チャットGPTに書道についての短歌を書いてもらうように頼みます。

AI is the new thing, so one had better get on board.

Furthermore, it's good at composing poetry; it lied to me about a French poem I was trying to remember and, it seems, totally made up a verse, but the verse is in the style of the poet and is good enough that one has to confront, yet again, the questions of authenticity and of what matters. (If a student found that and thought it original...so what? Does it matter, whether that writer wrote it? Isn't "Shakespeare" a grouping of texts, anyway?)

I think about 習字/書道 every day but almost never pick up a brush* because I'll suspect but not know how poorly I'm writing.

*I did play around a bit in this workshop I took on Hebrew calligraphy, which thinks about the whole process in a very different way.

So, in the hope of inspiring myself to put brush to paper, I've asked AI (ChatGPT) to write me a tanka about shodou, something that I hope no one ever has written (brushed) and therefore I can't get all that wrong. Here's what it's come up with:

筆の先
fude no saki

心をうつす
kokoro wo utsusu

墨の海

sumi no umi

白き和紙には

shiroki washi ni ha

風すらとまる

kaze sura tomaru

Quite nice!—though it could use kigo. (Never have known whether to go for kigo specific to the season as current in Japan or here; Japan out of respect, but here might be more in the spirit of the form.)

Very much interested in shiroki, I'd think a more classical form of shiroi. Kind of an amazing choice by AI, per my request for tanka. 

Now, to choose a brush and review my options for hentaigana!

♥

"Distinct Tokushima accent"

This podcast just has referred to a "distinct Tokushima accent". We certainly have a bouquet of accents here in the US, and I speak French with a Provençal accent and German with a French accent and probably Japanese with a Philadelphian accent, but I wonder what that means. Thoughts?

One for the host.

This computer doesn't know a certain thing we say in Tea. I'm glad. It's been years, for me, but I know it.

In which I get to speak Japanese.

日本語 for me always has been academic—I've been too afraid to speak as a person, beyond the ritual words of 茶道—but yesterday I walked randomly into a barbershop, and his father was 日本出身, so we spoke Japanese. After the disaster that was the JLPT 日本語能力試験, I really needed that; I still study every day, but my heart hasn't been in it.

Maybe it's that I popped a CBD gummy before I left the house, but I had zero problem talking with that dude in Japanese.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping.

Thinking of evenings, 夕べ yuube and 夕方 yuugata and 晩 ban. I wonder whether 夕べ is related to 浜辺 hamabe, with べ meaning the edge of the thing. But 夕べ seems to mean specifically last night.

Among my building projects in Second Life is a traditional Japanese clock, but I still can't figure how time worked. I suspect they weren't super sure, either. What I've learned is based on seasonal words (季語 kigo) from Japan, but I'm in Philadelphia. Does Dec 18 in Philadelphia count as early winter? Midwinter? At least we share the cherry blossom 桜花 front, though maybe at different times. If I were writing in Australia, it would be summer, I think—an entirely different vocabulary of plants and insects. Sure, I can practice with the usual great poets, and the Moon is the Moon everywhere, but sometimes I might like to write about our own fireflies.

JLPT N3, the useful stuff.

I've written this and then lost it, and I'll forget and won't write it again, so.

For the JLPT N3, please pay attention to

- rendaku in the second half of the word—ぎょう, きょう

- similar kanji; watch the hen radical

- long vs short vowels; おう vs おお

and LEARN KANJI.

JLPT N3 (personal part; useful part to come).

Personal experience of it:

N3. Wasn't going to go, because I felt unprepared; went anyway. Train as advised didn't match Sunday schedule; took cab with friendly driver, hair blowing in the breeze from the open window. Waited outside; stream of students. Greeters super friendly; directed me to a room. Curious, why there would be computers, when I had a backpack full of sharpened #2 pencils. Angered, as the clock passed the start of the test. Next seat, when asked, had no idea of a Japanese test. Turns out I was in the media lab, not the JLPT test room.

Proctors let me join the second section in the correct room, with the understanding that it won't be scored. All that for nothing.

I wrote a whole thing on learnings, but it's disappeared, so I'll do it again maybe tomorrow.

Further JLPT panic.

Just taking a moment to freak out. JLPT is this Sunday. My N3 book arrived, and it seems to expect me to understand and speak Japanese. If the test were in Heian, maybe I'd have a chance. I'm good at languages, but only academically; talking with people and getting by in life aren't among my limited skills. I'm going to spend some time with my book outside.

 

とにかく (tonikaku, "anyway").

