More Crisis Vocab

Edit: corrected a couple things in this post and the last. Commenter wanted to remain anonymous, so I'm deleting what they said...

We'll start on a term related to the last in our previous post. Keep in mind I don't know why these words were chosen, and I haven't necessarily heard them, but I am putting them into my own English and context, and confusingly mathematical looking meaning breakdowns. I hope you remember junior high math order. Also, for some practical nuclear words, check out this list.

天譴論 (tenkenron, (heaven+reproach)+theory) the belief that heaven is punishing us for our iniquities. 天譴, tenken, on its own means divine punishment.

水火 (suika, water+fire) flooding and fire. Used in 水火の苦しみ (suika no kurushimi) to mean great hardships. xの苦しみ is a common pattern in times like these; just fill in the x with the bad situation of your liking.

漏洩 (rouei, leak+leak) leakage. Especially recently, of radiation.

待避 (taihi, wait+avoid) wait for danger to pass, or make way for emergency vehicles.
退避 (taihi, escape+avoid) run away or take shelter from danger. Note this is a homophone for the previous item.

被災漁船 (hisaigyousen, (incur+calamity)+(fishing+boat)) a boat in the the wrong place at the wrong time that falls victim to a disaster. Like those ships that got swept inland by the Tsunami.

殺処分 (satsushoubun, kill+(dispose+portion)) killing off animals to avoid zoonoses (disease that humans can catch from animals). I think this one comes about because a lot of people can't donate blood if they lived in mad cow disease-laden countries. Unless I missed yet another bird flu story recently.

私利私欲 (shirishiyoku, (self+profit)+(self+avarice)) selfish desires. 私欲, shiyoku, and 私利, shiri,can mean self-interest on their own too.

Which brings us back to the governor of Tokyo, who said that we are suffering a form of tenken for our shiyoku. He apologized, but someone may well satsushoubun him from his political party if he's not careful with what he says. He'd better taihi until this scandal blows over.

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Vocab from the 2011 Quake and Fukushima Crisis

I'm just going to provide some short translations of interesting words I found on the Practical Japanese blog, which has many helpful topical entries each day. Sub it if you know how to read Japanese. Here we go!

安否 (anpi, safe+no): safety, well-being. Think safe or not.

耐震性 (taishinsei, (x-proof+quake)+nature): Earthquake-proofness.

憂慮 (yuuro, anxious+fear): anxiety or concern. The sentence 憂慮すべき状況 would be "disturbing circumstances," or more literally "things are in a state you should fear."

空焚き (karadaki, empty+cook): heating an empty vessel that would usually have water, or that has lost it. Seen in 空焚き状態, the reactors being hot last night without an incoming water supply to cool them.

不透明感 (futoumei, opaque+ kan, feeling): Unclear feeling. Being unsure what to do next. Indecisiveness.

点検漏れ (tenkenmore, (spot+examine)+omission): Something that was overlooked during a check. A blind-spot in the prevention plans. Like a tsunami taking out your generators after an earthquake.

多選 (tasen, many+election): Being elected many times. I think this one refers to the crazy governor of Tokyo.

Well, my lunch-break is over, so more later!

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My Take on a Womb-a-Snatching Yoji

Did you ever watch a show and think, hey I've seen this plot before! Are all writers hacks these days or what? Well hack is an appropriate word as you will see when I dissect tonight's yoji in a macabre fashion just in time for halloween!

換骨奪胎 kannkotsudattai Breakdown:

換 kan: change
骨 kotsu: bones
奪 da(tsu): rob
胎 tai: womb (embryo)
gloss: adaptation of a previous creative work
part of speech: noun, suru verb

Change the bones, rob the womb? Yup. Make a frankensteinian monster and call it art! We only have so many ideas to go around anyways.

The recollection collection of a monk, one Eko of the Song dynasty, entitled 冷斎夜話 (reisaiyawa, Uncle Eko's Bathroom Reader of uh... Cold and Holy Trivia?) gave us this word's genesis about 1,000 years ago. It says,

その意を易（か）えずしてその語を造る、これを換骨法という。
Without changing the meaning, make that story. This is the bone-change way.

その意を規範（きはん）（手本）としてこれを形容す、これを奪胎法という
Using that meaning as your model, make a form. This is the steal-womb way.

[source] Well, thank goodness they spelled that out for us, or I wouldn't know what to steal and what to change.

