(Apologies in advance for the garbage formatting. I’m on mobile )
Since the school closure in Japan, desk-warming has spread much like Covid-19 itself and infected even the homeroom teachers and principals at my schools. This morning, one of the ES special ed teachers came over to me incredibly excited to show me her notebook of “面白い” Japanese that she collects things in to teach her students, since they apparently love this kind of stuff. This notebook included insanely specific counters(as in 一個、二枚、三本, etc, but way more specific. Eg pots for cooking, the mortars used for making mochi, tsunamis, kappa, etc), specific kanji for individual reptiles, fish, etc (螈、鰕、翡翠、you get the idea), and my favorite part: 回文, or Japanese palindromes!
From the Oxford Dictionary: “A palindrome is 1. a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backwards as forwards, e.g. madam or nurses run .“
Some of my favorite English examples include:
Do geese see God?
and
Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.
My favorite Japanese palindromes the teacher showed me are probably
悪い子いるわ
ブスにテニス部
イカ食べたかい
But I haven’t seen many yet, so I’ll be killing my desk-warming time looking for more of these
Here’s a website with a handful of 回文 for your enjoyment
Have y’all ever heard of 回文 before? What’s your favorite? Ever made your own original palindrome (in Japanese, English, or your native language)? Any common ones in your native language (if it isn’t English)?