The Economist on Machine Translation

There's a blog I follow called Hanzi Smatter, where readers send in pictures of tattoos in Japanese and Chinese, and the author explains their meanings. Spoiler: most of the time they are either gibberish or mean something other than what the inked subject originally thought they meant.

Anyway, the blog was mentioned last month in an Economist article about machine translation. Being that I do a bit of translation myself and am considering it as a possible career in the future, this is an area of great interest to me. Namely, with the rise of computer translation engines like Google Translate, will humans someday be crowded out of this job market by computers? The Economist promised a followup article on that topic, but I haven't found it if it's been published yet and here it is.

MT has come a long way, I'll grant. But Google Translate still churns out a lot of awkward and unnatural text, if it can even get to the base meaning of something. In translations where the source and target are similar, like English and Spanish or German, I imagine improvement may be quick and dramatic. I'm skeptical that leaps and bounds will be made for languages like Japanese, Thai, and Chinese or Korean paired with English. Here's a comment from the article that I think states well this belief (criticism of the publication itself aside):

Good to see MT discussed in the Economist.

Sad to see the same tropes get dragged out all over again. Bad sign translations? Really? Only seen that one in every single online article ever written on MT in the last decade.

One would hope the Economist (of all journals) would write something far more insightful than the 4,757th article full of gasping glee over "magic" technology or how much money Dell saved by using MT. (Ever wonder why Dell is the only TAUS company that keeps getting quoted over and over? Not that many "success stories," it turns out.)

OK, let's review a few dirty little secrets. They can be very revealing.

Dirty little secret #1. There is almost zero money in commercial-market MT. It's a barren desert of "consultants" and shockingly little cash flow. Every company that dips its toes into the water realizes that it cannot survive on hype and no cash. All the VC cash is pouring into platforms for human translation. There is a reason for this.

Dirty little secret #2. Human translation is a $34 billion global market with billion-dollar segments (law, finance, banking, marketing, media, government) where MT -- the perfect technology for fast, cheap and good enough -- will never work.

Dirty little secret #3. The engine driving MT is human translation. Google works by leveraging existing human translations in its databases and only when nothing is there does it lean on predictive algorithms. Hence, the massively uneven quality. If you subtracted all that human-translated content, Google would be a gibberish-producing laughingstock.

Oh, and Google itself does not use Google Translate for its own materials. Who would be silly enough to do that?

If this article were on Internet privacy, we would have just read the version the NSA wants us to read.

I would hope the Economist would get more serious as a journalistic enterprise in exploring the far more fascinating story (the real one) instead of the one just spoon-fed to it by organizations like TAUS, which have their own agenda.

My own brief followup anecdote:

At work, my colleagues and I find and clip articles from major US publications relating to developments in the telecom industry or telecom public policy. Each day we send the ones we choose to a translator, who sends them back in Japanese. Recently we were told by our Factiva (a publication aggregating service that we subscribe to) account representative that there is a tool within the interface that allows for some articles to be translated to Japanese. I expressed skepticism, but she told me she was confident that they would be of good quality and to check out the tool. I did so, and this is what I found -

Ta-daaa!

Their fancy tool is actually just Google Translate. And thus I lost confidence that our account representative really knows what she is talking about.

Falling

You know, I keep intending to pick back up the pace around here and really get rolling again. And yet June is nearly over and this is post #2 for the month. Oi. I guess between having a girlfriend now and dividing my free time between gaming and productive outlets like translation, my energy to blog has suffered. 許してね。

I think I've talked about how when it comes to manga and Japanese reading, I prefer somewhat educational fare. Often they're called コミックエッセイ (comic essays). There's one I've been picking away at on and off for about a year now. Usually I go through them quicker, but this one is a little more difficult than the likes of ダーリンは外国人 (My Darling is a Foreigner) and 日本人の知らない日本語 (Japanese that Japanese People Don't Know). This one is called 意外に知らない間違いやすい漢字 (Unexpectedly Easy to Mistake Kanji), and as you might expect, the subject matter contains a lot of difficult kanji distinctions. Still, interesting material.

Throughout the book, characters talk with their teacher about Japanese characters, words, and expressions that perplex them or that they're unsure of. There's one frame at the end of a chapter where a character humorously mixes up two 四字熟語 (4-kanji compound idioms) about falling and is corrected by an old woman. That's what I wanted to share today.

