Names and Addresses

Are feelings emotions and facial expressions universal across borders, happy, sad, etc..?
I think that many of the facial expressions are universal. You can tell 'happy' or 'sad' when many different kinds of people make their face, but 'confused' or 'puzzuled' are difficult to tell I guess. Japanese people of course use facial expressions, but compared to people in the US or Italy it's not so obvious. We should show what we think useing our flexible face!


This is the list of names of feelings in Japanese
1. 嬉しい : happy
2. 悲しい : sad
3. 楽しい : pleased
4. 寂しい : lonely
5. 驚く : surprised
6. がっかりする : dissapointed
7. いらいらする : irritated
8. 腹が立つ : angry
9. 怖い : scared
10．あたたかい : warm

Are there any feelings in Japanese that cannot be translated into English?
Yes. When I think of my boyfriend, I feel this. I miss him, feel lonely, sad, but also feel like I'm in the bottom of some hole. I feel like my heard is way heavy. I say this 'kurushi' in japanese, but in English it means tough, trying, hard like that. I don't know these fit the way I feel.

Q1.How do you choose a child's given name in your family?
People think their child's name carefully. If the given name fits the first name is important, but especially in Japan, we have 'kanji'. So, we think of also how they look and kanji's meaning. I'm going to get married American guy, so he/she is going to have English name, so first I'm going to look at English names (which name is popular? which name has what meaning?) then, after that I would like to give some japanese name like Susan did. It's cool if my child has a kanji name.

Q2. Does your given name or family name means anything?
My mother told me before how decided my name. There is a famous comic called 'Kyojin no Hoshi' in Japan. It's about the professional baseball and the guy who plays in Kyojin as a pitcher.
In it, there is a girl who named same as mine. I heard from my mother that that girl was really kind and ...I forgot, but she wanted me to be like her and the kanji was really good and fit my last name. So, now when I told my first name to people whose age as same as my mother, they say 'Oh, it's same as her!!'. I tell this story and they say 'you got a nice name.' Everyone like her, so when I tell this story, I feel good!

Q7. How do you know if names are boys' name, girls' name, or both?
In Japanese, there are some kanji which means boy or girl. '美' means beautiful. It's usually used for girls. People usually put like this '○○美'. My grandfather has this, so it looks like a girl's name though. '太' means thick or strong. It's used for boys like '○○太'. Recently, people use difficult kanji which isn't used so much, so I can't tell immediately or I can't even read their names. However when I hear names, I judge names by sound if it's cure, or strong something like that.

When You Greet People.....

Recently, I often hear people who is Moslim try to show that there are many good people and ask us don't think what only a few bad people do in the US or Iraq. The only thing I can know about those countries or people is Internet or TV, but I thought sometimes we should have courage to doubt what media say. Thanks to Kathy, I got a good impression about Islam and she made me change my opinion.


1. How do you greet people in your life? Is it different for different people?
Yes.
When I greet my really close friends, I say 'hello' and wave hands. Sometimes I touch their shoulder. but I don't like to touch people so much, because if someone who is Japanese do that to me, I would be surprised for a second.
When I greet older people like my boss at work, teachers, neighbor , I would say 'hello, how are you?' in polite way. I would use different phrase to each person to show how to think of them.

2. Do you touch people when you talk to them? Why? Or Why not?
As I said already to my friends, I would probably touch them, because when I see them by accident and I want to show that I am happy to see them. but even I don't touch you, don't worry!!! It doesn't mean that I don't think you are not my friends at all!!! haha