Japanese public network NHK runs a weekly international show called J-MELO, which showcases myriad looks at the Japanese music scene to a worldwide audience. The show is conducted in English (mostly) and has been hosted by professional harpist Mai Takematsu (竹松 舞) until this past week, when she announced that she is one step closer to her dream of becoming a doctor, and that she must vacate her duty as VJ to begin her medical internship.
I have to say that I’m a little saddened by it, even though it’s clear that she is making an intelligent career move. It was very fitting that the last segment which aired during her tenure is a piano/harp duet that she played called shabondama “(soap) bubbles”. I must say that in formal wear, excluding her sometimes costume-esque TV-show wardrobe, I was surprised by how beautiful she looked. Those things aside, I’m probably going to watch J-MELO one more time to see who the new VJ is, and if it’s a guy or a girl who doesn’t match up to Mai, I probably won’t watch it anymore. I hope NHK knows what it is doing in hiring a new VJ.
Next time I’m in Japan, which is August, I may have to get sick and go see Dr. Mai.
If anyone was reading my kanji-a-day lessons, and the blog stats show that somebody other than me was, I have relocated these lessons going forward to their own, dedicated blog. I will be keeping it updated daily, so please visit it often!
The first character contains both the character for day(日) and moon(月) implying one complete day prior to the second character for day which occurs by itself.
Incidentally, the second character is also the shorthand symbol for Sunday (日曜日) pronounced nichiyoubi.
Also, the character 月 is shorthand for Monday (月曜日) and when prefixed by a number, such as 7月, represents that month (or moon) of the year.
other related terms of interest:
一昨日 ototoi: 2 days ago
昨日 kinou: yesterday
明後日 asatte: day after tomorrow
明々後日 shi-asatte: 3 days from now
I’m starting the kanji-a-day posts up again. Eventually it will become its own blog as soon as I have time to create it. Hopefully you can learn something from it. I try to share characters that a beginner to intermediate Japanese student would encounter; forget that obscure crap.
As always, your pronunciation and meaning will differ in all Chinese dialects, as what I put will be the Japanese usage.
Today’s kanji is:
You may have heard about this in one of the larger US cities since they have larger Japanese populations. I happened to be watching the show when it was on (NHK’s new years Kohaku) and I was also fooled until the very end of the song. The body suits the girls were wearing were perfectly matched to their skin color, and it was very hard to tell that they weren’t real except that the boobs you “saw” were, on average, larger than the average Japanese lady. At the very end of this song, I saw some shirt wrinkles in one of the dancers, so that is how I figured out it was fake.
Not only did I think the song was inappropriate for NHK (the equiv. of PBS in the US) being something like “I wanna bang you every day how about right now?”, but this act was way out of line. I doubt DJ OZMA will be invited back next year.
Against the Grain 