Pawprinted Pages

i feel like the problem with this question is best illustrated by a conversation i had with a friend a while back, where i said something like, "i feel very safe with you because you don't do subtle hints and you are always very straight-up with me about what you are thinking and feeling."

Some background: Japanese is written with a mix of kana (which are phonetic characters that each represent a sound) and kanji (more complex characters which have both a meaning and often multiple possible sounds).

But little kids aren't expected to know every kanji yet, and there can be obscure words or names with oddball pronunciations that would puzzle any reader. So you can also put some small kana alongside the kanji to tell people how to pronounce it. Those are called furigana, and they're common in a lot of manga for youngish audiences.

As an example, here's the kanji 神 (meaning "god") with the furigana that say かみ (kami) in case you didn't know how to spell that one in kanji yet:

But at some point someone figured out that, hey, you don't HAVE to have the furigana match the kanji. There's nothing stopping you from just...

Using a foreign or made-up word but with a built-in definition: the kanji 祓魔師 (exorcise-demon-professional) pronounced as the English word エクソシスト (ekusoshisuto = exorcist)

Letting a character talk to himself really literally: 俺 (me) with the furigana おまえ (omae = you). You, by which I mean me,

Harping on the fact that you have a light themed villain this arc: 光 (light) but with the OTHER WHOLE KANJI 闇 (darkness) as the pronunciation. Darkness, but our darkness is Different because it's actually Light...

Clarifying what someone means like a little parenthetical statement: 俺達 (us/we) pronounced イルミナティ (iruminati = Illuminati). We, the Illuminati...

And many more. Those were just examples from Blue Exorcist that I already had saved to my hard drive. I cannot emphasize enough how much manga likes to create double meanings this way.

As you might imagine, this can be awkward to translate into a language that doesn't have even the slightest concept of furigana.

Usually you end up doing something that either ignores it (just pick the word that was most important of the two, or use the made up word but only define it the first time) or gets the job done but feels a bit like a cop-out (list both words, or put one in parentheses after the other)

But not always. Not in this one case from the first chapter of Blue Exorcist, translated for Viz by John Werry:

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

When I first moved out most my meals were instant ramen. Then I started adding 1 egg to that ramen to get a little protein in. In a couple months, 1 egg became two. Then it was 2 eggs and 1 chopped green onion. Then a couple months later I was adding carrots and other vegetables. In about two years I was able to skip the instant ramen part altogether and now use chicken broth and noodles and I’m basically making a ramenesque soup from scratch when I’m craving ramen. It took 2+ years total of just gradually, one at a time, adding one ingredient. Over a period of months/weeks.

Start with where you’re able. If a sandwich is too much, maybe try just a piece of bread and some meat or cheese. Focus on where you can be gradually introducing more nutrients into your body. 1 slice of deli meat. A couple weeks later, that plus 1 slice of cheese. Then 1 vegetable. Maybe they don’t all make it into sandwich form and that’s ok. But if you keep what’s the most basic and simple for yourself and slowly add 1 thing that’s not too much of a hassle, over a couple months you might start toasting the bread before putting cheese and meat on it. Then one day there’s more vegetables. Years down the line you might find yourself owning a panini press or slicing your own bread.

Most of us will never be gourmet chefs and that shouldn’t be the goal. You might not ever get to the point where you own a panini press. But the more important thing is that you’re finding ways that work, for you, gradually, in order to make your meals more nutritious. The expectation to cook a full, unique meal every night for dinner is a relatively new phenomenon and completely unrealistic for most people. Having the same 3 things you can make consistently and keep on rotation is plenty fine, especially if you get to the point where you can mix it up a little bit by adding ingredients in the method stated above. Feeding yourself should be the #1 goal, getting more nutrients in #2, and stepping it up to the next level #3 when you have the capacity to. Like with a lot of things, it’s really just about consistency. Start with where you can be consistent. If that’s 1 meal a week you cook yourself and the rest is hot pockets, but you can do that 1 meal consistently, then that’s where you start. Then when you have that down, maybe try two (of the same) meals a week, or ask what you can add to your hot pocket to make it a little better for you. (Some vegetables on the side for instance).

But this thing does all the work. I can quarter an onion half in like five seconds, and have it chopped into small pieces in 15 seconds by slapping this bad boy on the hood.

Pre-prepared foods can help, too. Jarred minced garlic isn't quite as good as fresh imo, but saving myself 15 minutes of peeling garlic and mincing it by hand means I actually use it and cook stuff because I don't have to mince garlic by hand, so it's worth it. There's even whole cloves like this now, if I want to mince but not peel, or if I need cloves not minced.

I also think that like... Finding actually simple recipes (difficult, but possible) helps. I just recently had to sift through a ton of recipes to find just one that was simple enough pickles for my taste. I just wanted to pickle some cucumber. Nothing fancy! I picked up cucumbers and dill at the produce market and wanted pickles. But every recipe I was finding had all these extra steps and ingredients that made it seem like so much work and complicated. But it wasn't! When I finally found a bare bones recipe, it was "put water, vinegar, salt, and sugar into a pot, bring to a boil and cool, pour into jars with cucumbers and dill, refrigerate 1-2 weeks" and I added garlic, because I had garlic. It didn't need to be more complicated than that. But everyone was making it seem really complicated and if I had to do all that crap I would never have made pickles.

So if you're struggling, take something you have to do and are struggling with and 1) ask if there's a tool/method to make this task easier, 2) ask if there's a pre-made version of ingredients or even a base item, and 3) ask if there's a simpler recipe.

For example your Sandwich is too much- 1) there's not really a tool to make this easier but 2) there are some frozen premade sandwiches/burgers that you could always thaw/heat and later on add something to and 3) like the person above said, you can just eat the ingredients, you don't have to put them into sandwich form. It's basically a charcuterie board at that point, and if you 2) keep some eating-ready nuts on hand you can add a handful of those and maybe later on 2) fruit that doesn't take prep like grapes (or very little prep, like an apple you can 1) cut with an apple slicing tool), and now you've gone and turned "a sandwich is too much" to "fancy little dinner involving sandwich ingredients." For less effort than a sandwich.

Of the bills. The responsibility. The emotional labor. The constant pressure of trying to make life work for themselves and the people they love.

* yes, I’ve had it and been sequestered

* yes I’ve had it but I haven’t been sequestered

* I’ve been called for it but I was never assigned to a trial

* I’ve never been called for jury duty (even though I’m eligible)

* not eligible for jury duty/my country doesn’t have jury duty

* it’s complicated

* see results

source: https://selftaughtjapanese.com/2014/03/19/research-results-homophones-in-japanese/