Of course, examples of 換骨奪胎 are all around us. For instance, the American adaptation of Ringu may be considered one. A cool one I ran into recently is the GiantRobo remake, which in turn inspired The Big O (the ultimate 換骨奪胎 anime). Here's the intro:

If you are looking for more Halloween yoji, may I suggest the mountains of blood one. Also, I just added the Ancient Chinese Secrets tag to the blog. Check out those secrets to clean the blood out your clothes after you literally interpret this post.

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Let's Yoji: Scholars and Wars

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but I say them's fighting words! In this post, I'll cover 3 slightly related four character Japanese compounds that I found interesting which all came from war and philosophy-torn ancient China.

The first is 諸子百家. Let's break it down!

諸子百家 Breakdown:
諸 sho: many, various, all
子 shi: founder of a branch of philosophical thought (as seen in Koushi, Confucius)
諸子: Chinese sages and philosophers
百 hyak: 100
家 ka: ~er person
百家: many scholars
shoshihyakka gloss: The Hundred Schools of Thought

A list I've semi-translated below from yahoo dic says schools that participated in the great philosophy explosion that was this event included Confucianists（Confucious・Mencius）, Taoists（Lao-tzu・荘子）, Mohismists（Mozi）, Legalists（管仲・商鞅(しょうおう)）, Logicians（公孫竜）War Philosophers,（Sun Tzu・呉子）Diplomatists（蘇秦(そしん)・張儀）, Ying-yangists, Complicatedists, farmwithinyourmeansists, and gossip/tale gatherers (there was actual office in ancient China for gossip gathering).

Okay, that doesn't work very well as a traditional idiomatic yojijukugo, but it helps one to understand 百家争鳴

百家争鳴 breakdown:
争 sou: dispute
鳴 mei: sound off
hyakkasoumei gloss: Many opinions freely being exchanged

Now, it's not so common but I did find it in an article post:

iPhone 4のRetinaをめぐり百家争鳴！誇大広告なの？
=Is the iPhone 4's Retina [display] being falsely advertised? The pundits are sounding off!

Anyways, this yoji comes out of the Hundred Schools of thought period and the wealth of different opinions that were floating around back then. Interestingly, the Chinese government used it in 1956 along with the phrase "Let a hundred flowers bloom" (Chinese:百花運動 Japanese:百花斉放) to encourage debate in the political arena. Some people think it was just to find political dissidents. Mao started it and then shut the sumbich down when people actually used their freedom of speech that he had so graciously given them. We'll talk a little more about a tyrannical ruler with the next yoji, 酒池肉林, below!

酒池肉林 breakdown:
酒 shu: libations
池 chi: pond
肉 niku: meat
林 rin: woods
shuchinikurin gloss: A banquet with rivers of beer and mountains of food, a decadent feast

This one is also from China, and had a debaucherous context. See ol' king Zhou of Shag (posthumously named King Crupper) liked to line his pool (池) with alcohol and canoe around in it while plucking meat from shish kebab trees (林) . Sometimes he watched his enemies fried alive to work up an appetite for a good orgy. He's known as the worst king that China ever had. I encountered him in a game I play called Dynasty Warriors and he utters his famous yoji every time you successfully and satisfyingly kill him.

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Let's Yoji: What I Know About Coins Makes Me Rich

During a wiki-surfing session, I ran across a pic of this hand purifying basin, or tsukubai, and learned that the characters meet up with the middle hole, which is shaped like the kanji/radical for mouth (口), to make new kanji. Then those kanji make a sentence. Brilliant!

Totally Profound Yoji Breakdown Go!
五 (five)+口= 吾 ware (I)
止 (stop)+口= 足 taru (sufficient)
隹 (bird)+口= 唯 tada (just/only)
矢 (arrow)+口= 知 shiru (know)

put them all together as a 4 character idiom and you get:
吾唯足知 or 吾唯足るを知る ware tada taru wo shiru which means I am content with just what I have.

I found a page with a couple of follow up idioms that one may have learned back in the day if they hung around the temple with this profound basin. They are:
知足の者は賤しとも雖も富めり Those that live within their means are rich even when destitute.
and
不知足の者は富めりと雖も賤し Those that live beyond their means, even when blessed with riches, are bereft.

