才人, 才覚, 才力. 財 (which Henshall says a bit dubiously is composed of both shells/money 貝 and, ideographically and phonetically, a dam 才).

Talent meets age. Maybe in this case of age it's just a tl;dw ("too long; didn't write") form of 歳, with the cross-stroke recalling 戈 (and maybe 矛). Or is there a connection between age/experience and increasing aptitude/capability?
Of course, similarity in structure, appearance, feel, or sound doesn't necessarily mean any type of thing.

(The image is of spears/pikes 矛, from the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo 島根県・立古代・出雲・歴史・博物館. 才, 弋, and 矛 all seem to involve weaponry, be it spears, halberds, or bows.)

才弾ける?  (a snapping string? 琴を弾く? 引く? 弾ける? 弾傷?)

Will have to suss out all this.

(Learning a lot from Duolingo and spending a lot of time asking questions on the message boards there. Doesn't hold a candle to studying with 先生, but better to stay engaged than not to!)

死亡 、希望。

Nothing but drafts in ages! I keep reading about various things but being pulled away by something else before hitting publish. One of these years.

Have been having a great time with Duolingo; a thing I enjoy is learning/practicing a language in another language, to help me escape English-language patterns of thinking. (I did for years largely live in French, so those patterns also are ingrained.) Duolingo mainly teaches from English but offers bunches of other language–first content, so there's much fun to be had, and it's perfect for doing some exercises in down time or in anxious time, when a person needs something to fidget with. Or in bed, via iPad.

Anyway, I jump in this morning to leave myself a note to look into 望. I have on News 24, trying to pick up whatever I can, and I've noticed shibou (死亡, decease, demise) and kibou (希望, wish, hope). 

亡 recalls 亡くなる/無くなる (to die / to be lost, to "become nothing", both of which are funnily appropriate because く looks like the > sign used in computer coding that means piping-to or resulting-in.) 望 is のぞ・む、のぞ・ましい、のず・み, wish or desire, 望み通り, just as one would wish. Recalls Hamlet, ruminating on death by suicide as "a consummation devoutly to be wished". 

I also am seeing in 望 rarity, the full moon, or the middle of the (eighth lunar) month—Shakespeare again, the Ides (of March, in Caesar's case)—bougetsu, surname Mochi-zuki (月—why mochi?). 望外 bougai, unexpected (外, outside of). 望遠鏡 bouenkyou, a telescope (the 望-distant-mirror).

No time to investigate now, so I'll have to take a rain-check on the full moon, but...note to self! 

七転八起! (or, never say die!)

I'm thinking of writing 七転八起 (shichiten hakki)—”Fall down seven times; get up eight.” This often is heard/seen in English, but it's a long time since I've put brush to paper, so why not? (No, it doesn't exactly make sense, but, really, what is sense, anyway?)

A thing I like a lot about learning kanji is the intersections of their meanings. In this case, we have 起, which I first learned as okiru/okosu, in the sense of awakening / getting out of bed or "knocking someone up"—i.e., awakening someone. Here, it's literally to rise after falling.

I've done a lot of falling down for a long time now and am in the process of getting up, so it seems appropriate. Shichi and hachi both are relatively simple—and hachi, of course, is of particular significance to me—so they have to be really right.

Examples below—thoughts? #八Rising

(Note: Work in progress; images are coded to link through to the source, but I'll have to fix. I'll look through them all after a nap; better just to post what I have, as I have dozens of drafts never finished!)

1. Standard kaisho, 2x2 format, right to left.	2. Somewhere between kaisho and gyousho, single column, top to bottom. The sweeping righthand stroke of 八 cuts off the 已 of 起; I've had the same issue with 八 when writing it 2x2. Love the hooks (そりはね, sorihane)!
3.	4.
5.	6.
7.	8.
9.	10.