I just recently learned 十分 (じゅうぶん) for “enough” or “sufficient” and got the instand feedback from my coworker who said 十二分 (じゅうにぶん) which is just the extreme version of it. It means “more than enough” or “too much”.
Easy and simple but I like it
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リキシャ = rickshaw, but may be motorized
Not necessarily man-powered like 人力車. (Or maybe I don’t know English.)
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Vocabulary
Dragon Quest II
- 浅瀬・shallows, shoal, sand bar, ford
- 藻屑・scraps of seaweed
- 藻屑となる・to go to a watery grave, to drown at sea
- 面影・1) face, looks, coountenance; 2) vestige, trace, reminder
- 紋章・crest, coat of arms
- 粗末・coarse, crude
- 粗末にする・to treat carelessly, to use recklessly
- 世界樹・world tree (i.e. Yggdrasil)
- 心がけ・attitude, way of thinking
- 亡骸・corpse, remains
- 風の噂・hearsay, grapevine, word on the street
A Certain Magical Index
- 確信・conviction, belief
- 門限・1) closing time; 2) curfew
- 対話・dialogue, conversation, discussion
- 別れを告げる・to bid farewell, to say one’s goodbyes
- 押し付ける・1) to press against; 2) to foist on (a task), to impose (one’s will, an opinion, etc.)
- やがる・to have the nerve/audacity/gall to (appended to ren’yōkei (masu-stem) form of verb)
- 天秤・scales
- 悪あがき・vain struggle, futile resistance
- 些細・trivial, trifling
- 及ぼす・to exert (influence), to cause (damage), to bring about
- 現状維持・maintaining the status quo
- 様子見・wait-and-see, waiting out
- 過激・extreme, radical
- …倒れ・doing … until you’re broke
- やけ食い・binge eating, stress eating
- 顔を売る・making oneself known to the public, to rack up popularity
- 監禁・confinement
- 参考書・reference book, student handbook, study-aid book, supplemental textbook
- 狼狽える・to be flustered, to lose one’s presence of mind
- 成し遂げる・to accomplish, to accary out
- 必然・inevitable, certain
- 裏技・secret trick, trick of the trade
- 傍観者・onlooker, bystander
- ちょっかい・meddling
- ちょっかいを出す・1) to meddle; 2) to hit on someone
- ちょっかいを掛ける・1) to meddle; 2) to hit on someone
- 簡潔・concise, brief, succint
- 補足・supplement, complement
- 補足説明・supplemental explanation
- 問い詰める・to press a question, to cross-examine
- 弁解・explaining one’s actions, justification, defense
- 弁明・vindication, excuse, apology
- 相部屋sharing a room
- ファスナー・zipper
- 判明・establishing, proving, ascertaining
- 退く・to step aside
- 三下・small fry
- 藻掻く・ to writhe, to struggle
- 懇切丁寧・kind and careful instruction/explanation
- 高ぶる／昂る・to get worked up, to get excited
- トチ狂う・to be playful, to joke, to play
- しかるべき・proper, suitable, appropriate
- 水臭い・1) stand-offish, distant; 2) watery (i.e. coffee)
Other
- 一概に・unconditionally, as a rule
- 概ね・1) in general, roughly, by and arge; 2) the gist, main idea
(commonly spelled using kana) - 旨・principle, main purpose, gist
- 分かる範囲・as far as one understands, to the best of one’s understanding
- 一戸建て・detached house, stand-alone house
- 応対・dealing with (customers, people), receiving (calls, visitors)
- 応用・1) putting to actual use; 2) applied (linguistics, physics, etc.)
- 解釈・interpretation, reading, explanation
- つまずき・mistake, misstep, stumble
- 余憤・pent-up rage
- 反論・objection, refutation, counterargument
- 頼もしい・reliable, dependable
- 誤解を招く・to invite misunderstanding, to beg to be misunderstood
- 相違ない・without doubt, certain, sure
- 相違点・points of difference
Ramblings
Dragon Quest
面影
This word is used in some rather interesting expressions. Here are some examples from Weblio:
Appearance
彼は父親の面影にそっくりだ
He’s the spitting image of my father
Vestige, shadow, reminder
姉の笑顔に母の面影を見た
I saw my mother’s simulacrum in my sister’s smile.
