journal features

mountain pass

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Kokubunji, 2022.07.18

Recently I've been rebuilding a study tool for kanji that I accidentally nuked several months ago. I re-built the database and then improved on the original quiz/flash tool. Because not one person on the entire Internet signed up to use it, I've made it private again.

One of the first kanji my new tool tried to teach me was that for the expression "mountain pass".

峠

Interestingly, it's three constituent components are mountain (山), up (上), and down (下). Which is about as clear a way of depicting a mountain pass short of drawing a saddle point.

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.