In a field, wishing for the ball.

I guess if one grows up with kanji, everything I'm always discovering about them is obvious, but for me it's a long road. Initially I balked at the idea of making up little stories to remember the radicals—as I have at hearing kanji referred to as little friends—but by now I'm 超 into that.

ATM I'm thinking about baseball, yakyuu. 野球. The first kanjus is ya, a field, the countryside; fair enough. The second, if we agree not to deal with 水 mizu water, consists of two parts, more or less: 玉 tama, a sphere or ball, and 求 moto.meru, to ask for or wish for. Ie, baseball is literally being in a field, hoping for the ball. (In my own school experience, only the first half fits.)

The next question will be the difference between 玉 and 球, noting that 玉 + 水 does make sense for a bead of sweat.

Now I'm wondering about 珠, also tama, but this time with—something—and from there 侏....

Also to be interrogated is the mental process by which I read 野 as inaka. Something in there must have read it by meaning; inaka is similar in meaning but is 田舎, a rice field (which looks like a rice field, divided into paddies) + a house/hut (conveniently showing yane roof, in the form of 人 hito a person, and 口 kuchi entrance).

For fun, here's a tribute in rice paddies to the Japanese rugby team, 2019:

(story)

For additional fun, note that rugby is 闘球, making war (戦 tataka.u) and wishing for the ball.

がはは >:-D （今朝の冗談）

パンダの好きな餌は？

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パンだ。

目を覚す (opening the eyes).

So I like to write things to hang around the house that may seem (or be) trite/cheesy but are meaningful to me, or that keep nagging at me to write them until I do, even if I do so crudely on telephone book paper. (I say it's OK to do something to an "ish" standard, so it's done, until you can do it better, vs not doing it at all.)

A while ago I was low-key obsessed with 息 iki breath, because I really do need a reminder to breathe and it seemed particularly relevant during COVID; before that it was 浅き夢見じ酔いもせず asaki yume miji ei mo sezu, a line from the mega-classic Iroha that I find worth keeping in mind—we will not have shallow dreams, nor live senseless. (酔 speaks to drunkenness and tends to be read as delusion, but the idea of losing one's senses in the world spans the two, more or less.)

At the moment I'm interested in 目を覚す me o samasu, to open the eyes; it's used for alarm clocks and regaining consciousness but also, at least to me*, carries a connotation of awakening in the more transcendent sense. (Can't be a coincidence, that the same kanji is used for one of the learning verbs, 覚える oboeru.) A good 書 to post near the bed, perhaps near the alarm clock 目覚まし時計 mezamashidokei, the eye-opening clock. "Wake up! Regain your senses! Enlightenment time!" I go through life generally "benighted"—the same idea in English, of being in darkness—so I'll check out some examples in the Book. I often wonder whether it would be meaningful to write Japanese phrases in just the kanji—目覚. I'll have to take a look at some examples of 目; relatively simple, but "eye" probably has some dramatic expressions.

*Not just to me; Jisho gives 覚 as a form of 悟・る sato・ru, "to perceive; to sense; to discern; to understand; to comprehend; to realize; to attain enlightenment".