Notice the liberties I took with 賤しい iyashii (greedy, vulgar, shabby, humble, base, mean, vile). You can probably think of a better way to put it, but I am 不知 fuchi (an ignoramus.) By the way, there seems to be a connection of some sort between these two idioms and what Lao Tzu said in the 33rd chapter of his book, How to Make a Blog Post Long, Erudite, and Boring: 足るを知る者は富む To be satisfied with one's lot in life is to be rich.

Okay, are you still with me? Because I wanted to discuss one more thing. You see, I thought I had seen a coin with the same characters as the basin at the top of this post. Turns out that such coins are not currency, but novelty items for sale in some areas, and that I was thinking of the Zenigata's 寛永通宝 kan'eitsūhō (Kan'ei era coins). Their names match the characters on them as you can see in the following pic.



Now the word just said, zenigata, may ring a bell with you. The word was even payed some homage by a Lupin character. Zenigata (coin shape) is part of the title to a series of books, plays, and dramas about an Edo period detective named Heiji that throws coins at bad guys. Somehow that works. Thus the series is called 銭形平次 Zenigata Heiji.

I will leave you with a video from the Zenigata series. Watch for coin throwing and use this vid to practice karaoke. After people get so wowed by you knowing this song that they start throwing money and kisses, you can pull out all the awesome knowledge you got from this post and really impress the crowd. But don't get cocky; know your limit.

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Let's Yoji: Vim and vigor

旺盛 (ousei, full of vim and vigor) appears in a few idioms. 旺(ou) doesn't seem to get used much without 盛 (sei) in Japanese. Oddly enough, the former seems to be substitutable for the later in the word sakan (prosperous, vigorous, etc.) because they cover the same ground: prosperity, vitality, and flourishing. I would bet this combo is used a lot more in Chinese, which likes to combine similar hanzi to make words. 旺 can also be used as an alternative for 美 (beautiful) in utsukushi (beautiful) in theory, but only very rarely. Anyways, as long as we realize one of these kanji is impractical, let's see how they are used. Breakdown music begin!

旺盛 Breakdowns:

士気旺盛 shikiousei
gloss: morale being very high, heightened fighting spirit

士 shi: warrior
気 ki: spirit
士気 shiki: morale

元気旺盛 genkiousei
gloss: be brimming with vitality, be full of vigor

元 gen: origin
元気 genki: vigor, spirit [don't you know this word by now?]

気力旺盛 kiryokuousei
gloss: being full of energy

力 ryoku: strength
気力 kiryoku: willpower, energy

This last one is the reason why I do these silly word studies. For you see, I am...

好奇心旺盛 koukishinousei
gloss: brimming with curiosity

好 kou: like, fond
奇 ki: strange, curious
心 shin: mind, heart
好奇心: curiosity

Gods and Devils in the Japanese Language

As a living contradiction, I love linguistic ones.

Here's a breakdown of all the words I use in the vid (besides 一期一会), in WWWJDIC order. Remember, I said in the vid what 鬼 and 神 mean.

Gods and Devils Breakdown:

鬼子母神 【きしもじん; きしぼじん kishimojin/kishibojin】 (n) Hariti (goddess of childbirth and children)
子 shi: child
母 bo/mo: mother

鬼神 【きしん(P); きじん(P); おにがみ kishin/kijin/onigami】 (n,adj-no) fierce god

牛鬼蛇神 【ぎゅうきだしん gyukidashin】 (n,adj-no) wicked and perverse; weird and incoherent
牛 gyu: cow
蛇 da: snake

神算鬼謀 【しんさんきぼう shinsankibou】 (n) inscrutable stratagem; ingenious scheme
算 san: calculate
謀 bou: strategy

神出鬼没【しんしゅつきぼつ shinshutsukibotsu】 (n,adj-no) appearing in unexpected places and at unexpected moments; elusive; phantom
出 shutsu: come out (appear)
没 botsu: without (disappear)

Bonus sentence I found after the video (figure it out on your own :p):
断じて行えば鬼神も之を避く 【だんじておこなえばきしんもこれをさく】 (exp) (id) Where there's a will, there's a way

Let's Yoji: The road ahead

前途 (zento) is a word that expresses one's prospects, or the path in life that lays ahead. It shows up in a few interesting yoji, so let's take a look at some breakdowns. I'll separate them into first the statements of a tough road, and then the statements of a more optimistic future.

