truth is stranger than kanji

[dr4b]

This is an "off week", really, by which I mean there's no baseball in the evenings and I haven't been proactive at all about trying to find any plans in the evenings. So I've spent most of the last two evenings just sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop, listening to music and kind of zoning out, looking at apartment listings, etc. I haven't even been blogging, which is probly bad, I need to catch up. But whatever. Tomorrow night in theory I'll be meeting up with a friend-of-friend from CMU that I've never met before that I know of who is visiting Tokyo, and then this weekend there will be baseball and other social stuff, so it's not all bad.

I actually should be using this time to catch up on email. What's wrong with me lately, that I can't seem to write emails to people? It's so weird.

Tomorrow I'll hear more about a timescale for moving, assuming it's happening. I'm not discouraged by apartment listings but I haven't tried to actually talk to any of the agents yet to see what they think of placing a foreigner in an apartment. Hrm. There ARE like 4-5 apartment agencies on my way home from work near Akabane station, too.

Yesterday I had dinner at Heiroku sushi, and today... today I had dinner at McDonald's. I dunno, it just was what I felt like getting when I came out of the station. Oh, I also went shopping at Yokado for clothes for once. Bought two shirts that I think are good to wear to school. They make me look kind of fat, but let's face it, right now everything makes me look kind of fat in my opinion (it's stupid how I'm 20 pounds lighter than I was in Seattle, but I'm 5 pounds over my weight in Japan last fall and 15-20 over where I want to be, so I feel fat).

There are a bunch of "profile" papers in the back of the classrooms at school that I'd never really noticed until today. Something neat on the 3rd-year ones is that, among other things, they had to write "your favorite kanji character", or maybe the meaning is more "a character that represents you", I'm not sure. Some are really interesting (things like 希、優、喜、静、翔) and some are obviously jokes, or at least I think they are (things like 大、日、寝).

Anyway it got me thinking about what on earth I would write, given a profile thing like that to fill out? And after a few hours I *think* what I would write would be 誠, makoto, which I guess kind of means truth/honesty/sincerity/etc. I dunno. It's a surprisingly tough question in some ways. A lot of the meaningful kanji that kids wrote were actually just part of their names that happen to mean things like joy, hope, victory, quiet, etc.

Hmm, I should go to sleep early. The Fighters won tonight and are in sole posession of first place in the PL -- awesome. It always surprises me when this happens regardless.

Comments

[kawaru.livejournal.com]

I think if you wrote 誠, people would think you're a fan of the 新撰組.

Maybe those joke ones aren't jokes. Maybe the 大 kid wants to be president, the 日 kid describes himself as Japanese, and the 寝 kid likes to sleep a lot.

[dr4b]

possibly true. Is there a better one for truth/honesty that I could use? 真 or 実 perhaps? I was thinking of the other one partially because I had baseball on my brain and it happens to be the name of one of my favorite players, too.

[kawaru.livejournal.com]

You could still go with 誠, I think it looks cool, and it probably conveys the honesty part better than most of the other possible choices. In this non-native speaker's opinion. A lot of characters have the "truth" meaning but don't really touch the concept of "honesty" so much as "reality."

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Hm. Not sure what I would use... 迷 comes to mind first, but there's got to be a better one. Perhaps one of the totally meaningless ones like 奈 or 唖 or 琲.

誠 is a good one. 誠意, 誠心, 誠実...

[isamum.livejournal.com]

誠 is fine, but as Kawaru says any semi-educated Japanese will immediately think of Shinsengumi because they had it on their banner. I think most Japanese think of 真 when they mean "truth," but 実 by itself usually brings to mind fruit or fruitfulness so probably isn't appropriate in this instance.

[the2belo.livejournal.com]

I guess mine would be 轟, not only because it means "with a roar" or "with a thunderous noise", but it's also one of the few kanji characters I just think "looks" neat. Heh.