Words December 2023 Week 2

Oxford Dictionaries named  Face with Tears of Joy its 2015 Word of the Year. (Emoticons became popular in the 1990s and J-Phone first used emojis in 1997.)

The erasable pen was invented in Japan. (Many useful things were invented in Japan.)

I poked his leg to wake him up. (He was sleeping on the bus.)

I’ve got shotgun! (I get to ride in the front passenger seat.)

I took a trip from the twenty-third to the twenty-sixth. (From A to B.)

She had to go to the rehab center. (She is rather senile.)

I’ll buy less herring roe than usual because it is so expensive now. (A lot of seafood is expensive now.)

We had a bird’s eye view of Tokyo from Skytree. (We had a nice view looking down upon the city.)

It was raining lightly. (But they helped pick many vegetables from the large garden.)

The ginger was very strong. (It was very fresh.)

I wasn’t nauseous. (I didn’t have an upset stomach.)

She has a green thumb. (She is good at growing vegetables.)

I strained my back. (Maybe he pulled a muscle.)

You should sleep on a firm mattress. (Wood is hard but a mattress that is not soft is firm.)

He asked me to pick up his daughter from school and then babysit her. (Her son’s wife was giving birth.)

One of my sandals was missing. (She thinks that a racoon dog was playing with it.)

He drank too much alcohol. (He fell and his head hit and broke the glass on a sliding door. He is ok now.)

They thought that he had a stroke. (He was only drunk.)

The Shinto priest prayed for their good health. (This was for the 7-5-3 ceremony.)

The wake was held two days ago. (A wake is held before the funeral.)

He was cremated and the cremation was held at the crematorium. (Thirty years ago, Nagoya had only one crematorium.)

The chrysanthemum became the imperial symbol when emperor Go-Toba chose the flower as his personal crest. (Japan has no official flower. Some people say it is the cherry blossom, but others say it is the chrysanthemum.)

I bumped into an old friend. (They met by chance.)

He works from home. (He works remotely.)

There were some issues with some football team members. (There are some problems with the athletes smoking marijuana.)

Seattle is in the Northwest.  (Chicago is in the Midwest.)

I believe 9 out of 10 people from the Kanto area like to eat natto. (I must have lived in Kansai in my previous life.)

Talk about a time when you sympathized with someone’s feelings. (To feel sorry for someone because you understand that person's problems.)

I don’t agree with their feelings, but I sympathize with them. (Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another. Sympathy is more of a feeling of pity for another.)

When she arrived at her house, she realized she had the wrong shoes. (Oops!)

He thinks about what is best for his body. (I should start thinking that way.)

The income gap is getting larger and larger.  (Now there are more rich people, more poor people and fewer middle-class people.)

Problems in the Middle East go back over 2000 years. (The wars there will never stop.)

Israel and Arab countries can agree that hummus is delicious. (I have never eaten hummus.)