前途遼遠

前 zen: front
途 to: road
遼 ryou: distant
遠 en: distant
遼遠: remote, far off
gloss: one's goal is far off; the dream has a long way to go
part of speech: keiyoudoushi (na-adj)
--

前途多難

多 ta: many/multi
難 nan:hardship
多難: many hardships
gloss: grim prospects; the road ahead will be tough
PoS: keiyoudoushi

I'm sure people follow these two yoji up with, "...でも頑張りましょう" (but hey, let's do our best!).

Here's some positive ones. They are all about the same, so I combined the gloss. Also note all the shared kanji and definitions within these words (多 appeared above).

前途多望

望 bou: ambition, hope, aspirations, etc.
多望: promising
PoS: keiyoudoushi
--

前途有望

有 yuu: exist, possess
有望: promising
PoS:keiyoudoushi
--

前途有為

為 i: advantage, benifit (and many more)
有為: promising
PoS: keiyoudoushi OR no-adj
--

前途洋々

洋 you: ocean
々: ditto mark
洋々: vast (doubling up words is a kind of plural in Japanese)
--
gloss of them all: to have a bright future

If we want to look outside of the 前途, we can also make a bonus yoji that shares kanji with the above, 有為多望, which is a synonym for our optimistic words.

One last one that is very close to these but lacks a 途 is:

前程万里

程 tei: extent, degree
万 ban: myriad, everything
里 ri: the Japanese mile
万里: a great distance
gloss: bright future, limitless possibilities.

Let's Yoji: 屍山血河

Yesterday I brought news of the Evil Dead Japanese musical. I can't help but wonder if the Japanese Ash will utter the word 屍山血河 (shizanketsuga) after carving a swath through some deadites. Tell us what the words mean before we kill you Clay! Okay! Time for the B-b-b-b-breakdown!

The breakdown for 屍山血河

屍 shi: corpse (an uncommon kanji)
山 san (rendakued to zan): mountain
血 ketsu: blood
河 ka (rendakued to ga): river (an older character than the usual 川)
collective gloss: mountains of corpses and rivers of blood
rank: super rare= impress your Japanese friends
alternative spellings: 尸山血河
alternative readings: しざんけっか

Though this yoji has little practical application, I find it cool. That first kanji, 屍, is found in some good words for us supernatural buffs. For instance 僵屍 (kyonshi, usually written in katakana because them kanji is teh hards) which is the word for Chinese hopping vampire. You may enjoy a post I did recently about the Hopping Vampire boom of the 80s.
Another cool word is 生ける屍 (ikerushikabane), meaning the living dead. I found a book named 生ける屍の死　(death of the undead) that looks promising; I'll tuck it into my wishlist for now in preparation for when my life gets resurrected from study hell.

Another cool yoji that shares the concept and this 屍 character is 死屍累々(shishiruirui).

The breakdown for 死屍累々

死 shi: death
累 rui: accumulate, trouble
々: kanji ditto mark
累々ruirui: in heaps
collective gloss: piles of bodies
rank: common enough to be understood

This one easy to remember because of how it's said. I think these days you'll see it used most in video games or to describe the reader count of this blog.

[J source]

Yoji: Two Yoji with One Stone

Everybody knows 一石二鳥 (issekinichou: killing two birds with one stone), but did you know there is an equivalent 4 character idiom out there, and it is also common? Allow me to introduce you to 一挙両得 (ikkiryoutoku). How is it different? I'll just have to do two yoji with one breakdown!

The breakdown on 一石二鳥

一: one
石: stone
二: two
鳥: bird(s)
frequency: high

On 一挙両得

挙: action
一挙: (adv) in one action
両: both
得: gain
両得: double gain
rarity: common

So there we see... eh? My erudition alarm just went off! It seems we have another equivalent term! 一挙両全 (ikkiryouzen)! Ah, now the breakdown alarm is going off too!

