*ヒョウ柄

Learned some new vocabulary that really enriches my life: hyou-gara.

Leopard print. How did I go this long without knowing how to say this?

角隠し

My mom taught me a new word today: it's the word for bridal veil.

tsunokakushi

角隠し

Trans.: hides her horns.

A word I like today:

crepuscular

Of or pertaining to twilight.

Cowberry???

I made jammy cocoa cookies to send off in batches today. I reached into the pantry for a jar of jam and came up with... こけもも.

Kokemomo? A peach of some kind? I searched my pocket dictionary, my phone dictionary, and my electronic dictionary. Finally, Jim Breen came to the rescue. As usual.
苔桃 【こけもも; コケモモ】 (n) (uk) cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea); mountain cranberry; foxberry; partridgeberry.

Partridgeberry?!? Excellent! Since I made gingerbread, coconut macaroons, cashew-cranberry chocolates, partridge-berry jam cookies are the perfect way to round out the packages.

Some random guy added me on Facebook today. I have a general preference for not adding people I've never met in real life. The last time I bent this rule is when some guy who CLAIMED to have met me lied his way into making me agree by furnishing fake details of our meeting circumstances (a party in Ebisu; I HAD been to a party in Ebisu, and there were a lot of people there). I later found out he was a LIAR with 800 friends and about as many updates per day. Blegh.

Anyhow, I didn't think I knew today's adder. When I looked at his info to try to jog my memory, he had a website link (and 800 friends). I clicked on it. And I don't know him, after all. But his photos are pretty awesome. And it's a really pretty slideshow. I would even put this on as a screensaver if I wasn't using the computer.

hugger mugger

I picked up this awesome phrase from Norman Lewis, in the excellent The Tomb in Seville. What a lovely book! He was in his nineties when he wrote it, and it happened in the '30s. It means chaotic hustle and bustle, or, alternately, secrecy and hush-hush.

tumescent

1.	swelling; slightly tumid.

2.	exhibiting or affected with many ideas or emotions; teeming.

3.	pompous and pretentious, esp. in the use of language; bombastic.

To think that all these could refer to a single person~

saturnine

sluggish in temperament, gloomy, taciturn.

again with the taciturnity.

from joyce's dubliners.

temerity

reckless boldness; rashness

(from dictionary.com - thanks all things considered, NPR)

ameliorate

make things better.

laconic, taciturn

(無口 - mukuchi)
Doesn't say much.

From my textbook Kana and Kanji.

ゲーーーーー

Playing fish with Mina, 5, yesterday in class: each time she drew a card that she didn't like, she said "Ge~!" That's as in Gephardt instead of giraffe, and rhymes with "hey!". And means "puke!". Or barf!, if you prefer. Retch! Gag! Take your pick. Ms. K, the excellent office manager, also uses this charming expression, and one I am eager to cultivate.

come a cropper

A funny idiom, with thanks again to Mr. Bryson.

6. come a cropper, Informal.
a. to fail; be struck by some misfortune: His big deal came a cropper.

fisticuffs

fighting with the fists; a fistfight.

judder (chudder)

A few days ago I was CONVINCED that chudder was a word; but looking it up in the dictionary, didn't really find anything that substantiated my idea.

Listening to Car Talk today, the Tappet brothers used the word "judder". A-ha! I thought. THAT'S what I was after.

judder:
1. to vibrate violently: an old automobile with a clutch that judders.

Love the sound of that.

meretricious

Thanks to Billy Bryson for this one - means tawdry, alluring by flashy showiness.

itazura

Kenta, one of my most impish students, was terrorizing Ms. K. "Yada!" she reprimanded. "Cut it out!"

Kenta scurried away and she shook her head. "Itazura" (悪戯) she told me.

Means michief. Or Itazura-ko, mischievous child. Which Kenta certainly is.

fushinsha

不審者:
a suspicious person. As in, "Get your fishy fushinsha-ass out of here!"

Last year, walking back from Naruse station, we passed as usual the little mom-and-pop drugstore, with its displays of multicolored toilet paper on sale. Out popped a guy from the recesses of the shop, wearing some kind of school uniform and carrying a gym bag. He looked like he was in his late teens to early 20s. Accosting us, he let loose a barrage of words, at the same time brandishing a sack of potatoes.

"Sorry - wakarimasen." We didn't understand him, not at the rate he was going.
He effortlessly switched to English.
"Right now, we are in the middle of a national campaign! It is a very important cause that allows me to offer you these potatoes for only 300 yen!"

300 yen? The bag held about 5 sad little potatoes. I could buy the same bag at the market across the street for 150.

We tried to brush him off, saying we weren't interested, but he dogged us down the street for about half a block more. Finally he gave up, trailing off behind us.

We thought we had seen the last of him. But, telling the story that night, it turned out he had also approached C. in our neighborhood with the same line.

mukatsuku

work stinks. some people are imbeciles.

pissed off. a lot lately.　

むかつく = pissed off, angry, irritated, offended.

perspicuity

Thanks to Lynne Truss and her wonderful book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". This means "clarity, lucidity". This also reminds me of Robyn Hitchcock's song "Birds in perspex", which, it turns out, is a kind of clear resin. So related to perspicuity, if not too closely.

ersatz

A word I never bothered to look up until reading it in "A Thread of Grace" by Mary Doria Russell. Means synthetic; artificial; a substitute for the genuine article.