Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Patience

O machi kudasai, please wait (before the light turns green). That's written in red.
I learn a lot about patience here :). Something to ponder, here people call green light "aoi" which in fact means blue. One  more thing, I did want to cross the street when I pressed the button.
Hiro San: Hayaku (Hurry up)
Yuri San: O machi kudasai, aoi mada desu (Wait please, it's not green yet)

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Really cool post! :-)

joo said...

I like this idea. Here it just turns:)

Tall Gary said...

I love the way you caught the illuminated writing. It looks a lot like glowing neon. It is so outstanding (both the red/orange writing against the black, and your photo).

Kaori said...

Gary's right, it really is glowing! That's a great way to pass the time waiting Henny :)

I heard that the reason we call it 'blue' when it's obviously 'green' is because a long time ago Japan only had four colors: black, white, blue, and red. So we tend to call things that are green 'blue' to this day. Like green apples, we call it 'Ao Ringo.'

Tall Gary said...

So maybe yellow would have been called “gold,” light blue “sky color,” pink “peach color,”and so on. Oops. So why was there a purple (murasaki 紫) from ancient times? An accepted mix of blue and red?

Vogon Poet – 横断歩行者 are a bunch of kanji meaning pedestrian(s) {there are no plurals to speak of in Japanese}. は (wa) is that hiragana topic marker making it, in this case, to whom the instructions are directed. ボタン (botan) is katakana. Remember that katakana are usually based on foreign words? If we look at that red circular thing in the middle, what could “botan” represent? を is a hiragana (of course it’s hiragana. Look at all those curves) particle meaning you’re gonna do something with the previous word. The last four hiragana are ください< which means “please.” So that leaves those three hiragana in the middle, おして (oshite). So what do you think they are asking pedestrians to do with that red “botan”? There you have it. The meaning of the word “oshite,” (which can also be written with a kanji for the first syllable 押して)。Well, OK, “oshite” is actually the imperative form of the verb. If you want to look the word up in the dictionary it would be written as “osu.” Or 押す。Past tense would be “oshita” 押した。Polite past tense would be “oshimashita” 押しました。If you have to do it it could be written “oshinakerebanarimasen” 押しなければなりません。“If” you do it might be “oseba” 押せば。When you do it could be “osu toki” 押す時。If you intend to do it you could say, “osu tsumori desu” 押すつもりです。I want to do it “oshitai” 押したい。It goes on and on.

Can you see why those extra hiragana things are so essential?

VP said...

I like the glowing writing and the blue is green thing is really funny.

henny said...

Thanks all for your kind comments and useful information.
@Kaori, I'll pass your info to my friend :).
@Gary, you know, this is the first time I understand how to use the word correctly. I was confused with that "botan" word either, that's why I didn't dare to mention.

Ayie said...

Patience is a must virtue most esp on roads! you can never stake on darting down the streets. That's katakana right? I love jap witing!

henny said...

@ Ayie, the red glowing writing is Hiragana, Original Japanese script for Japanese word. The writing below is a combination of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana (script for borrowed words, mainly western words).

Ayie said...

Oh yeah...i totally forgot hiragana! I learnt some basics for that but never went deep that's why all I think of is katakana! hahaha! basically forgot it already... =(