A few days ago I watched a Chinese film that happened to have both English and Mandarin (or was it Cantonese, I wonder? They were speaking Mandarin, in any case.) subtitles burned in (yeah, don’t ask… 
).
Anyway, it was quite amazing to see familiar kanji (fine, hanzi) used in completely strange (to me) combinations 
2 Likes
I would guess that Cantonese, Hokkien and most Chinese dialects, have Hanzi with mostly the same meaning to Mandarin, though combinations and grammar are different.
Just less difference compared with to Japanese, perhaps.
Also, spoon 
looks a little different. 喝 / 喝.
2 Likes
なまむぎなまごめなまたまご (yes of course this is one word)
6 Likes
Good ol’ 早口言葉!
I like 東京特許許可局 [とうきょうとっきょきょかきょく]
6 Likes
That’s a tough one!! I gotta learn it and bring it to taiko practice. We say tongue twisters while warming up sometimes lol
3 Likes
水を向ける【みずをむける】- to try and draw someone out, to fish for information
Cute 
5 Likes
醍醐味 だいごみ The real pleasure (of something); the great thrill; the true charm also the flavor of ghee as 醍醐 means ghee
Which fascinatingly enough is apparently the Buddha’s favorite food?
2 Likes
桑原桑原
- (exp, uk, JMdict [2025-05-16])
- knock on wood
- touch wood
- heaven forbid
- God help me
- absit omen!
- spoken to ward off misfortune
- (forms, JMdict [2025-05-16])
- 桑原桑原
- クワバラクワバラ
7 Likes
Maybe it’s also because of ritualistic reasons, which I find in Chinese counterpart of the article (and I still can’t really read). In any case, 醍醐 doesn’t seem be a currently used word, even if it may be true that it is similar to ghee. (I know the vocab is a food, just never bother to know what it really is nowadays.)
There might be a sutra somewhere, describing in details.
3 Likes
白星を = scoring a victory
Jisho marks a sumo term, though it isn’t exactly sumo. I’ve seen a few other vocabs from this category too.
白星をあげる perhaps. I was thinking about 金星, but that’s not it => 金星
2 Likes
Not a new word for me, but I did have reason to use it recently.
癇癪 - かんしゃく - tantrum
As an aside, my son is 18 months old.
15 Likes
輿論 ー public opinion
I’ve seen 輿 multiple times, but always with 訓読み and with the meaning of palanquin or some similar platform carried by people. I had to look up the reason it also has this meaning, and surprise surprise it comes from Chinese history. There was a dude named Wang Chen, and in his legend it states 自古賢聖、樂聞誹謗之言、聽輿人之論, which I haven’t bothered to look up the translation of, but from the kanji you can see that listening to the slander of the palanquin bearers about the higher class is fun. 輿人之論 eventually got shortened to 輿論 and that meaning stuck until 1946 when the government said that kanji too hard and 世論 became the norm (even though the origin of the words are totally different).
10 Likes
シラミ 虱 lice.
I work in an elementary school. That’s all you need to know.
10 Likes
This has to be one of my favorite kanji.
If 門 is a gate, how would you call the bar that closes the gate? Yup, 閂
8 Likes
Great minds think alike 
5 Likes
Oh that’s funny! I had read that post and missed it / forgot it somehow!
I love your 四字熟語s though Favorite of mine that I saw recently, find it very poetic: 散歩日和
2 Likes
Just recently unlocked and have been working on 首相 and saw this when I went to the 区役所. First time in a while I’ve had one of those “Oh I can read this!” moments 
7 Likes
カクつき - lag, choppiness, stuttering, dropped frames – important gamer word!
Apparently derived from カクカク.
10 Likes
I was looking for words containing 翠 that are not 翡翠 and found:
翠微:
- approx. 80% of the way up a mountainside
- view of a light green mountain; mountain that appears green from afar
6 Likes
This is one of those words where I knew it but honestly have no idea where the hell I learned it. Maybe doing the same thing you did like 5 years ago.
Always the weird ones that I remember
4 Likes