Wondering about the etymology of this. Wiktionary says it derives from とにかくに, which it seems we can read as とに、かくに to ni, kaku ni, roughly "that way or this" / "one way or another". Reminiscent of Eng "but that's neither here nor there". Anyway...

The JLPT approaches!

The JLPT is on the 4th! I'm scrambling; one never knows quite what to study, and experience tells me that uncertainty on even one element in an item can lose you the point. I've ordered a book of N3 test questions that promises to arrive Tuesday, and I'm trying to find 完全マスター; in the meantime, I'm reviewing kanji flashcards and a site that claims to know which kanji to focus on. (I'd link to Kanzen, but weirdly I can't find the edition I have.) I'm consistently at the head of the diamond league in Duolingo, but I don't think that really is preparing me for anything but ordering battleship sushi. I'll need #2 pencils and an analog watch. It's like the ascending part of a rollercoaster. 

Momoshiki.

That's the word I was trying to remember: momoshiki. Momoshiki no oomiyabito ha itoma are. The people of the palace.

I've been thinking a lot recently about insider and outsider, us and them; that seems a very Japanese thing, at least grammatically, and maybe that's why I'm remembering his commenting on the people in the palace.

ももしきの大宮人はいとまあれや桜かざし今日も暮らしつ
—YAMABEのAkahito 

暇

I've wanted to write a poem on my forearm; it seems to me that tanzaku are exactly proportioned for it, 1x6, tho probably for writing news from battle or something. What's in my head today is 暇, that the people of the capital have too much time on their hands. oohitobito ha itoma are ね.

あなたを永遠に愛します。

Duolingo. (Just hit a 365-day streak, tyvm!)

I put in も—
あなたを永遠にも愛します。

Duo wants 永遠にあなたを愛します, but is も so wrong, when we mean forever? Even until forever.

Why we're using a masu form for someone we'll love forever is beyond me, but, hey; so is を, which tags you as the direct object of my loving. あなたのこと?

(My soft heart loves this song, of a pair of songs, which uses that construction in the context of love:)

大ボタル。

I've received a gorgeous card with a golden dragonfly and am remembering a haiku from 書道 lessons—蛍 is a firefly, vs a dragonfly, but anyway:

大ボタル oobotaru
ゆらりゆらりと yurari yurari to
通りけり toorikeri
(Issa 一茶, Hachiban Nikki / Eighth Diary, Bunsei 2, 1819—I think)

a big lightning-bug is passing by, swaying

Or maybe lurching, right, left, right, left. -keri, if I recall correctly, is continuous; a moment of fireflying along, sort of stumbling along its 通 through the air, as bugs do. 

"夏の世の闇の中を大きな蛍が悠々と光って飛んでゆく、の意。" (source, source, source; Issa chronology from the endlessly fabulous HaikuGuy, David G. Lanoue)
A big lightning-bug flies leisurely by, lighting the summer dark.

Is お世話 really བརྩེ་བ?

To be thought on.

A friend has bought a formerly owned book on Buddhist tsewa—very roughly, tenderness/compassion, or openness, of the heart—and discovered inside an inscription from the author, and asked me to look into it. Some success had, but here's my thought: Is tsewa related to お世話 (o-sewa)? The kanji are ateji, used for their phonemes (se, wa, plus o honorific) rather than their meaning (world, speech); this suggests it's borrowed from another language. A prelim look into etymologies (here, here, here) says o-sewa's origin isn't clear; derivation from busyness or from "common talk" isn't convincing. Openness, compassion, and care seem to suit お世話 very well, and it certainly wouldn't be the first instance—far from the first—of imported Buddhist terms fitted to Japanese speech, or maybe to monastic writing. 

Or maybe there's no connection at all. 

source, worth reading

(Maybe it's Guanyin manifesting again; I could use some compassion and self-care. I'll move the pen-and-ink portrait I recently found on my street to a more prominent position. おんあろりきゃそわか.)

觀世音菩薩 manifests on my street.

Recently I've been thinking about compassion and, surprisingly, about boddhisatvas; Buddhism isn't a thing I think about much at all, but it's been on my mind. A 19th-century pulley I have from a musty basement has been whispering dharmachakra. My house is peopled with ancestors and saints—including Budai/Hotei, the "laughing Buddha", a favorite for years, even before our post-COVID similarity in belly—and for a while I've been looking online for a statue of Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion in many forms, to join them.

