What the Japanese really mean Part Three

Japanese: (Buddhist term) shogyo mujo

Literal meaning: All is transient, nothing is fixed

Real meaning: It’s not worth building a nice-looking house, because we’re going to knock it down in 20 years anyway

Japanese: O ki no doku

Literal meaning: Honorable poisonous feeling

Real meaning: That’s a shame

Japanese: Sumimasen

Literal meaning: (This situation or inconvenience) will never end

Real meaning: Sorry/ excuse me

Japanese: Arigato

Literal meaning: You put me in a difficult position

Real meaning: Thank you

Japanese: Anata

Literal meaning: You (polite)

Real meaning: You (polite) or darling (to your husband)

Japanese: Omae

Literal meaning: You

Real meaning: You, sonny Jim

Japanese: Teme

Literal meaning: You

Real meaning: You son of a bitch (fighting talk!)

Japanese: Mizu shobai

Literal meaning: The water business

Real meaning:The sex business

Japanese: Soapland

Literal meaning: A land of soap

Real meaning: A “massage parlour”. You understand- not a massage parlour, a “massage parlour”, nudge nudge, wink wink

Couple of interesting stories behind these. A “soapland” used be called a Turkish bath, until the Turkish embassy complained and the government forced the yakuza owners to shut down their brothels. Oh no, silly me, the government forced the yakuza to come up with a new name. The euphemistic name for the whole business comes from the Tokugawa Edo period, when samurai and what have you would pay just to drink water as long as it was served by very pretty girls. Or at least so says the free individual English language tours (!) in the Edo Tokyo museum- highly recommended!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 9:36 pmand is filed under Japanese language, TESOL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.