Japanese with anime voice: episode11
Hello, I’m Sachi.
I went back to my parents’ house the other day and it was extremely cold and snowy. And it was a blizzard for a few hours. I don’t like the cold, but I still get excited when it snows. Where I live now, the temperature is relatively warmer than other places throughout the year. It rarely snows, but sometimes it falls like a dance, which is called Kazsahana in this region. Kazahana” is written “風” and “花” in Kanji. Actually, snow is falling from the top down, but it is light snow, so it falls like a dance on the wind. It looks like flower petals, which is probably why the name “Kazahana” was coined.
In my hometown, there is a word Ibukioroshi, which refers to a cold wind blowing from the direction of Mount Ibuki in the neighboring prefecture. I thought it was called Ibukioroshi when it snows, so I was going to talk about it in connection with Kazahana’s story. But before I started, I looked up Ibukioroshi and found out that it is not about snow, but about wind.
I think the sound of words like Kazahana and Ibukioroshi are lovely. I love this part of the Japanese language.
Do you have any favorite Japanese words? It doesn’t have to be a word, but if you have any, please let me know in the comments section.
An American friend of mine used to say “shitaiDANE” for “I want to do something,” and I told her that “shitai” or “shitaiyo” is more natural than “shitaiDANE.
But she said that was boring and that she preferred “shitaiDANE”. I thought that was interesting. I think that’s a good thing.
Speaking of snow, in my hometown when I was a child, it used to snow so much that we could make Kamakura (snow igloo), and there used to be many icicles on the eaves of our houses. But before I knew it, there were no more icicles, and these days it doesn’t snow that much anymore, and many years have a mild winter. We used to have snowball fights during recess in elementary school, but now my niece and nephews’ generation don’t get much snow at all, so they can’t have such games with their friends. Until I was in my early twenties, there were years when it would snow a lot.
It’s hard to shovel snow, it’s hard to get the car out of the driveway, it’s cold, and there’s nothing good about it, but when you grow up in a place where it snows every year, you want to see snow in the winter. When the snow piles up on the mountains, the scenery is just so beautiful. I always expect to see snow in winter as a seasonal tradition.
If it is too cold or too hot if half of the year is covered in snow, or if it is warm all year round and there is no snow, there is no sense of season and it is a bit boring. When I was a student in my hometown, we had hot and humid summers and moderate snowfalls in winter, so we had a good sense of the four seasons. I miss those days.
Well, I have thought that it is difficult for a woman to live alone in a snowy area. Before I moved in with my partner, I lived alone in an apartment in my hometown for about four years, but it was on the third floor. Living on the third floor of an apartment, I think it is good for women because it reduces the risk of danger. In regions where it snows, you need snow tires. The only place to keep tires in an apartment is on the balcony. The tires were too heavy for me to carry alone, and I would have to pay a storage fee even if I asked a professional store to store them for me. I started living alone in the countryside with the same intention as when I lived alone in the city, but I realized that life changes completely depending on whether you have a car or not, and whether it snows or not. Since it was so difficult to carry the tires, I kept the snow tire on the car until the summer or left the snow tire in the car. But they say snow tires hurt the asphalt, and the heavier the car, the worse the fuel economy. So it was like, what should I do? At that time, I was enjoying living alone, but well, winter life was hard.