In English we have expressions like "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" and "if you fall off your horse, get right back on." In Japanese, there's an idiom with a similar meaning:


七転八起 (しちてんはっき). Let's break it down for the sake of analysis. 七 (7), 転 (turn around, change; this kanji is often also paired to mean some kind of "fall"), 八 (8), 起 (get up). So somewhat literally "7 turns, 8 rises." Or stretching a little further, if you fall 7 times, get up 8. This expression is sometimes used to denote that life is full of ups and downs, but also as encouragement to keep trying.


On the other side of things...


七転八倒 (しちてんばっとう). Again we see 七転 (7 turns), plus 八 (8) 倒 (fall, collapse). So this time we have 7 "turns" or falls, and 8 more falls or "collapses." This basically means someone writhing in agony; they've fallen 7 times and collapsed 8 times (I picture someone doubling over and then falling completely afterwards instead of getting up).

I can't think of any similar English expressions for that second one. Any ideas?

10 Colors

Although they may not come up super frequently, Japanese expressions and sayings can be fun to learn. One of the first ones I remember learning is 一石二鳥 (いっせきにちょう) - "two birds with one stone." That's also a good example of 四字（熟語）- an expression made up of four kanji. There are tons of these yoji.

If you're familiar with the expression それぞれ, which can be used to mean "to each his own," then here's another yoji for you:

十人十色

1, 2, 3...close enough.

If you've studied some basic kanji, you should be able to recognize these ones and maybe glean the meaning to be found here. 十人十色 (じゅうにんといろ）is made up of:

十 - 10
人 - people
十 - 10 (again)
色 - color

So 10 people, 10 colors. 10 people each have their own color. Each individual has his own likes and preferences. To each his own.

Alc: 十人十色

Should you study how to write Japanese by hand?

Sure! Why not?

Oh, do you mean: "is it worth my time to study how to write Japanese by hand?" Then no, probably not. Unless your job is testing calligraphy brushes for quality assurance.

I didn't always feel this way.

I started to seriously study Kanji a little over a year ago when I did Heisig's RTK1. Ever since then, writing hundreds of characters a day has been a huge part of my studying routine. I didn't give this much thought before starting. It just seemed like what I was supposed to do if I would ever achieve my goal of being "good" at Japanese. I was always taught the importance of The Three R's in school: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (my teacher wasn't a good speller). So then, doesn't reading and writing go together? Isn't that what literacy means: being able to read and write? The answer is yes because that's the definition. Someone might be able to read every book there is and still be illiterate according to a dictionary (which they could also read). Keeping this in mind I kept writing and writing and writing. Without realizing it I started to spend more time writing than I spent reading or studying new vocab and grammar.

After doing this for a year I became able to write pretty well. I can write 麒麟 and 憂鬱 without breaking a sweat; and I can even write 汗. Yet I knew I still had a long way to go since I still couldn't write every word that exists (it was a lofty goal). About a month ago I switched up my studying routine and put even more effort into writing and as a consequence even less into new grammar, vocabulary, and reviewing what I already knew. I even started a journal. It felt great since I was finally giving writing the amount of time it required (note: it requires all of time: all of time that has ever been and will be). That was until I happened upon this article on Tofugu the other day.

Koichi states that you shouldn't worry about learning how to write by hand since everyone uses cell phones and computers to communicate nowadays. The amount of time you need to study to become proficient is disproportional to how useful being proficient is. My first reaction was to push my computer away in anger as if it had gotten up in my grill. It somehow felt like a personal attack on how I had been studying for the past year. If he was right then I just wasted a lot of time. I spent the next half hour sitting in the dark, coming up with counter arguments in order to defend my year spent filling up notebooks with Kanji. I came up with two circumstances in which my study of Kanji proved undeniably useful: one time a Japanese coworker forgot how to write the Kanji for 'shoes' and asked me; the other time was when I wrote two New Year's cards in Japanese. I think I filled out a questionnaire in a restaurant once too. Hey, all that studying paid off!

So yeah, now I'm all but cutting out writing from my routine. I've put the emphasis on vocabulary and started reading a new book. I have so much more time now to focus on studying other aspects of Japanese that I haven't quite worked out where to allocate it all, but having too much time is one of those problems you want to have.

I am definitely not saying you should completely forgo learning how to write Japanese. You should know how to write Kanji correctly since you do actually have to write by hand from time to time, like for New Year's cards. I still swear by and highly recommend doing the Heisig system for many reasons beyond writing. After the four to six months it takes to get through RTK1 you will be as good at writing as you will probably need to be. Then if you ever need to fill out a form or something and you inevitably forget a Kanji compound, look it up on your phone and then write it. I go more into why I love Heisig so much here.

