Random nihongo lesson! There’s a category of four-syllable (four kana) word used here that are so pregnant with meaning they boggle the mind, and I enjoyed learning them because they are so different from anything we have in English. One such word in this group is sekkaku (seh-KAH-koo), which carries the implication of having gone to great trouble to do something, e.g. sekkaku dakara, yukkuri tabemasho (“because we’ve gone to all the trouble already, let’s take our time eating it”). Another fun word is yappari (yah-PAH-ree), which means “just as I thought” or “as I expected” or “Aha! I knew you’d be here trying to peek into the girl’s bath!” When you learn something that surprises you, you might use the phrase naruhodo (nah-roo-hoh-doh), which can be translated as “wow, I didn’t know that” or “I see your point.” Finally there’s tonikaku (TOH-ni-kah-koo), which just means “at any rate” “regardless of that fact” or just “anyway.” When my bilingual son was growing up, he got confused and accidentally combined English and Japanese create the hybrid word toni-way (tonikaku + anyway), which has been a running joke in our family ever since.
My son, who is in high school now, looks just like Keima from The World God Only Knows.
