journal features

Japanese idiom strikes again

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.04.11

At the wedding, Manami-san's sixty-something parents invited us to come over to their house to play, sometime. To play?

I'd stammered out a few words of Japanese to them on differfent occasions through the day, and I suppose the speach that Mari and I gave had an impact, because they seemed pleased with us. At the end of the affair, they came up to me and asked in Japanese, "Why don't you and your family come to our house to play?"

Thinking that I'd misunderstood, and that perhaps they were talking about Jon's family having come to their house for the two-families dinner the day before, I wondered, "Was that yesterday?"

They looked very confused. So I asked, "Um, when?"

They said, "Any time!"

We exchanged a couple of words after that, but I'd confused them so thoroughly that it was a bit awkward.

I asked Mari why on Earth they'd asked us to come for a play date. Mari informed me that the verb "to play" (asobu) is also used when inviting someone to your home for a pleasant visit, and that in fact it's a bit of a formal way of doing so.

A little knowledge (of Japanese) is a dangerous and bewildering thing.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.