思ったより (more than expected).

My new favorite phrase is 思ったより (omotta yori), "more than one (had) thought/expected". (Just came across it on Duolingo, which I frequent for a bunch of languages, although I started for and still practice Japanese, and which I recommend, not least for its item-specific discussion spaces.) It's a simple thing, but I haven't come across it before, at least in studies, and it's a concise and elegant way of expressing that surprise. Feels lighter than, as in English, having to inflect the what as a comparative; you can just add the phrase to whatever the situation is. 思ったより面白いです。"It's more interesting than I'd expected." 思ったより高かったよ. "Dude, I didn't think it would cost that much."* 思うよりも役に立つだろうね。

*In more exact/"correct" English, 思ったより高い, I didn't think it would cost this much; 思ったより高かった, I hadn't thought it would cost that much.

雷鳴.

Thunder today. Funny, that the second kanji of a thunderclap (雷鳴, raimei) is 鳴, which also can be a chime or even a bird's cry (to chirp/sing/ring / make a small sound, 鳴る). The parts are literally a mouth (口) and a bird (鳥). Kaminari (雷) is a pretty unprepossessing kanji and might suggest a retro-fit from Chinese writing to a preexisting Japanese word—presumably related to kami (神), gods/divinity, as the concept often is—a cry of the gods—if the older form weren't 靁, same rain (雨) but with three rice fields (田) vs one. (Does this 雨 count as 雨かんむり?)

Interesting: Seems 雷 also carries a kun'yomi of ikazuchi—derivation? From Goo.jp: 「厳 (いか) つ霊 (ち) 」の意。「つ」は助詞》かみなり。なるかみ。《季 夏》 Meaning ika (厳) tsu chi (霊), つ being a particle. kaminari. narukami. (seasonal word for summer)

雷に
松籟どっと
乱れ落つ
—茅舎

ikadzuki ni / shourai dotto / midareotsu
in thunder, a sudden wind disturbs the pine trees; [needles] fall
—KAWABATA Bousha
(ish)

Speaking of that 乱れ落つ verb situation:

春の宵
身より紅紐
乱れ落つ
—三好潤子

haru no yoi / miyori beni? himo? / midareotsu
—MIYOSHI Midori (Junko)

Hmm. More to learn about this one and 紅紐. Some sources say that evening hours in spring suggest dropping a boring lover. ?

I'll have to look further into how to distinguish lightning from thunder; in Eng there's little if any overlap between the words.

お風呂 in Portuguese?

I have on a TV episode that's in Portuguese, and someone has just referred to a hot tub as the ofurô. Might this be one of the famous vocabulary crossovers between Japanese (お風呂) and Portuguese? Maybe in this case the flow was not from the Jesuits but toward them.

小澤征爾さんの名前の書き方 (or, How Ozawa writes his name).

For company while working, I have on the old (1950–1967) game show What's My Line?, each episode of which features a celebrity, each of whom, on entering the stage, writes their name on a chalkboard. Here's how the illustrious symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa* writes his:

小 澤 征 爾

Interesting to track the motion of his writing. He runs 小 into 澤. He reverses the motion of the first two dots of 三水.^† Writes the running-man radical (行人偏, gyouninben) as you would in gyousho and combines the last two strokes of 正 into a curve. The Xes in 爾 suggest there used to be something more complex within, but the character's etymology suggests that it's been written with Xes since forever.

*As it happens, Mr. Ozawa was not the celebrity on this episodes, which aired in 1963. The collective celebrity guest was Peter, Paul, and Mary.
^†Interesting, too, that さんすい means not just three-dot water but also, phonetically, sprinkled water (散水)., as if you could dip your fingertips into the suzuri and just flick them at the paper.

Bai ji shēng wù has got tensho.

Recently I've had some contact with a company called BeiGene, whose logo is in tensho:

I gather the Chinese is /bai ji sheng wu/ and that the /sheng wu/ or /shen zhou/ is biology (生物, seibutsu—or, without 学/學, shēng wù xué, then just living things)—easy enough to see the 生物 through the tensho! The source says /bai ji/ has no particular meaning, beyond perhaps a phonetic similarity to Beijing, the "northern capital" (北京; cf. in Japan 東京 Tou-kyou, the eastern capital, which in the Edo period replaced 京都, Kyou-to, the capital or capital city).

Some help from the China Trademark Office. The same company seems to have registered these:

The first two (righthand column) would be /bai ji/, then. 百済神州. 百済 seems to refer to an ancient Korean kingdom, "land of the gods" (神州)—Baekje?

面白いですよね。I'll have to work it into conversation with them, somehow.

Woke up thinking

初時雨かな

Better nine years late than never.

Surfaced, this morning, from an email I apparently didn't send to myself in 2011:

鮎の背に一抹の朱のありしごとし

Touché, 原石鼎.

鬼は外！ 福は内！ (Setsubun!)

Doing my daily Japanese reading a few minutes ago, I came across an example of  「鬼は外！」 (Demons, out!) Some Helpful Soul points out that this is said on Setsubun (節分), season-division (into Spring), which, as it happens, is today. Time to banish demons and bring in luck! I need to hit the 食料品店 (グロ・スト) , anyway, so maybe I can pick up some soybeans to wing out the door. For a demon mask, luckily, I can just use my face.  >:-D

The custom of mamemaki first appeared in the Muromachi period. It is usually performed by the toshiotoko (年男) of the household (the male who was born on the corresponding animal year on the Chinese zodiac), or else the male head of the household. Roasted soybeans (called "fortune beans" [福豆, fuku mame]) are thrown either out the door or at a member of the family wearing an Oni (demon or ogre) mask, while the people say "Demons out! Luck in!" (鬼は外! 福は内!, Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!) and slam the door. This is still common practice in households but many people will attend a shrine or temple's spring festival where this is done. The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary to eat roasted soybeans, one for each year of one's life, and in some areas, one for each year of one's life plus one more for bringing good luck for the year to come. (Wikipedia)

I could use some demon-banishing and some luck, so today is the today for me, フォ・ショ.

「お手数をお掛けして。。。」

(数 + 掛—Is there a sense here of adding to one's burdens/troubles? Hanging more troubles or tasks upon one? Jisho gives as a meaning of 手数 number of moves.)

Writing English as 句.

Since we started studying writing haiku and tanka, lo these many years ago, my in-English semi-cursive handwriting has changed a bit; now I tend to connect letters downward, as if writing a tanzaku, while writing along a baseline to the right. (Maybe I've been thinking of it because I've been studying Arabic along with my Japanese reading, and Arabic connects letters quite differently, right to left, with meaningful parts below the baseline, and also has a rich calligraphic tradition.)

This afternoon I was on a boring phone call and started doodling the word transfer as if it were tanka (right). Many of the shapes are similar, e.g.,

T, 大, 木, 下, 七, 十, tsuchi-hen
R, や, 民, 尸, maybe sousho u-kanmuri 宀
A, sousho 林
N, ん, れ
S, 乙, 弓, し, numerous hentaigana
F/E, 乍,れ, 馬, maybe hentaigana の from 能
&c.

Silly, but kinda fun, and probably decent practice for connecting in elegant and/or interesting ways.