Omedetou oneesan!!! XD

just random posting, but japan just won its first olympic gold in figure skating, beating out the heavily favoured american and russian skaters! (more at the cbc website.)

hows that for taking something foreign and making it more japanese! i guess the judges weren't into the the american's or russian's sabi, but i guess in the olympics the judges share a similar wabi XD

did i just make a geeky, dorky (and pathetic) attempt at a japanese-acedemic joke...? oh dear... that's what happens after a weird shift at work... =.=

ps. with what little japanese i retained from jap 100 and 101 from capilano, the title says "congratulations (older) sister". i use "oneesan" as a generic, no relations honourific. to make it more slang/english, it loosely translates into: "congrats/you go girl"

new term :)

as i've been reading "obasan" by joy kagawa for my english 359 course, it's interesting to see what japanese aesthetics are in it in comparison to what we've read.

anyways, the term that i found in "obasan" is wagamama which means "selfish and inconsiderate" (kogawa 138). in other words, one should not be wagamama and thus should meet the needs of everyone else instead of seeing to ones own needs (which is bad).

in contrast to genji, can we say that genji is wagamama or not as we do see him pretty assertive in a few chapters in the book. one example maybe his meeting with fijitsubo, blatent wagamama. then there's the incident with murasaki, in which genji takes her away, but does give her a life that she might not have been able to enjoy. and later on (after his exile) he allows for other women to live in his palace/house.

i realize this leads else where, but what do you guys think?