MANUELA TIDBITS
 

1. Introduction
2. Doll's Festival
3. Decoys and Cherry Blossoms
4. Wordplay and Written Japanese
5. Men are G or Z
6. Summer in Japan,
Traditions and the Japanese Calendar
7. "Sake" or Alcohol in Japan

 

1. Introduction

Little Manuela is a unique and lovely corner for jazz lovers.
I love its jive and juke, I hang out there with chums from my high school days, I have made new and dear friends including the Owner and the Webmaster, and I have been having fun translating the articles in this web site.

The Webmaster of this site is a college professor by day, a Jazz lover and singer by night. Because of who he is, the original Japanese articles of this site is full of sophisticated humor, which is a challenge for me to translate into English without losing the import and fun of the original Japanese. Also, since Little Manuela is in Japan, may of the seasonal events are based on festivities and traditional customs observed in our country that may not be familiar to our non-Japanese readers.

In this section, I will write the backgrounds and explanations of the traditions that are observed as events at Little Manuela.
I will also write about the humor of some of the expressions that have come up where the innuendos can only be understood in Japanese, so the translations are not verbatim, but figurative in order to convey the humor. Some of these come from our traditions, others from the character of our written language. As most of you know, written Japanese is a mixture of "kana", the Japanese alphabet, and "kanji" the Chinese characters. Although there is only one pronunciation for the "kana", most "kanji" has at least two, in some cases, several pronunciations. Also, in many cases, there can be more than ten "kanji" for one pronunciation. Hence there can be a lot of word play with double, or even triple, meanings, using the various pronunciations of the kanji, and this word play is unique to our language, and difficult to catch and understand for the non-speakers of Japanese.

If you have any questions or you find anything interesting that you want to know about somewhere in this site, please feel free to put it up in the guest book, or send an email to the Webmaster to forward to me.


I am sorry, I cannot answer them through personal emails, but I will add anything informative that might help you somewhere into this site, most likely into this section.

I hope the information that I put up here will help the readers to understand the atmosphere of Little Manuela, and Japan in general and enable you to enjoy this spot even more.

2003/06/01 SKT

Ms. SKT (right side)




2. Tidbit - Doll's Festival
3. Tidbits - Decoys and Cherry Blossoms
4. Tidbits - Wordplay and Written Japanese
5. Tidbits - Men are G or Z

6. Tidbits - Summer in Japan, Traditions and the Japanese Calendar

7. Tidbits - "Sake" or Alcohol in Japan

ˁ@Toppage