Monday, May 29, 2006

We did "ladder" last night.




Do you remember that I wrote about 2 different meanings of “サクラ (sakura)” ?


http://nihongonihongo.blogspot.com/2006/04/he-might-be-sakura.html


I’ve just remembered 2 another words having 2 different meanings.

The left picture is a basket which you use when you are cooking.
This is called ざる (zaru) in Japanese.
The different meaning of zaru is a person who drinks a lot and doesn’t get drunk easily.
Zaru can’t keep water at all.
Those people’s stomach doesn’t keep (feel) alcohol like zaru.

The right picture is a ladder.
This is called 梯子 (hashigo) in Japanese.
The different meaning of hashigo is making the rounds of bars.
I’m not sure (couldn’t find) why we use hashigo for the action, but I guess, going to bars one after another is like going up the ladder step by step.
This expression could be used for different situation, too.
It’s not only for bars, but also restaurants, coffee shops etc.

The way of using ざる (zaru) and 梯子 (hashigo) is popular.
Try to use these expressions when you talk with your Japanese friends.

“Wow! You drink a lot! You must be zaru.”
“I had a terrible hangover this morning. We did hashigo last night and drank too much!”

You usually use katakana when you use these words for “2nd meaning”.

5 comments:

  1. I guess it's also a bit similar to our 'pub crawl' (going around bars one after another). Though, perhaps after a few drinks, 'crawling' is what many people do!

    ReplyDelete
  2. In the US: "bar hopping".
    I didn't know "tied-one-on"...

    it's surprising how many words we
    have for "drunk"!
    http://www.sober.org/Drunk.html <-

    Superstructure, did you find a
    dictionary yet?
    http://www.rolomail.com/index.htm
    This guy is pretty cool. He has a
    project for creating animated
    kanji images, and sells some good
    Japanese study tools. (I bought his
    kanji wall charts).

    I'll have to try to use ざる and
    梯子 next time I'm in Japan! Fun!

    あきこさん、Thanks as always for an
    interesting blog entry!
    いつも面白いBlogを書いてくれて
    ありがとうございます~

    最近Mixiで英語教室の日記を書いてます,
    I'd be happy to hear your comments!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:31 PM

    The soccer Japan representative fought against representative Australia in the World Cup.
    The television was watched while drinking Australian wine on the day. After all, it was defeated by couple 3. And, I got dead drunk. So,I knew to be not ZARU.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very very interesting blog! I'll keep on reading it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous4:27 PM

    Thanks for an excellent entry, you won't find this in any textbook. I'll bookmark your blog.

    ReplyDelete