もう十二月ですよ。MOU JUUNIGATSU DESU YO (It’s already December). The MOU (already) part of this sentence feels the most important. It feels like it should be March. The year will be over while I am still planning it.

The red and yellow leaves on tree tops around Hove are a reminder 秋 AKI (autumn) is not quite done. This week I heard 2 people on a radio podcast discussing the spectacular yellow イチョウ ICHOU (Ginkgo trees) that decorate parks and streets in urban Japan during autumn. The presenter said that during the morning, イチョウが　きいろかった　ICHOU GA KIIROKATTA (The ginkgo trees were yellow).

The adjective for yellow here is きいろい KIIROI. Adjectives can take the past tense in Japanese. In this case, きいろかった KIIROKATTA expresses that the tree WAS yellow.

This nice autumnal image was turned on it’s head by one of the radio show hosts, Haruna Ai, a famous transgender TV personality. She misunderstood イチョウ ICHOU (Ginkgo trees) for 胃腸 いちょう (Stomach and intestines). The pronunciation is exactly the same. It’s the context that helps define the meaning.

In this case, they had just been discussing illness, so perhaps it’s not surprising Haruna Ai misunderstood and feared her co-hosts stomach and intestines were yellow.

Japanese is full of homonyms like this, words with the same sound but different meaning. When even native speakers misunderstand, it’s reassuring and sometimes even amusing.

I enjoy listening to Haruna Ai. She is from Osaka and speaks in an informal style with a strong accent but she is lively and entertaining. This week she talked about a date she had been on.

After discussing the date, Haruna said うきうきするのって UKI UKI SURU NO TTE (Being cheerful is). In this case, UKI UKI means cheerful or buoyant. Adding する SURU makes UKI UKI into a verb, to be cheerful. Then adding の NO makes the whole thing into a noun. The TTE at the end is a topic marker like は WA, signalling she is going to make a comment about the noun - in this case, being cheerful.

Her comment was: ひさしぶり やな　HISASHIBURI YA NA (It’s been a long time). The やな YANA sentence ending is similar to だね DANE, the short form of ですね DESU NE (isn’t it?).

If anybody is still reading this far, firstly well done you will shortly be free to go, and secondly hopefully you have understood Haruna was saying that it is the first time she’s felt so excited in a while.

Hopefully we will all have some UKI UKI moments to look forward to over the next few weeks and months.

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PS I have signed up for this daily newsletter linked to below telling the tale of photographer and writer, Craig Mod’s journey across cities in Japan. It runs until December 20th. I highly recommend it. Craig has just visited Onomichi, a beautiful town near Hiroshima.

The Next 500km+ Walk: Ten Cities Across Japan — Ridgeline issue 132 (craigmod.com)