What do you guys think about writing by hand? Is it worth studying?

Watch out for chikans

ちかん (chikan) is a Japanese word that you'll hopefully never have to use in daily life (except maybe jokingly), but that it pays to know. It means "pervert" or "molester." Stories of train chikan abound in Japan.

Joe (who just recently returned to Japan from a stint in the States and honeymoon) spotted the sign above and sent it to me. I can't remember ever seeing any signs like this, but apparently they're around. It says 「ちかんに注意」, "Watch out for molesters." Not the most flattering sign to put up in your neighborhood. Kind of conjures up images of villains decked out in trench coats, shades, and fedoras, stalking around the neighborhood looking for people to molest. I think it's really meant more to warn parents about letting their kids wander around alone lest they get picked up by an unscrupulous stranger, but still...

I don't think I've ever seen the kanji for ちかん used anywhere, so I was curious and looked it up. Kind of strange combo. 痴漢.

痴 seems to mean foolish or idiotic. 漢 is a character often used to mean "Chinese" but that more basically means "man." The dictionary also says "honorable man." I just can't quite get the connection there. Molester = foolish honorable man? Hmmm...

Soba Ale

There's this large liquor warehouse near where I'm living now that has all kinds of interesting drinks. The last time I was there, I saw a beer brewed in Oregon with a label entirely in Japanese...I wish I still had the photo, but it seems to have gotten lost in the void.

I went back  the other day to look for that beer and didn't have any luck, but I did see this other interesting one.

Morimoto Soba Ale. Note that it's not a Japanese product. I didn't try it this time, but perhaps I'll give it a go in the future. Always interesting to see kanji in the wild, though, especially outside of Japan.

Kanji? More like Yawn-ji: My journey in learning Japan's written language

I'm very excited to be able to contribute to the 2011 May Japan Blog Matsuri and I want to thank NipponTheBus for hosting this month. His choice of topic for this Matsuri caught my eye since Kanji is something near and dear to my heart. Though, it didn't start out that way.

I live in Japan. I moved here three years ago, giving up friends, family, a good job, and my country. I did this for a couple reasons but at the top of the list in bold font was TO LEARN JAPANESE. I didn't like being the typical example of 4 years of mandatory American high school foreign language class: knowing that the Spanish equivalent of my name is Jose, being able to say "donkey" (why did we all learn that?), and knowing a couple naughty words. I wanted to be bi-lingual and Japanese was the language that fascinated me. Immersion is the way to go, right? So leaving everything I knew, I went off to a strange new country with the main goal of mastering a foreign language. But of course I didn't want to put in a lot of effort.

After arriving I soon picked up my first textbook: Minna no Nihongo Romaji Edition. Romaji, as most of you know, is Japanese not annoyingly written in Japanese. In fact, it's these characters right here. Aren't they easy? It was excellent! I could dive right into learning Japanese without all the bother of actually becoming literate. Right off the bat I could say "Watashi wa Joe desu" and state to the world that "As for me, I am (politely) Joe." It was an exciting time when every word I learned increased my knowledge of Japanese by a good percentage. But all was not well. My aversion to Japan's written language while studying had quickly led me to be able to order in a restaurant, but it didn't actually give me the ability to read menus. This limited my choice of restaurants to ones with pictures. I've even taken a photo with my mobile phone of the plastic display model of the meal I wanted and shown it to the waiter. Of course you can only tell so much from a picture. I'm not proud of all the horse meat I've eaten. Also one time I used conditioner as bodywash and complained about it's lack of lather.

Another pitfall I ran into while studying Japanese sans-Kanji is that memorizing words became incredibly difficult. Without these words grounded in my mind to a visual image they just became this kind of floating vagueness. They were all sounds without meaning, unconnected to anything. Imagine English if you didn't realize that rewind, remove, and remix all have the same prefix with the same meaning. Or worse, what if you assumed rewind and ridicule were related because of the similarity between 're' and 'ri'? Here's a vocab quiz for you: What's the Japanese word for 'teacher'? 'Student'? 'Menstruation'? If you answered 'sensei', 'seito', and 'seiri', you are right! Without Kanji you might not know that all those 'sei's are the same: 生. Knowing this, those words are much easier to remember. They're connected in your head so you don't have to memorize them in a vacuum. You just know what pieces go where and you build up vocab words like Legos or some other building simile. With my Romaji version of Minna no Nihongo I'd grind lonely vocab words into my brain for hours straight. Afterwards I would actually feel physically exhausted.

