Back in Time to Old Japan

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Shinpachi said:
Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and sushi may be good but .......
Hello, Goodby, Thank You and Sorry will be more useful

???
Sorry.
Kon-nichiwa(Hello), Sayonara(Goodby), Arigato(Thank You) and Sumimasen(Sorry).
Sumimasen, minasan(guys)!
Click to expand...


Shinpachi

watashi wa sukebe nohnbei kokan kensakan, hosu bosu des



The parade I saw was like that in a town called Fukuyama, it was some anniversary for the town but thats how the girls were dressed.
 
Shinpachi said:
Wow! Who taught you such bad words, TEC
Your mom would have been surprised if she had known what it meant!
Click to expand...


Shinpachi

I worked in Japan for 6 months but also worked with Japanese in Saudi Arabia Paris and London, the phrase hosu bosu always makes Japanese laugh although it isnt bad japanese as I understand just strange for a foreigner to use.

If my mother knew what it meant she would probably agree
 

To advise or not to do so.......

The sentence sounds,
私は助平、飲ん平（アルコール中毒）、股間検査官。

Alas!
 
TEC, you dirty old man, you want to inspect what? the mods will get you, matt said they can see everything and everywhere

新八は、あなたが最後尾のチャーリーのようなlewed歳の男性によい影響することになっている。あなたのお母さんはあなたがそのような言葉を知っているか
 

Mike The answer was already in the text
kensakan is inspector .....Kokan is pipe (I work for oil pipeline projects at times)

As in NKK =Nippon Kokan =Japanese Pipe (gawd only knows what the second "K" means maybe shinpachi can say)


I cant read a single Japanese or Chinese (I was also in china) character but what I wrote in romanised Japanese means "I am a lecherous drunken pipe inspector making a poor living" it always gets a laugh in Japan.
 
How anyone can read those ideograms is beyond me, but i was just teasing you, i managed to translate some of the text so i kinda knew.
you need to come here to joliet, we just had a big underground oil pipe break. think it was about 30 inches. sent thousands of gallons of crude gushing down the streets. ended up in the sewer and then into the treatment plant
 

I have no doubt it was a BP pipeline LMAO
 
Ah, TEC. It's 'hoso boso' for poor. 'hosu bosu' sounds alike 'hosu hosu(= for a host in Hiroshima dialect. a male companion for hire a club which provides male drinking companions for women)'. Very witty but risky self-introduction which I do admire.

Hi, Mike. My mother left for the heaven thirty years ago.
So, she did not know my words as a grownup so many.
Thanks.
 
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Shinpachi I learned it when I first went to Japan in 1986. Years later I was working in France with Japanese people. We used to exchange pleasantries in many languages English Japanese French and Italian. One day in a very hard week a colleague said O genki des' ka and I just replied "Hoso Boso des". All the Japanese almost died laughing. They had never heard and couldnt imagine hearing a foreigner saying it. In Japanese probably it is a stupid thing to say but as a foreigner it "breaks the ice".

This is the first time I have ever written hoso boso (hosu bosu) I just wrote it as I pronounced it in Hiroshima(fukuyama) dialect. I was told it means " I am making a poor living"
 
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I have understood that you were doing your very best for the very best communications with the Japanese.
Thanks for sharing your valuable experience that risked yourself!
I am much impressed with it
 
Shinpachi said:
I have understood that you were doing your very best for the very best communications with the Japanese.
Thanks for sharing your valuable experience that risked yourself!
I am much impressed with it
Click to expand...

In Paris my Japanese colleagues and myself were in the same situation away from home in a foreign country, I had a colleague from Japan whose name was Mr Skiibei (that is I think how he wrote it) I would ask him how how he was and he would say sukebei very very sukebei. To everyone from Europe he was saying his name but to me and all the Japanese he was saying he was horny (he wanted a girl). Japanese like to play with words and they enjoyed playing it together with a European, to return the compliment I told them the same tricks in English.
 
'Sukebei' or 'Sukebe' is a slang like 'bi*ch'.
If 'Kokan' sounds kohkan or koukan, it indicates steel pipe but kokan, like Coca Cola, is 股間。
 
Shinpachi said:
'Sukebei' or 'Sukebe' is a slang like 'bi*ch'.
If 'Kokan' sounds kohkan or koukan, it indicates steel pipe but kokan, like Coca Cola, is 股間。
Click to expand...