彼は昔の面影も無い
He’s a shadow of what he used to be.
彼には昔日の面影がない
He is no more than a shadow of his former self.
or
He is not what he used to be.
昔日の面影だにとどめぬ
Not a vestige remains of its former grandeur.
城は今なお昔日の面影をとどめている
The castle still retains some traces of its former grandeur.
It’s worth noting that while in English we often use words like “vestige” and “shadow” in the affirmative in cases where 面影 appears to be used in the negative:
He is a shadow of his past self.
=>
He isn’t the 面影 of his past self.
粗末にする
Example sentence:
体を粗末にする
to neglect one’s health
金を粗末にするな
Be careful with your money!
確信
It’s like 確認, but instead of recognizing certainty, you just really believe in it.
天秤
Some interesting collocations:
XとYを天秤にかける
to weigh X against Y
命を天秤にかける
to put one’s/somebody’s life on the line, to leave somebody’s life hanging in the balance
天秤座 is also the name of the constellation Libra (a.k.a. the Scales).
…倒れ
京都の着倒れ、東京の食い倒れ
The people of Kyoto spend all their money on clothes, the people of Osaka spend all their money on food
掛け声倒れ
raising one’s voice but failing to take action, starting out with vigor and then getting nothing done
簡潔
Possibly some risk of conflation with the homophone 完結. Arguably not the most grievous mistake, since conciseness and completion tend to go hand-in-hand.
Confusing it with 汗血 would be worse, but there’s probably less risk of that.
This word also appears in the longer compound 簡潔明瞭, meaning “clear and concise”.
Looking up examples, I find a lot of instances where 明瞭かつ簡潔, but I think this might be fairly formal/legalese; かつ on its own is fairly formal, and all the examples appear to be from policy documents and the like.
クレームは，明瞭かつ簡潔でなければならない。
Claims shall be clear and concise.
退く
退く is spelled identically with 退く. Fortunately, the two words have virtually identical meanings.
Also, 退く is commonly written out using kana (どく), so I guess if you see the kanji, 退く is a safer bet.
三下
When I first learned this word, I figured it meant something like “third-rate underling”; like, the boss’s henchman’s henchman’s henchman.
However, looking it up, it appears to be a gamling term, based on the fact that rolling less than three in dice practically ensures you’ll lose.
It’s said that those unlucky in gambling are lucky in love, so I suppose it’s appropriate that both states can be summed up as <3.
概ね
For mnemonic purposes, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that this sounds like it could mean “big chest”.
By one line of thinking, this is not a complete coincidence: 概ね is presumably a combination of 大 + 旨, to mean “the big principle/gist/idea”.
Going by the etymology on Wiktionary, it seems 旨 and 胸 may be cognates (what with hearts being all central and important and all that). That being said, the same section also says there is some evidence that the two words are not directly related.
相違点
This word is often used in contrast with 共通点 to mean “similarities and differences”.
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雑談 (ざつだん) ：idle talk, chatting, small talk
From Easy Japanese podcast
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ととのいました！ - what you say when you feel good after having a sauna.
From: Sayuri Saying podcast # 224 The Art of Sauna in Japan
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I’m so tired of 漬け words. How many pickle words so I need?
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I thought that was just an advertising campaign for the Yamaha Tricity. 
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Nope - it’s apparently a thing!
Love the ad.
