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Among the many items of goodness sold by the pound at Hanamasa (who would have ever thought I would actually *miss* bulk-supply food stores, one day), the giant (for Japan) Tiramisu Ice Cream pot is about as close to food orgasm as one can get with his clothes on.

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擬音語 are the Japanese version of Western onomatopeia. They are often used in comics, to add intensity to a scene, describe a noise or even a texture (though technically these would be 擬態語, and not onomatopoeia). But they have a much wider use, often replacing bona fide words or full sentences, in everyday conversations. They nearly all follow the same specific pattern: a group of two syllables repeated twice (pika-pika, pera-pera etc)… which makes them very easy to spot and remember… Using them in your daily conversation will simultaneously propel you to the ranks of l33t native speakers, and make you sound like one of these 13 year-old Japanese schoolgirl with 5 pounds of plushies dangling from her keitai.

I have compiled below a short list of all those I could remember, off the top of my head, along with a few friends’ contributions. I have made arbitrary use of katakana and hiragana, more or less dictated by what I’ve seen more often in writing. Rule of thumb is that most of these can be found in either form, depending on the mood of the author and the type of material it is used with. Mouse-over the kanas to get the romaji pronunciation….

The ubiquitous (all the time, provided you ever watch TV or speak to a Japanese teenager):

  • ピカピカ glittering!
  • ソラソラ sparkling!
  • ギリギリ quick (chop chop!)
  • ぺらぺら fluent (in a language)
  • ぺこぺこ starving
  • モシモシ [when answering the phone]


The commmon

  • ドロドロ messy/dirty (a room, a floor) or muddled (a relationship)
  • チャキチャキ efficient
  • ツルツル smooth, slippery
  • プンプン intense smell or furious anger
  • ポツポツ bit by bit
  • ベタベタ clingy (overeager lovers) or sticky (sweaty gaijin pig)
  • じめじめ humid, damp
  • ゆらゆら flickering

The uncommon (friends use them, dunno how universal they are):

  • バラバラ scattered, all over the place
  • エロエロ [will let you guess that one…]

The rare (those you likely won’t find in a dictionary, as they are total slang):

  • ブリブリ high
  • パキパキ fucked-up (much stronger than the slightly ‘cute’ ブリブリ)

The manga-style (those that sound like a comic strip description all by themselves):

  • キョロキョロ looking around restlessly
  • イライラ getting nervous (also as kanji: 苛々)
  • うろうろ walking aimlessly
  • カチカチ scared motionless

The real deal (actual onomatopeia, such as used in comics):

  • ワンワン bow-wow (dog)
  • ザアザア water sound (rain, river etc), white noise
  • ケラケラ cackle (hen)… [not quite certain]

The fake (not really 擬音語, but still close):

  • 色々 miscellaneous
  • 時々 sometimes
  • 中々 quite, considerably

Now your turn: send me your favorite 擬音語!

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So it’s 1am on a Sunday night, not much more has happened in term of exciting stuff ever since my latest week-end update (no more earthquake, no tsunami, no godzilla…), I am busy debugging code written by a maniac who apparently thinks that picking random combinations of three to six letters is a perfectly acceptable naming convention for all functions and variables in a multi-thousand lines program (and yea, I’m aware that this last bit means absolutely nothing to a rough 90% of my beloved readers: please color me equally stumped, albeit not for the same reasons)… It’s time for…

Techie Update of the Month

I have been putting in a bit of long-overdue work into wp-plugins.net, the ultimate WP plugins repository.

Namely:

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Agreeably low-key, the first half of my week-end was filled with so much interesting stuff and encounters with cool people, that I went starting this entry convinced we had to be Sunday night already…

Today’s earthquake was easily the strongest I have ever felt in my life. All in all, I don’t think it was much bigger than previous ones, but its epicenter being very close made a difference. Seems it registered an upper 5 (on the Japanese scale) in some areas near Tokyo.

Being on the first floor of my small two-stories apartment building, all books and loose objects safely tucked into their shelves (I learned my lessons from previous times), I didn’t have a lot to feed my imagination on and wasn’t overly worried, past the initial surprise (feeling the earth move when you haven’t even had your first Gin Tonic of the day, will always get you at first). Seeing the importance of train disruptions and reading other blogs afterward, made me realize it didn’t just feel strong: it was strong.

In other news, Friday screening party of Bondi Tsunami at Superdeluxe was a blast!

The movie is very much worth seeing. An interesting mix of edgy MTV-style editing (well, the good sort of MTV-style editing) with typical tongue-in-cheek multi-culti humour, mixed in with long bouts of pure surf psychedelia. Only serious reproach: could have been made a tad shorter. Shooting for a feature-length was, imho, a bit ambitious, as some of the latter scenes tended to lack the tight editing that made the beginning a truly good indy movie.

But overall: good-humoured story-telling, cool music, casual vibe in the club during and after the screening all contributed to an awesome evening.

Hako wrote a really cool entry about Friday night in her Mixi diary, copied here with her permission, for the benefit of non-mixi users. Can’t really be arsed to translate it at the mo, but heartily recommend you put in the reading effort if you have some basic kanji skills: it’s quite funny and an interesting read.

Actually glad we didn’t elect to follow the group to Odaiba for an all-night rave party, despite the promise of cool music and a comfy tent if we needed a rest, I’m quite happy being back in my bed for a long night sleep now. With hoping that I don’t end up flattened by the second floor crashing on me during the night.

（葉子ちゃんはミクシィの日記に映画で書いてった。本当に面白くてぜひ読もう：）

昨日はお友達に誘われて、六本木の映画の試写会に繰り出してみた。そこは地下のクラブでフレンドリーなかんじ。
製作はオーストラリア人のとてもキュートでファニーな女性。おっぱい柔らかったぁ〜（笑）オーストラリア人の観点からの日本人サーフトリップムービー。もちろん舞台も大自然オーストラリアで、出演者もビーチでナンパして集めただけあって、ナチュナルで入りやすい。いわゆる等身大的なことこがわりやすいのかも。ストーリーはバックパッカーで旅をしてりゃ、どこにでもありがちなこと。そこに、ヴィジュアルで彼女テイストの芸者や侍テイストを加え。さらに微妙にボブやダヴやハワイアンテイストをミックスした、ゆる〜い音中心の映像とのコラボはかなり飛ばされます！お酒で一服キメてご覧になるのがおすすめです（笑）
特に旅好きな方にはどうぞっ！
最後に製作の彼女に日本のサファーについて、質問！
クール！セクシー！スケベ！
だそうです（笑）
久々に色んな国のヒトとお話できました。
刺激になります。

抽選でオーストラリアチケットがあたるはずが、
何故か、t-シャツとキャップが！
ラッキ〜♪
と、単純なわたしでした。
詳しくは。。
http://www.super-deluxe.com/schedule/event0507JP.html#anchor22

♪ー　葉子　ー♪

by ·Comments Off on Laid Back Evening
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Briefly considered pulling an allnighter with a rave in Odaiba… Finally opted to chill out in Harajuku around oolong cha and spicy food…
Retrospectively a good choice.