After some time of not studying to learn anything new, I feel renewed motivation to pick up more and more Japanese - below helped. Unfortunately I do not have too much time to study now but if I can try for even just a few words a day…

…and I think it will help to post them here. For archival purposes and also for the chance that I do have some Japanese readers who can tell me “Meghan…you don’t need to remember that”. Without further ado…

鼻の穴, はなのあな, hana no ana

“nostril”, more literally translates to “nose’s hole”, nose being 鼻(hana) and hole being 穴(ana), I like that it rhymes (鼻の穴にバナナを突っ込む).

いびき, ibiki

“snoring”, this is harder for me to remember because the word, ibiki, sounds more like a sneeze to me, perhaps the sneeze of a small dog.

苦しい, くるしい, kurushii

“painful”, “difficult”, “laborious” in the context of work or more physical things like breathing. I think I remember hearing this word a lot so it might have broad usage.

チョコまみれ, choco mamire

“covered in chocolate”, my translator says that mamire (まみれ) is a stain or smear but I think it can maybe also be used as a suffix - xxxまみれ meaning “covered in xxx”, comes from the verb mamireru (まみれる) meaning to be smeared, covered.

By now you might be wondering where I am getting these words from. I pick stories from the book I bought at the airport and try to read them. They seem to be written in a natural speaking style so I hope I can pick up on some Japanese that you don’t learn studying grammatical patterns. The current story involves chocoballs inserted into the nose of a sleeping boy.

次の瞬間, つぎのしゅんかん, tsugi no shunkan

“the next instant”, an important expression if I am going to be telling suspenseful stories.

ぴくぴく, pikupiku

onomatopoeia for twitching or wiggling.

全身, ぜんしん, zenshin

“the whole body”, as in his whole body began to convulse. It is good to remember that the kanji 全 (zen) has means of “all”, “whole”, “entire”, “complete” and so on.

Now do I dare try to use all the words in a sentence or two?