さっぱりした、I’m refresh because I took a bath or got a haircut, drank water, etc, ad nauseam. Source: that poor Japanese man that look so tired when I didn’t understand what he meant…
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Vocabulary
Dragon Quest II
- 乾ききる・to dry up, to become completely dry
- 礼拝堂・chapel
- 不届き・outrageous, reprehensible, insolent, nefarious
A Certain Magical Index
- 出前・external catering, food home delivery
- 絶句・being lost for words
- エセ・fake, faux, mock, pseudo-
- ブー垂れる・to complain, grumble
- 燥ぐ・to make merry, to frolic
- 面識・acquaintance, being familiar with
- 照合・1) checking against, collating with, comparison, verification; 2) checking something off on a list
- 綺麗事・whitewashing, lip service
- 信条・creed, belief, conviction
- 黄金比・golden ratio
- さらけ出す・to expose, to lay bare, to disclose
- 晒す・1) to expose (to the sun, danger, etc.), leaving out in the open; 2) to bleach; 3) to rinse; 4) to doxx
- 火種・1) live coals; 2) cause (of a disturbance, conflict, etc.), trigger
- 陽炎・heat haze, shimmer of hot air
A Certain Scientific Railgun
- Tバック・thong
- 見解・opinion, point of view
- 相違・
- 見解の相違・difference of opinion
- 炎天・blazing sun
- ミーハー・faddist, follower of trends, sheep
- 微睡む・to doze off
(commonly spelled using kana) - 溜まり場・gathering spot
Japanese Wordle and 言葉で遊ぼう
- 竦む・1) to freeze (from fear, etc.); 2) to cower
(commonly spelled using kana)- すくみ・deadlock
- 三すくみ・three-way deadlock
- 酒戻し・giving back gifted/borrowed alcohol
- 脚光・footlight, headlight
- 軋轢・strife, friction
- 遊惰・indolence
- 安逸・idleness, leisurileslienes
- 弊害・harmful effect, abuse, malady, an evil
- 何しろ・anyway, anyhow, as you know
- なだらか・1) gently sloping, gentle, gradual (of a literal slope); 2) smooth (process), gentle (tone of voice, etc.), slow/moderate (growth, etc.)
- シーハイル・greeting among skiers (possibly politically incorrect)
- 尊ぶ・to value, to prize, to esteem
Other
- -ごと・with, and all
- 皮ごと・with the skin/rind, skin and all (i.e. eating 枝豆 with the scabbard)
- 骨ごと・bones and all
- 聡い・1) clever, smart; 2) sharp/keen (ear, etc.), sensitive, discerning
(commonly written using kana) - 円やか・1) round, circular (shape); 2) mellow, mild, smooth (flavor, etc.)
(commonly written using kana) - 紙一重・paper-thin (difference), a hair’s breadth
- あながち・not necessarily, not exactly (with negative sentence)
- 意味合い・implication, nuance, connotation
- 縮れる・be wavy, curled, crisp, frizzled
- 手帳・notebook, diary, memo pad
- 増大・enlargement, growth
- 輪郭・silhouette, outline
- もどかしい・vexing, frustrating, feeling that things are going too slow
- 桁・column
Stuff I yell at people about on the bus
Dragon Quest II
礼拝堂 and 不届き
礼拝堂を汚す不届き者め！
Scoundrels who defile the chapel!
A Certain <adjective> <noun>
I’ve now finished the first season of A Certain Magical Index and moved on to the first season of A Certain Scientific Railgun, which means I get to enjoy that banger of an opening theme on a regular basis.
I’m enjoying the increased focus on Misaki, who was the best part of the previous show, and the show is great when the girls are out fighting crime and solving mysteries like they’re the Famous Five.
Unfortunately, though, that’s only like 10% of the show so far. Then there’s 30% high school girls being high school girls (which I don’t mind) and 60% Kuroko being a sexual predator (which I do).
Still, the good moments are enough to keep me coming back, and apparently I only have to wait two more seasons (one each of Index and Railgun) for A Certain Franchise-Redeeming Story Arc, which I am looking forward to.
エセ
This word is similar to 偽, and the two words may even be cognates.
It seems that エセ is commonly used to refer to putting on a fake accent. For example:
エセ関西弁
mock Kansai dialect
面識
Some interesting collocations:
一面識
a passing acquaintance
半面識
a slight acquaintance
彼とは面識がある
I’m acquainted with him.
