I’ve been killing time this holiday enjoying some random videos on Google Video. I thought I’d share some interesting videos in Japanese in case anybody was looking for a fun way to study this holiday. Somebody was diligent enough to put English subtitles on the videos so you can enjoy them even if you don’t feel like studying Japanese.
Sushi Documentary
The first video is a “documentary” about sushi. And the word “documentary” is in quotes for a very good reason. It starts out like this.
寿司。日本の代表的スナック。それが寿司です。この寿司を食べるショップが寿司屋です。日本人のほとんどがこの店を毎日利用しています。
女性が男性に注ぎ、女性は自分で注ぎます。なるほど。侍の国ですね。
It’s quite amusing and represents, in my opinion, the image that some foreigners have regarding Japan. I remember, before I knew anything about Japan, that I used to think that Japanese was a country with very strict rules such as the appropriate angle for bowing.
The narrator speaks in a very clear, standard Japanese so people learning Japanese in a classroom should have no trouble with the style. Anyway, here are a few comments and corrections just in case.
1. Most of the Japanese population cannot afford to eat sushi everyday.
2. That’s way too much soy-sauce on the sushi. (Soy-sauce, by the way, is called 「醤油」(しょうゆ). Sometimes, it’s written as 「正油」.)
3. The wet napkin given out in restaurants to wipe your hands is actually called 「おしぼり」 and not 「雑巾」(ぞうきん), which is a cloth used to clean around the house. 「おしぼり」 comes from the verb 「絞る」(しぼる), which means to squeeze. I presume it’s because the excess water is squeezed from the cloth.
地球戦隊 フレッシュメン
Here’s another funny video featuring Shingo Katori (香取慎吾) from Smap, a “talent” group you can’t avoid here in Japan (as much as I try). This video features quite a lot of slang so those of you who learned Japanese on the streets should have no trouble. Here’s how it starts.
高校ん時の親友は、俺にこう言った。「ちょうだい?これ。お前っていいやつだよな。」 だからってわけじゃないけど、俺だって、自分のことを悪いやつなんて思ってなかった。地球を滅ぼすほどの悪いやつだなんて。
I intend to cover some of the expressions in the video such as 「というか」 and 「じゃん」 so make sure to subscribe to the feed.
I hope you find the videos as amusing as I did!
Unfortunately, the second video seems to have disappeared. I love the Sushi video, though!
Darn, the person who uploaded it must have deleted it.Hopefully somebody will put it back up again.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2447877231270015933&q=shingo
there’s the video the url may have been off. ^^
Cool, it’s back up. Thanks, I updated the link.
Awesome comedy from Ramens. I laughed till it hurt. Even the wife (who said that this was at times “yarisuigi,” though I disagree…) chuckled more than once. Most telling, since watching this video, “maa maa maa” and “ottotto” have become almost daily sayings around the household…
Ugh, so glad I misspelled “yarisugi” above. Can this site support JIS? Test – やりすぎ
Sorry for being such a pain, Web master.
Just wondering about the おしぼり thing. I drink 一番絞り sometimes and always thought it meant the first distillation. So 絞り can mean something like “filter” too? Just had a conversation about how to make sake before, so we were talking about this word.
絞る means to squeeze or wring something out. So it’s used in a variety of ways in that sense.
Here’s another one made by the same people, this time for dogeza no shikata. Now you’ll know how to grovel in the dirt properly 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB66S6KfEC0&search=dogeza