Kanji for today (if I have to do it, by gum, so will you)
今日の漢字（一生にがんばろうか？）
万
マン、バン
ばん
10,000
Examples:
三万五千円 （さんまんごせんえん）（san-man-go-sen yen)
35,000 yen (about USD $360.00)
万歳 （ばんざい）(banzai)
Hooray! (lit. 10,000 years)
Not to be confused with 五 （ゴ）(go - five) or 方 （カタ、ほう）(kata, hō - method, way)
Note: Yes, this is the famous "Banzai" you hear about whenever you think of kamikazes and such things.
ReplyDeleteNowadays people still say it -- it really just means "Hurray" and you'll see they do it just as we do, three times, except they always raise their arms while doing so -- but now it has the uncomfortable overtones of nationalism, which originally it didn't. I don't know how they got from "Ten Thousand years!" to "Here I come, suckers!" but sometimes Japanese really is unfathomable.
It's not (and never was) like the Hitler salute, since it was around way before the second world war, but I would definitely feel uncomfortable in a roomful of drunken Japanese businessmen yelling "Banzai!"
Too much knowledge of WWII and how often they misused it.