Thats the problem with Japanese and Chinese, tones are important. I was told sukebe meant lecherous or over sexed. my colleague was called Sakura Kibe which meant he was addrtessed as Kibe san. However when a fax or letter arrived it was always addressed Mr S. Kibe when I was reading them I always said Sukebe san

one evening the waitress brought the food with no chop sticks so I said Hashi okudesai which I thouight was please could I have some chop sticks....The waitress looked puzzled and more puzzled the more I said it. Eventually she got a dictionary and pointed to what I said it was SUSPENSION BRIDGE. I dont know why a guy with no chop sticks would ask for a bridge but hey foreigners are strange
 
Shinpachi, my mother also died about 30 years ago and my dad about 45 so i am an orphan. although it was a long time ago please accept my sympathy on the loss of your mother, i miss mine and think about her often.
Vietnamese is also a tonal language and we often had to have two translators. one who could translate English in Vietnamese and a second who could translate Vietnamese into whatever dialect the villagers understood. there was also a pidgin vietnamese-french lingo that we picked up in the cities. there was a time whern i new several words and could make my self almost understood but that was a long time ago. also i just realized i know another japanese word: mitsubishi
TEC, the pipe was 34inches and the leak was small about 50gal/min. they said it was a major supply line to the midwest running to oklahoma the company is Enbridge Energy. they thought it was fixed but is still leaking
 
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Oh, I have found out a recent example of Sukebe greeting by a foreighner, TEC.
He has been nicknamed "Sukebe jijii ( ji-ji-i = slang for old man )" by Japanese boys at once.
Reference site: Sukebe Jijii

HAshi for the chop sticks and haSHI for the bridge but....
the waitress must be kidding you


Thanks for your care about my mother, mikewint.
Don't you think or feel that your parents are always with you though they have gone?

As getting older, I can feel more firmly she is always with me year by year.
I am still part of her as a son.
 

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Shinpachi- yes she is always in my heart, but i would give anything to see her again, to talk to her just one more time, to hug her, just once. the curse of age, so much loss, so much that will never be again
 
Shinpachi said:
Don't you think or feel that your parents are always with you though they have gone?

As getting older, I can feel more firmly she is always with me year by year.
I am still part of her as a son.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to but in here, but this just spoke to me and I had to comment. I lost both my parents less than a year apart about 5 years ago and while I was never really close to my mother I was with my dad. I take great comfort in the fact that he IS alive in me. Not (only?) on a spititual or emotional level but on an even baser level than that...through genetics. In a very real sense he lives on in me as a living breathing part of me, as does my mother. Taken together with the emotional, I can still - if I think hard enough - feel his hand in mine like the last time we shook hands. And for me that will have to be enough. I just wish he could have met my kids... Hope I didn't come off as too sappy.
 
Oh, that's what I wanted to mean in my last post, Capt. Vick.

Sorry, mikewint, for my insufficient explanation as I was afraid of my opinion being taken as a difference of the religious sense of values.

My appearance is almost affected by my father but my character is very alike my mother.
When I met my father few years ago, he was surprised at my emotional reaction.
"Oh, my son. I thought your mother had gone many many years ago but today I find her still alive inside you!"

Yes, it's a result of genetics.
Thank you very much.

PS: But, of course, I want to hug my mother again too if it was possible.
 
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Shinpachi said:
HAshi for the chop sticks and haSHI for the bridge but....
the waitress must be kidding you
.
Click to expand...

Shinpachi, in Fukuyama in 1986 few people had met a foreigner they just panic and dont think straight she wasnt kidding she was really embarrassed. I have no doubt she wouldnt forget the chop sticks with a Japanese. + there is a famous suspension bridge near Fukuyama she may have thought I wanted directions.

I met a Japanese in London who lived near Saint Pauls Cathedral, taxi drivers were always taking him to Centre Point (a large office block famous in London). Japanese instinctively end a word with a vowel and he always put an "O" on the end of Saint .......Sainto Paulso sounds more like Centre Point than Saint Pauls
 
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