Bonus breakdown on 一挙両全

全:　all
両全: mutual advantage
rarity: uncommon

Well that was a short breakdown, but of course I did use the first breakdown to kill
a few birds. If there are any more in this series, drop me a line!

iPhones are Cheap in Japan Now (Kinda)

I was trying to decide if I should buy an iPhone. Softbank has brought the price down to about 5,000 yen a month (they advertise 4,000, but there are always hidden costs). Right now I think I can afford the two year contract. But who knows where I will be tomorrow? And the economy is bad. Maybe English-monkey is still a safe job. But I am a free-lancer. That is the opposite of secure. But the cool apps! Think of the apps!
And so it went...
My friend called me "優柔不断" (yujyufudan) when he heard me moaning thus. Why? Let's have a yoji breakdown to explain:

The breakdown for 優柔不断

優: gentle
柔: soft
不: lacking
断: decision
優柔: indecisiveness (only seems to be found as part of this yoji)
不断: indecisive
collective gloss: wishy-washy, flip-flopper, indecisiveness
Rarity: Not too uncommon (Google hits: about 900 thousand)
Part of speech: 形容動詞 (na adjective)

So I'm pretty sure that I have decided to get the iPhone. Ostensibly for the improvement to lifestyle. Oh, I feel little resolve though...
As I was searching around for uses of this yoji, I saw this video which reminds me of another 優柔不断な私にとって (for the indecisive me) hard decision. Whether to get a bunny. I've waffled about it on the blog before, in a post about bunny-related Japanese slang.

Follow-up: The Criticism Yoji

Remember the super rare yoji I posted the other day? I presented it to a teacher here at my school. She had never seen it, but the advantage of going to a school for learning Japanese is that the teachers joyfully look into things for you (the rest of the populous doesn't know a 動詞 from a 助詞). Anyways, when we describe harsh criticism of a public figure by the media, we can use the term バッシング (bashing), which is a suru verb. Also, it appears you can use it the same way you would say "America bashing" or "Japan bashing" in English.

Let's Yoji: 口誅筆伐

In this new feature, I'm going to start explaining interesting yojijukugo (hereafter to be referred to as yoji) that I find from time to time, hopefully without stepping on the Daily Yoji guys' toes.

口誅筆伐 (kouchuuhitsubatsu) is made of four characters that one doesn't often see together--making it an advanced sucker in my book.

The breakdown on 口誅筆伐

Kanji:
口: speech
誅: death penalty
筆: writing brush
伐: punish
Frequency: Freakin rare
Impressiveness factor: Too rare! Natives will have no idea what this means (so no dice unless you can write it and explain it).
Japanese explanation: 言葉と文章で激しく批判・攻撃すること。
ある事件や人物に対して、報道機関が容赦なく批判を浴びせる喩え。
English gloss: through words or writing, harshly criticizing, judging, and attacking.
Part of speech:Noun.

So by words and writing, one condemns another. These days, this compound, when used at all, seems to describe the attacks of the mass media on public figures. So why did I choose to introduce such a hard yoji? Because the thread where I found it had a great picture as seen above, and commentary to go along with it that amused me. But please don't criticize me too harshly for the choice, for any yoji can stimulate a Japanese-studier's brain.

--
Bonus challenge: Can you use it in a sentence? For that matter, can you find a good example sentence online? Like I said, it's rare...

Bakemono

You see what happens when you let paperwork pile up?!

Been enjoying some things recently related to Japan's indigenous demons (I interchangably say yokai, bakemono, and so on). From the list at The Obakemono Project (highly recommended), I get the sense that Japanese people didn't trust anything if it got old enough way back when. Maybe that's why houses are built so shoddily (read: ready to be demolished after about 30 years and paper-thin) in the countryside to this day; let a house get old enough and it won't get haunted, but it will get animate and terrorize the good cucumber-farming peasants! My conjecture. I don't think I've run across a record of a house-demon (お化け家?）yet .

Lately, found this boys' manga, which despite the silly haircut, is pretty sold for a boys' manga. From it, I learned a new 4 character idiom: 魑魅魍魎 (chimimouryou) spirits of the rivers and mountains, or in other words, all the yokai of the land. These days, it is often used to describe the profane world with it's politics, money-hungry businesses, and bullying. One idiom often uttered in such situations is 魑魅魍魎が跳梁跋扈する (the demons are rampant). Or, to use another yokai-flavored idiom, I bet one could say 魑魅魍魎が百鬼夜行する (pretty much the same, though you could say it means the demons are plotting). Google says it's okay!
To learn more about 百鬼夜行, go here. BTW, Jeff, if you ever read this post, know now that you have the onus of explaining 跳梁跋扈; I'm not the guy with a yo-ji blog.

Finally, you might also like these old prints of Japanese creepies available online.