I continued to study Japanese in this broken way until I signed up for one-on-one Japanese lessons at my local international center. My teacher suggested I buy Minna no Nihongo. "No need!" I said, proudly pulling the textbook from my bag. She looked at the book and said, "WHAT IS THISSSSSSSSSSSS?!!" and smacked it from my hands. Actually she politely let me know I wasted $25 and lent me the actual Japanese version of my Japanese textbook until I bought my own copy. Looking at all those foreign squiggles, I could only describe them as uninviting. For the first couple lessons my teacher worked with me using flash cards to get my Hiragana and Katakana (the most simple and phonetic characters) down. At home I studied using the game Slime Forest which is a fun little RPG that helps you learn to read basic characters. It felt like a long time especially since it seemed like my Japanese studies were on pause. And even after I learned the characters, reading was still slow. But suddenly, one day, I realized I could read menus. Especially menus at foreign restaurants which are all in Katakana, the characters used almost exclusively for foreign words. I could order piza (pizza), and pasuta (pasta), and furaido poteto (fried potato: aka french fries), with ease! It was very exciting. Also I could finally tell bodywash from conditioner at the store.

Even with this new found pleasure in being able to sort of read some things, Kanji still didn't hold a great interest to me. I tried some Kanji workbooks which focused on rote memorization but I'd always quickly forget them. I was able to passively learn to read some. I could recognize the Kanji for male and female (important for restrooms), to go, the Kanji for the days of the week, and some other random ones. Most I couldn't write and none could I write well. "But what's the need, really? Everyone just uses mobile phones and computers nowadays," I reasoned. "What's the point of learning to write?" I dealt with the embarrassment of not being able to write my own address on forms with my head held high.

I continued in this vein for two years. I still tried to expose myself to as much Kanji as possible without really studying it. In emails with my girlfriend we would communicate entirely in Kanji so at least I would often see it. In truth you can get pretty far with this passive style of learning. By far I mean live in Japan and give the impression of being a functional adult. I was able to write and read the simple things my girlfriend and I would want to say to each other in emails. I could recognize the food I liked to order in restaurants and the Kanji on the ATM I needed to press to get money. But this has it's limit and I hit it. I plateaued hard. I started to no longer learn new Kanji since I didn't need to. As my Kanji learning stalled I found it affected everything. I wasn't learning many new words and even my grammar ceased to progress. I don't know what triggered it in my mind but suddenly I came to the realization that I was at a crossroad. Either I could give up and accept my mediocre Japanese, or I could dive in and succeed in what I set out to do those two years ago when I packed up and moved to Japan.

It was at this time that I came upon the site All Japanese All The Time. The proprietor of this Japanese learning establishment is Khatzumoto. Many of you might already know of this (in)famous gentleman. His creed is simply "All Japanese All The Time." Completely give up English and live entirely in a Japanese world. He did this and went from zero to fluency in eighteen months. By fluency I mean he landed an entirely Japanese job at a Japanese company in Japan and did all his work in Japanese. The amazing part is he did this while studying in America. I made my decision and abandoned English and sought Japanese enlightenment and followed Khatz like he was a Japanese-language Buddha.

The number one technique in Khatz's teachings is of course "All Japanese All The Time" but so close to this that it's basically technique 1.1 is learn the Kanji. ALL the Kanji. Well, not All all, but all the ones Japanese students learn in their ten years of schooling, about 2,050 Kanji. To do this he, and now I, heartily recommend the Heisig method. It's not easy and there are no shortcuts. It takes anywhere from three to six months (it took me five) to learn them all while studying every day for about an hour or more. Heisig is a smart guy who figured out that the reason Chinese people learn Japanese so much faster than English speakers is that they already know all the Kanji and their meanings. All they have to learn are the readings. In the Heisig method you learn how to write each Kanji plus its meaning given as one English keyword. But no readings. So in the end, after studying for 6 months or so you'll be on par with a Chinese person, but you won't be able to read a word. Sounds great (I say sarcastically)! But in reality it works incredibly well. All the Kanji you would confuse because they look similar are now no longer confusing since you know what each means. You start to notice that a bunch of words (like teacher, student, and menstruation) all have the same Kanji in common, making them easy to remember. But the best part which is endlessly fascinating to Japanese people is that you, a foreigner, can actually write your address now.

