The Lobster Dance

Rainy season 梅雨 has come to Japan, and with it comes a never-ending train of farewell parties for my friends leaving the Program, summer festivals, and the dreaded new version of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.  I will be spending my4 July NOT legally drinking in public with the rest of my fellow American expats but crammed in a stuffy university exam room at the mercy of JEES. However, while the parties, get-togethers, and festivals have all been a blast, between all the fun and all the studying, I haven’t had a lot of time to write. I am dying to get started on a couple big posts about class and gender in BeruBara, but, no, it’s all kanji all the time. So you can all suffer learn with me, でしょう？

魚 is fish, and it and insect 虫 are used in most names of fish and sea-creatures.

鮫　さめ　shark. A shark eats a school 校 of fish (actually 交, but it helps me to remember that they have the same right-side radical.)

鰯　いわし sardine. A sardine is weak 弱 fish.

鯨 くじら whale. A whale is a capital 京 fish because whales are huge.

鰤 ぶり yellowtail. The buri is the fish that teaches 師 you to like fish. (It doesn’t smell like fish!)

鮪　まぐろ tuna. The tuna is a fish that exists 有 everywhere. Or, the tuna is a famous （有 of 有名、famous ） fish.

鮭　しゃけ salmon. The salmon is a beautiful (second radical of 娃, an alternative for 美, beauty) fish.

鰹　かつお bonito. The bonito is a tough 堅 dried fish.

蛸　たこ octopus. Actually uses the bug kanji. An octopus is a “bug” that extinguishes light 消 with its ink. (Again, the second radical is actually肖 resemblance, but for the mnemonic, it helps me to remember that the two words have the same right-hand radical.)

Will this be on the JLPT? Probably not. However, learning fish words and food words is crucial to having a practical vocabulary set. Fish-eaters like me can figure out what’s we’re ordering at restaurants and buying at the store.  I’ll be the first to admit that shop by sight. In other words, I know my favorite organic peanut butter is the one with the raccoon on it and the tofu I like has an orange logo with a check-mark, but most of the time the actual names of the brands escape me. Since most fish looks fairly similar filleted, this was important for me to learn. For non-pescatarians and people with food allergies, learning these kanji means you can avoid all the “hidden fish” in Japanese food. (Dashi stock and okonomiyaki flour, for example, contain bonito.)

Good luck studying, everyone!　能力試験頑張ろうぜ！！！