My new phone conveniently came with a set of dictionaries on an external SD-card. Which has allowed me to give some rest to the incredibly helpful, yet thoroughly worn out, pocket dictionary Karina gave, me the first time I left for Japan, three years ago.

As I used to do with the old paper one, I take it out all the time when riding the subway in order to check some random stuff I’d read on an ad or heard somewhere (unfortunately, it doesn’t have any multi-radical kanji search, so I still need to have at least some clue on the pronunciation of what I’m searching for). Often, I end up drifting through definitions for a while, browsing along some thin line of thought and picking words I might want to remember.

This evening, I accidentally stumbled upon this pearl, reprinted verbatim from my phone’s dictionary:

腎虚 (じんきょ [jinkyo]): “man’s emaciation due to sexual intemperance”.

Can you actually believe there is a word, a single word, for “man’s emaciation due to sexual intemperance” ? Yea, neither can I.

In other news, my favorite kanji of the day is:

火の粉 (ひのこ [hinoko])

Which means “sparks”, but literally translates to “fire dust”. Incidentally, the “dust” (粉) in “fire dust”, is also the dust in 花粉症, or “flower dust affliction”, known to the West as “hay fever”, responsible for a strong seasonal comeback of the ever fashionable white cotton facemask (for many years before coming to Japan, I had been convinced, along with the rest of the Western world, that these masks were exclusively worn to prevent germ spreading while they are in fact meant to protect from pollen).

Damn I think I just made an informative and somewhat useful entry here. My editorial integrity is sinking these days.