Two notebooks filled with Heisig practice Kanji

One of the most important points of the Heisig system is the order in which the Kanji are taught. Each Kanji is made up of a bunch of smaller Kanji pieces called radicals. Heisig ordered them in such a way that it feels like you're constantly building on Kanji you've learned before so you never have to rely on pure rote memorization. Also a big part are the mnemonics that break each Kanji into a little story. You use the story for awhile when writing but eventually you get to the point where you just remember and you don't need it any more.

I finished Heisig two months ago but I still study my Kanji every day for maybe a half hour so I don't lose it. Since finishing I read a lot more and get a lot out of watching Japanese movies with Japanese subtitles. I can't believe how quickly my Japanese is improving now that I'm completely comfortable with Kanji.

This has been a long post and I congratulate you for making it to the end! As a reward I'm going to give you some of my unsolicited advice. If you're studying Japanese, whether you just started or are a couple years into it, learn from my mistakes and do Heisig ASAP. If Heisig was the first thing I did when I came to Japan I know I'd be completely fluent by now. I wasted two years half-arsing it. There are no shortcuts but there are ways that are better than others. And the key to Japanese is through Kanji.

Name the movies

Crank it up! This one is for you movie buffs out there. Think I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but I'm tickled every time I see this scene (and the rockin' music doesn't hurt).

Can you name both the movie this screen capture is from and the classic it's giving a nod to?

Update: Highlight the bars below to see the answers.




As Tokyo Five pointed out in the comments, this is a reference to This is Spinal Tap, with an amp that goes up to 11. The scene capture is from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, as Shadow said. In this particular scene, the Sex Bo-Bombs battle the Katiyanagi Twins, who at one point turn their amps up to 11.

Kanji Cameo

I just saw Scott Pilgrim vs the World  with Joe. It's a shame it didn't do better at the box office - though it wasn't perfect, it was jam-packed with nerdy references, had a good soundtrack, and was pretty funny (I thought) in its own right.

Anyhow, there's this one scene I wanted to point out to any of you who have seen or intent to see the movie - watch for this! During Scott's battle with two Japanese rockers, when it's time for them to get serious, they turn up the dial on their amps to 11. Great reference. Made even better by the fact that the dial's numerals are in kanji, so "11" is displayed as 十一.

My first Hanshin Tigers game...

...was a waste of three and a half hours. But I will try to salvage what I can by pointing out some important kanji a little further down.

The field was in bad shape. Don't know why they couldn't do us the courtesy of canceling the game more than 30 minutes before it was scheduled to begin.

Here are two of the teachers I went with. We were sad.

The cheering section didn't want to pack it in, so like 8 guys and a chick with trumpets started leading the leftover crowd in a few cheers for a victory tomorrow.

And here's our lesson for the day, good to know if you plan on attending some event that's contingent upon the weather or other uncontrollable factors. The message displayed in white says that today's game is cancelled. The yellow kanji, 中止 (ちゅうし) are what you want to keep your eyes peeled for. 中止 - cancellation.

Ah well, I guess it could have been worse. They could have played and lost to the Giants.

Kanji is a 4 letter word

"Kanji muzukashii ne?" translates to: "Kanji is difficult, huh?" and is referring to Japan's Chinese Character based writing system. You will hear this phrase every time someone in Japan sees you studying Kanji. Even when you're not studying, someone will most likely say this out of the blue. They might just call you up to mention this. Japan's literacy rate is, like my homeland's, at 99%. So obviously Kanji can't be difficult, right? Unless this is an entire nation of geniuses, but I doubt that. That life sized Gundam they made couldn't even fly . To me, every time a Japanese person mentioned the difficulty of Kanji to me I assumed they meant "-difficult for foreigners." I was always quick to dismiss their statement as some sort of underhanded boast while thinking to myself, "Why would it be difficult for us foreigners? Are we not all the same inside regardless of where we come from? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you give us sake do we not drink?" But, I was wrong. I made a mistake. The Japanese have something on us when it comes to Kanji, and that is a decade of schooling and a lifetime of experience. Grade school for them consists of studying Kanji. Me being able to read and write English feels more like a byproduct of going to school. I never had to write a word a hundred times to make sure I knew how to spell it. But that's how it works with Kanji, with classes dedicated to just that. I had been consistently denying the difficulty of Kanji for about a year. It wasn't until I seriously started studying that things changed.

I had been sitting next to a new Japanese co-worker for about two weeks; both of us barely saying more than "Good morning" and "Goodbye". During my break I was studying some Kanji in despair. She noticed, leaned over, and obligatorily said in stuttering English, "Kanji is difficult… for foreigners… isn't it?" Never having heard this said so blatantly I stopped, looked at my paper covered in my chicken scratch hieroglyphs, and finally admitted that "Yes, it is." This acceptance was long in coming, but it set me on the right path. A journey of discovery to find the best way to study and actually remember these crazy runes.

