I was wondering what are some of the weirdest Japanese idioms you’ve heard of or come across and what do they mean.
I recently came across this:
喉から手が出る （のどからてがでるて） 
Meaning my hand’s coming out of my throat (more or less)
can you guess what it really means?
It means you want something really really badly.
What other weird idioms are there? Saying that just made me realize it might be easier to list the non-weird(?) /regular(?) idioms instead
If you say something in jest, but it actually happens later, you can say
「瓢箪から駒」ひょうたんからこま
Which means “Horse from a gourd”.
This is actually a pun of 「冗談から本真」じょうだんからほんま (first a joke, then a reality).
石の上にも三年
If you sit on top of a rock for 3 years, it’ll get warm. / It takes 3 years to heat up a rock if you sit on it.
This essentially means it takes 3 years to get used to / good at something enough to start reaping the fruits of success. I’ve often heard it applied to jobs / careers. The first three years tend to be the most difficult while getting used to everything, learning all that needs to be learned, and dealing with the psychological ups and downs. After 3 years is when things finally start to click.
Or at least that’s the idea.
Lol would have liked to have known that in high school. There was this one person who’s “What if…” jokes had a tendency of coming true.
It’s funny until a friend’s iphone was stolen by a couple in a car asking for help, he just had to joke “What if they just drove away with the phone?” …people giggled before it happened.
Honestly that could apply with anything that ya start out with and I know that’s true. Took three years before my drawing stopped looking really horrible to decent.
Wonder how my Japanese will look in three?
recently came across 尻が重い
which you would call someone who is lazy.
I just love how it roughly translates to “Heavy butt”
We would say slow-ass, butt-dragging, etc. in English.
Not sure if it counts, but 「おじゃまします！」 basically means “I’m being a devil of perversion!”
A 邪魔 is a demon that invades a Buddhist practitioner’s mind and distracts them from the path to enlightenment.
It later came to mean “obstacle” or “nuisance”, which is probably what most Japanese people have in mind when they use the phrase … but I do like the idea of introducibg yourself as a perverse devil wherever you go.
i think this one is kinda weird, mostly cute. 「尻餅をつく」 
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.