12/12/2008

Breaking news via Kyodo Press.

The Japanese Word of the Year is “Hen” -…in this case meaning ‘Change’.
However, I am very used to being called in Japanese a “HEN-na gaijin”–literally “odd’ + ‘foreigner/alien’ as you can see on the right.
So, I just learned that I’m a “Changed Alien“, ha, ha.

Hen (adj-na,n) (1) strange; odd; peculiar; weird; curious; queer; eccentric; funny; suspicious; fishy; (2) unexpected; (3) change; (4) incident; disturbance; disaster; accident;

UPDATE:
‘Change’ voted Japan’s character of the year – Yahoo! News – Fri Dec 12, 4:02 PM ET
[The photo below shows] World’s heritage Kiyomizu temple priest Seihan Mori puts the finishing touch on a caligraphy …The public sent in 111,200 nominations for the kanji of the year. Of those, a majority 5.42 percent endorsed “change”… and “fall” to reflect the global market plunge.
“I think it is an expression of the Japanese people’s wishes to see political, economic and societal changes, as they were impressed by Mr. Obama’s message of change,” Mori said…

Story thanks to Omae Mona