The main problem stems from how the most common way to study (i.e. the Japanese way) doesn't work. Maybe it works when you're a young Japanese boy or girl in your tiny shorts with an empty brain that is happy to be filled with anything; even Kanji. As for my full to the brim half-middle-aged mind, memorizing anywhere from 10 - 20 random lines for every new word is impossible. That space is already taken by all the lyrics to Skee Lo's "I wish (I was a lil' bit taller)". Let's take a simple word like "hot" for example: 熱. Holy crap! It looks like you just hit a bunch of keys on a typewriter at once. I had given this way of studying a shot more than once; writing each new Kanji 20 times or so but I always ended up forgetting them the next day. This way is too time-expensive. I needed a way to save some time-money. If I invest everything that I have from my Time and Effort bank into Kanji, I'm going to go time-broke. Which I guess equals death or hypothermia or something.

But, boy, do I have an investment opportunity for you. One day you'll realize, like I did, that studying Kanji stroke by stroke is a bad deal. Have you wasted time-money and real-money on expensive Kanji textbooks and study cards? Well, do so no longer! I'll let you in on a little secret. Your job is just to share it with your friends. This will all go down like a Kanji pyramid scheme.

Go here for salvation. I talked in another article about how Japanese textbooks fail. Learning stroke after senseless stroke only brings tears, yet it is how every Kanji textbook I've seen has been set up. What you have to do is break every Kanji down into its simpler parts. Let's go back to "hot": 熱. Break that down and you get: 土, 儿, 九, 丶, 灬. There, not so bad now is it? Just put them together like you would put together letters in a word, but kind of mixed all around.

But wait! There's more!

These little symbols are called "radicals". There's over 200 of them, but they're fairly simple to learn and a lot of them are whole Kanji in themselves, almost like how "A" is a letter and a word. You get twice the usefulness for half the studying time. Now you're buying in bulk! It's like 2 gallons of Kanji mayonnaise for the price of one.

My Kanji reading and writing has shot up since I started studying this way. I gave each of those 200 my own name: "丶" is "The Touché". "屮" is "zombie hand". So when I write a Kanji like "逆" I'm just thinking, "double touché-line-zombie hand on a water slide." Simple!

That website I linked up there explains everything more in detail. I'm just letting you know that it does indeed work. So call today!

Let's enjoy Japanese: Hot and Cold

The last couple weeks have been pretty mild. There was even a day or two that got up to around 18 C (about 64 F). And then it got cold again. And rainy and miserable. Towards the end of the week, though, things may heat up again. This kind of weather isn't unusual for the end of winter in temperate climes.

The other day I learned that there is a Japanese expression for this type of weather behavior. It's even a yo-ji (word or phrase made up of a 4-kanji chain)! Ready? Here it is:

三寒四温

It's pronounced 「さんかんしおん」(sankan-shion). Literally, the kanji mean "three cold four hot." When put into its proper context, it refers to the weather cycle that follows the rough pattern of three cold days and then four warm days.

I think it's a pretty cool phrase to know, but just be warned that it's not exactly mainstream. I learned it from a teacher that I work with, and although I tried to sneak it into conversations with some of my Japanese coworkers and friends, only about half of them knew what I was talking about.

Kanji number riddle...things

A couple months ago, my friend's girlfriend taught me a couple of interesting kanji-riddle-number things, for lack of a better term. I beg your indulgence if you're not very familiar with kanji, but you may find this interesting nonetheless.

米 （こめ；べい）, usually pronounced "kome" or "bei," is the kanji for "rice." It can also mean "America." I imagine this is because America is the country with vast fields of grain. But this kanji can also mean 88 years old. Let me show you why.

八 is the kanji for "eight."

十 is the kanji for "ten."

We draw 米 by this process:

1) We draw two intersecting lines, like the kanji for 10.

2) We add two diagonal lines orginating from the intersection, like the kanji for 8.

3) We add two more diagonal lines, this time sticking up, like an upside down "8" kanji.

4) Ta-daa...here are the components: 10, 8, and 8.

I suppose since 10 x 8 + 8 = 88, 米 can represent 88 years old.

Kudos and an e-cookie for anyone who can tell me what number 白 represents and why.

Know any other kanji-riddle things like this, or if these have a proper name? If so, please share them!