彼とは一面識も無い
He’s a complete stranger to me.
識のない人
a stranger
Tバック
ミーハー
Apparently, this is an abbreviated form of ミーちゃんハーちゃん, although it isn’t entirely clear where that phrase comes from.
Wikipedia suggests that it could be a pun on はあちゃん, an archaic word for “fool”, combined with the musical scale (do-re-mi-fa), or a division of contemporarily popular girls’ names into み-names (like みさき and みちこ) and は-names (like はな and はるか).
And, of course, there is the theory that it refers to that particularly egregious brand of faddists: Girls who like mitsumame and Shōwa era actor Hayashi Chōjirō.
I admit: I only pretend to like mitsumame and Hayashi Chōjirō to pick up chicks.
Japanese Wordle and 言葉で遊ぼう
I’m trying to do these every day; it’s a good way to think actively about words that I know, and to stumble across new words while searching through dictionaries with wildcards.
I generally prefer 言葉で遊ぼう, which takes some liberties with the Wordle format to provide more useful clues: Rather than just telling you if a character is correct, it can also tell you if a character is in the correct column or row of the gojuuon chart, or if it’s a variant of the character (such as つ for っ or づ).
Wordle Japanese takes a different approach: It just uses the standard Wordle clues, but counts variant characters as equivalent (for example, じゅっぷん is written as しゆつふん). This makes it a real head-scratcher, which I suppose has both ups and downs from a learning perspective.
三すくみ and 酒戻し
Not exactly the most useful words, but they’re now pretty much lodged in my brain due to forcing me to rack my brains out in Wordle Japanese.
In particular, 酒戻し doesn’t appear in Jisho, so even after I worked out that it was a word ending in もとし (remember, と=ど in Wordle), I still couldn’t figure out what it was. I ended up running out of guesses on my computer and continuing on my phone.
I usually try to think of guesses that match all discovered constraints, but towards the end I just started throwing unused letters at the board hoping to find some clues, finally discovering 酒戻し as the child of 買い戻し and 叫び声.
遊惰安逸
I found these words while looking into another Wordle head-scratcher. Once again, I resigned myself to just throwing symbols at the board, and finally ended up with the correct answer: ゆうたあん
However, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what ゆうたあん was. There was nothing on Jisho, and looking for the reading on Google, the closest I could find was 遊惰安逸, which is a combination of the near-synonyms 遊惰 and 安逸.
I went online to see if perhaps 遊惰安 could be used without the 逸; after all, when you have kanji for play, laziness and calm, do you really need another kanji meaning idleness to get the idea across?
Finally, I decided to go straight to the source and look at the dataset that Wordle Japanese picks words from:
Looking up ゆうたあん, I found that it was the reading for …
-
Ｕターン
It turns out that, as is pointed out in kaisetsu.txt:
見出しの読みを平仮名で表記しました。見出しに長音符号がある場合は，直前の音節の母音で表しています。
例： りありてぃい（見出しは「リアリティー」）
The headword’s reading it presented in hiragana. In case the headword contains a ー, the vowel of the mora before it is used.
For example: りありてぃい (headword is リアリティー)
Now, I finally understood why so many of my gairaigo guesses had failed.
シーハイル
Speaking of gairaigo, this word popped up while I was trying to figure out some Wordle.
I found out it was a greeting among skiers, which I thought was kind of cool; I like to ski, so maybe I could use it.
But as I started trying to figure out the origin of the word, I started to feel that it sounded a bit … familiar. A quick search later revealed that it is indeed a katakanafied version of “Schi Heil!”
Now, it’s worth noting that German phrases that we primarily recognize from World War II biopics are actually just normal German words, and people have been saying things like “Berg heil!” (“Mountain greetings!”) when hiking and “Petri Heil!” (“(Saint) Peter’s greetings!”) when fishing since long before the nazis made the word infamous.