So today I had to walk across town for this meeting that turned out to be nothing. On the way back, in the rain, I espied in someone's recycling bin this framed treasure:

Of course, task #1 (after hauling it home) was to read it.

From right:

南無観世音菩薩
十三年六月二十五日
And then katakana and one kanji: グリフ、スグリーン芽—glyph, "sugureen" sprout? 芽 me/GA
Or is it a little tsu? Griff's/Griffith's Green?

Carefully lifting to view the back:

謹写—kinsha, copy?

Front again:

南無: namu/namo (kanji are south 南 and nothing 無), but this is a hailing word in Buddhism
観: appearances, observation (KAN カン; variant of 觀?)
世: the world (SE セ, yo よ)
音: sound (ON オン, oto おと)
菩薩: bosatsu ぼさつ, boddhisatva (suffix)

Together, these name the boddhisatva Avalokiteśvara—that is, lotus-bearing Guanyin (观音/觀音)! 

十三年六月二十五日: June 25th (that is, 25th day of the 6th month) of the 13th year. Of what? 本地垂迹? Shinto "manifestation theory"—traces of the homeland, manifested forms of the deity (in this case to save Philadelphians?)—that linked page says honji suijaku was accepted in Japan until the Meiji era; if this is Japanese (given the katakana), then the 13th year might be ~1938 (Shouwa), ~1924 (Taishou), or even ~1880 (Meiji). 

I have a lot more learning to do, so for the moment I'll be happy that the boddhisatva of compassion 觀世音菩薩 has manifested in my home. Wild-goose chase across town well spent!

Translating trivia questions.

A thing to try, in the interest of trying things, is translating questions for this app Trivia Crack. Veamos cómo va:

In The Lion King, why does Scar want to kill Simba?
映画ライオンキングではなぜスカーはシンバを殺したいのか。

He's tired of his attitude—シンバの態度にうんざりしてるから

To become king—王になるために

He doesn't want kids—子供が欲しくないから

He is bored—スカーは退屈だから

Or maybe because Simba's bored. 

No way to know whether that's anywhere near the mark, but I'll submit it because, hey. On to the next ね.  

This next one isn't promising: "What's the definition of ambidextrous?" That works in Eng because the roots are Greek, so you can offer the options "lefthanded" and "righthanded" (although etymologically it's more like "both right", with the ancient connotation that the dexterous right hand is better than the sinister left hand and thus both hands are valid/worthy); but in Japanese the first kanji is literally "both" 両.

Miscellaneous and trashy (雑).

As I now am committed to JLPT N3 and really need kanji work, I'm paying more attention to radicals. (I find that often I know kanji more by their shape/feel, plus context—some parts just sort of blur out, because from the initial visual impression it's pretty obvious. If I were asked to write the kanji from memory, I would have to piece it out and probably would get only the most salient parts right, the parts that have feeling-weight.)

雑 ゾウ; "miscellany (classification of Japanese poetry unrelated to the seasons or to love)". This last raises the question of a hierarchy of genres; there always is one, in the arts, but here zatsu is all that mess/noise that isn't refined poetry. It's fun to think of a magazine as not only a collection 集 of various documents 誌 shi but also a collection of low-culture noise 雑. (Compare a 週刊誌, a 専門誌, a 論文誌—publications that aren't 雑—vs a 漫画雑誌, a manga zasshi.**)

*Phonetically in the sense that phonemes tend to attach to the feels they name—mechakucha for all over the place, out of control—my hair is all mechakucha; or guttural, and other heavy /uh/ sounds, in English. Lithe, a lithe word to name litheness. Meek to name meekness. びっくり, which sounds surprised. Onomatopoeia, of course, like crack. キラキラ, どんどん, くしゅ.
*Having read many, many academic publications, I'd say manga often ranks higher in cultural value. I have a draft around here somewhere about 漫 and its related forms.

英訳は深刻な社会問題だね。

This is why I find studying with translations so unsatisfying. This likes to translate 深刻 shinkoku as “serious”; fine. But the kanji actually are for deep (深い fuka.i) and engraving (刻む kiza.mu)—a deeply engraved problem, an ingrained problem. A problem can be serious but not ingrained—say, having broken a vase—so a facile translation strips nuance.

過労.

Faulty though my memory be, it seems to have no problem recalling 過労 karou, overwork that leads to illness or death. The first kanji generally means excessiveness (すぎる), but visually it says bones in the street; Henshall explains that as flexible movement, but to me it sounds exactly like corporate life—hard work, exhaustion, your bones in the street. 会社員は過労で倒れて死んだけど、年金を与えられなかった。