My personal idiom

If you had to choose on idiom to describe yourself, what would it be? I'm talking 四字熟語 here, but naturally I don't expect everybody, even Japanese people to know them. Anyways, mine is 神出鬼没. It kinda means appear like a god and disappear like a demon. And that kinda means just randomly pop in and out of places in a surprising way*.
I chose it because I have some sort of ethereal ability to sneak up on people. Interestingly, I don't think I always had this ability, but possibly got it from a movie. I can't remember what the movie was✝, but in it a cop was describing a tense showdown with a person that had a gun or something. He described pulling back his presence and trying not to exacerbate the situation. When he finally spoke, he startled the person who had somehow forgotten he was there. I thought it was a pretty cool scene at the time, and after that, as if I had somehow learned the technique, I mysteriously started surprising people. Usually people will freak out because they never hear me coming. I can't really turn it off, and I have no conscious control over it, so it's not that useful for situations where I want to be stealthy. Which brings us to the next part.
There is another aspect to the appearing, and so there is another part to my presence. That thing about coming in like a god. I am also very visible. Especially in classroom settings. Whether they liked me or (more rarely, thank goodness) hated me, teachers always took notice of me. People form strong impressions of me. I can't call it charisma, because it's not necessary positive. The problem is only worse in Japan, where I am very visible (yet I still sneak up on everybody here). Anyways, that's how I appropriate the god portion of the idiom. Then I disappear...
In daily life, I use my odd foreign part time teacher status to appear around the school, investigating how things work or being seen reading books. I also don't like attention that much and so do my exiting like a phantom quite often. I remember someone in college complaining that I thought I was Batman. Sorry commissioner, no time for small talk.
--
*: Some other definitions--incidentally this is one of the first four character idioms I ever learned in Japan:

現れたり隠れたり所在が知れないことをいう。

Appearing in unexpected places and at unexpected moments; with phantom-like agility and elusiveness

✝: If anybody know that movie, let me know.

もののあわれ

Props to Jeff for not only reminding me that it was firefly season, but also learnin' me a bit about some fancy nippongo words.
So let me summarize: From Jeff, I learned the word 諸行無常, which is a Buddhist concept of the inevitable impermanence of things. Which reminds one of もののあわれ, the appreciation of the impermanence of things, as illustrated by short-lived fireflies and sakura blossoms (life is short, therefore beautiful--Jeff seemed to contend that this is a depressive thing, but as the Hopeless Romantic, I am inclined to put my sad-is-beautiful spin on it).　もののあわれ finds it's origins in The Tale of Genji, whereas 諸行無常 finds it's genesis in the tale of Heike--which is about the Heike and Genji clans' war (they used to have different names, but this is the convention now). By the way, Mr. Heike and Mr. Genji sit in that image on the title bar of this very blog these days.
Now oddly enough, when I went up into the mountains to view fireflies, I met an old lady associate of mine. She informed me then that fireflies, the reminders of もののあわれ, are split into two types: Heike and Genji. Is this a coincidence, or did the bug naming guys have the two tales, concepts, and clans in mind, due to relationships of impermanent sayings? Who knows. Anyways, I thought it was neat.
I was informed that there was going to be a firefly festival in the same spot the next night, so I returned. There was a band and food and everyone eying me as usual--at one point I was forced to dance for the crowd with my old lady friend, this is the wages of easy wages in a foreign land, so no real surprise there.
I mentioned もののあわれ to a guy that was buddying* me, and he seemed impressed, saying Japanese people these days don't know about that. Judging on how people acted that night, I am inclined to agree. During the music and lottery portions of the evening, everyone stayed off to the side of the riverbank, in the lights where one can hardly see fireflies. Some of the children played in the river, but came up for the raffle when it was dark. When the event ended, almost everyone just left. No actual going down to the river to look at the reason why we were there. I was astounded; here we have these little wonders of nature, and nobody cares.
And far be it for me to think I am doing the Japanese thing better than the Japanese do (though sometimes I wonder if that is how the impremanence of this culture is going to manifest: in the hands of a few foreigners). I was just confused why people don't stop to enjoy the sights. After all, our time on this world is fleeting, and therefore beautiful.
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Incidentally, I ran into a barbecue while wandering about the rivers that night, and not only ate strips of, but was given a huge chunk of boar meat. I made boar meat chili with it. Yum. Oddly un-porky.
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*buddying: The process of giving unwanted food, drinks, and 30 years-unused-English-skills to a foreigner who is just trying to enjoy the quiet majesty of nature. Also known as gawk-blocking.