So, I won’t be passing any judgment on people who use the phrase, but I also don’t feel comfortable using it myself. Still, I guess it’s good that I’m aware of it, so that I won’t get too shocked when I finally make the trip to Niseko.
Other
照合
Example sentences:
この複写をオリジナルと照合してみてください
Please check this print against the original copy.
彼女は品目をひとつひとつ照合した
She ticked off the items one by one.
指紋を照合して彼が犯人だとわかった
They identified him as the culprit by checking fingerprints.
増大
This feels like the sort of word that could have any number of homophones, but it seems it doesn’t have any (at least accoridng to Jisho).
Some example uses:
インバウンド観光増大
increase in inbound tourism
情報の爆発的増大
information explosion, an explosive increase in information
貿易が国富を増大させた
Trade increased the country’s wealth.
もどかしい
I found this word while looking for ways to describe the frustration of being unable to express myself properly in Japanese.
A few example sentences:
私はちゃんと英語が話せない自分がもどかしい
I am irritated with myself not being able to speak English well
英語がうまく話せなくてもどかしい
I can’t express myself well in English and it’s so frustrating
英語で言いたいことが表現できなくてもどかしいです
I get frustrated not being able to express what I want to say in English
The word seems to be useful to expression for expressing a sort of impatient irritation. Not sure how severe it is, but I’ll probably throw in a ちょっと・・・な〜 and lighthearted tone of voice to soften it a bit.
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Huh… I’m a native speaker but I’ve never heard of that one (despite being aware of the other variations you mentioned).
Searched a bit and found this article: "Ski Heil!" - Darf man das noch sagen? - SnowTrex Ski-Magazin (“is it still okay to say that?”) and it says, yes it is ok at least in the context of skiing, and the word “Heil” in and of itself is not forbidden, and in some parts of Austria people apparently use it when greeting each other. But tbh I wouldn’t really use it - not because of possible Nazi connotations but because it sounds super super old-fashioned to me 
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I don’t post here anymore because I learn way too many words every day to list, but here’s the most vexing one I’ve learned recently: 抱き抱える - to hold in ones arms. The reading: …だきかかえる 
Okay I get it, it’s 抱く plus 抱える, but you’re really gonna put the same kanji twice in one word, with different readings!?
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標高 - height from sea level.
Putting this word here as I heard it in a podcast I was listening to this morning. It’s a word I’ve wanted to know & use for a while.
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「確トラ」から「ハリかも」
Can you guess it?
Explanation here, where the guy checked if ChatGPT could guess it
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I don’t normally mine words from what I read to make flashcards, anything very common I expect to come up more often than not, as words get rarer, it’s less of a problem to be looking them up. But it could be interesting to post words here since that’s not as much effort as doing a flashcard for them. Then when and if I need to in the future I could take the interesting words from my posts here and make a deck out of what’s not well known.
Today I ran into 居心地 which means comfort, from the cold mountain escape survival book.
I also misinterpreted 異常性 from 変な家 I saw abnormality and sex abnormality in the dictionary I use and didn’t realize one entry also had an extra kanji. 異常性 isn’t necessarily a sex thing, it just has the 性 kanji in it.
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ワンボックス 
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getting into 逆転裁判 finally and learning all the JPN terms for things to yell… 意義あり、矛盾、証言。。。much to consider.
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素人 layperson, I recognized the first kanji from 素晴らしい but it’s read as しろうと
Also from 変な家
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浪人 apart from the masterless samurai meaning, high school graduate waiting to enter university having failed the entrance exam (or so my dictionary says). Am wondering if this term can also apply to a student taking a “gap year”.
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無題 untitled
憶測 guess/speculation
不動産屋 realtor, real estate agent. (Kanji breakdown as Immovable property store)
怨恨 grudge, enmity
謳う to celebrate, to extol
一連 series, chain
依頼 request, commission
縁起 omen
妄想 delusion
来客 visitor
These were some of what I looked up from 変な家 yesterday.
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