Show us your Japanese calendars

@_Marcus’ beautiful Zen Calendar 2023 inspired me to ask you to show your Japanese calendars, especially those with daily texts.

Here is mine:

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Thank you so much! Your calendar looks super-super-super advanced! Good luck with it!

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@2000kanji what a cool kanji exercise calendar! thanks for creating this post. I was going to share my calendars in my study log but I guess I’ll share it here instead.

Here are my two calendars for 2023 both given to me as a gift from people who know me as a cat lady! :joy_cat:

This big wall calendar has advice for happiness every month and for January it’s: ゆっくり休む日も大切だよ which from my limited translating skills i think means “it’s also important to slow down and have a rest day.” I really wish I could be this cat…

This 夜廻り猫 desktop calendar has a quote for every week. For this week it’s: お正月が過ぎるのは早いなあ… Had to look up the top middle kanji cause I haven’t learned it yet. But I think it means that “New year’s has passed so quickly…”

If anyone has better translations, please do share!

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Nice calendars! Perhaps we could have some more year-long calendar translation threads?!

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I did a thread for the Hobonichi quotes in 2021 and 2022. It was pretty educational to translate a quote per day, because it really forces you to decide what you think something means precisely, rather than ‘yeahhh I get the general gist of this’ and move on. I was told at the time I couldn’t share the Japanese quote everyday, as that would be copyright infringement, so I should stick to my own translations.

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And it’s highly motivational to improve my Japanese, as there is hardly a day where I don’t need the dictionary and/or ichi.moe to read the questions and answers.

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I also like that you get such a wide variety of topics and contexts that you often come across vocabulary or grammar that you otherwise would not have seen yet at that point in your studies. And I learned a bunch of interesting facts along the way, too :grin:

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I very occasionally posted a question from last year’s edition of my calendar, but like @phryne I think that posting every one of the 365 sheets would not be legal. Perhaps it’s different for your calendar as it is apparently not for sale.

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Mine is from these folks:
https://www.nkcalendar.co.jp/calendar/okamoto_hajime/calendar.html

They don’t seem to show the exact edition I have, which I bought at a museum store in the US.

Edit: Here’s the one I have: Lucky Cat by Hajime Okamoto (2023 Calendar)

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I’m really sad to hear this, I found your thread and loved reading your translations and copying my favourite ones into my 2022 Hobonichi.

I have decided to make the bold step to try translating them myself this year :slight_smile:

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Awesome! I look forward to seeing your translations :grin: I don’t think I’ll do a thread this year, so I am happy someone else is, hehe (unless you’re just translating them for yourself privately, which is also totally fine. But if you ever want to exchange ideas, let me know!)

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Oooh! I now understand the logo of the Subaru cars…
「昴」を知られてくれたのをありがとう

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I hope I’m not breaking copyright! Yes, I think the calendar is not on general sale, there’s no copyright notice as far as I can see, and I’m not reproducing all the information the calendar has, just the proverbs, and it’s in the interest of study, I’m not making any money from it, and it’s in a totally different form (gorgeous calendar vs online educational discussion forum). I think I’m covered. I hope so! Thank you!

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Proverbs are – in the US – generally in the public domain. They’ve been around a long time and have no known author. Be careful, though, as some catchphrases that are treated as proverbs culturally are much more recent. “Use the Force, Luke” is very much still under copyright!

A collection of proverbial statements can be copyrightable, though. The “original work” consists of selection, arrangement, and presentation.

So if you were to post a photo of a calendar page everyday alongside your own translation, that would pretty clearly be infringement. Just the proverbs without the rest of the calendar? IANAL, but it seems to me to be a stretch to try to prove that a list of public domain proverbs in an online forum affected sales of a calendar that happened to use the same list.

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Thank you so much! That is really useful!

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I don’t know about starting a thread, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay up to date with it while I’m still doing 2 classes a week :sweat_smile: We’ll see, maybe in March.

I would definitely like to exchange ideas though, reading is something I’m hoping to work on this year since I mostly read class materials.

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Yeah, staying up to date with translations could sometimes feel like a bit of a chore! So I thought switching to ‘reading’ rather than ‘translating’ this year would take some of that pressure off :slight_smile:

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Is there a recommendation on where to buy something like this online, in Japanese? Even without proverb, I usually have to buy it online nowadays, anyway.

Book covers

This year’s cover in online store (Chinese version).

My actual one for 2022, but no proverb (and I didn’t write any Japanese).


How about Hobonichi (A5)?

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I recommend the Hobonichi line! I’ve been getting their standard A6 planner for three years now, and I’m really happy with it. I bought it because I heard the paper was very good, and as a paper nerd, I can attest to the quality, haha. If you buy a cover for it, you can swap out the actual planners every year. I’ve only bought the English planner so far, but I’m planning on trying to make the switch to one in Japanese in 2024.

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That’s the one I’ve been using for years and I love it! I find the A5 size gives me a bit more space to work with and I like the weekly spreads you get with the Cousin. Cannot recommend it enough!

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