
I can see Christmans decoration every year and I got a mail about year end part at work today. Ah 2007 is over soon. On the Internet, I can find some anuual year end events.
The nominated list (60 words) of "2007 word of the year" was release yesterday. Last year, it was Ina Bauer and Hinkaku in Japan. Ina Bauer is a figure skating move. Olympic Gold medalist Shizuka Arakawa performed it at the winter Olympics on 2006. Hinkaku comes from a best selling book titiled, "Degnity of a State" by Masahiko Fujiwara. TIME picked the book in this article. My American friend read it and his comment was "arrogant" :-) ha ha ha. the Japan time has this article too. You may also have such an impression of the book, since it was translated into English. Try it.
On the nominated list, words I picked from my posts were included:
KY (stands for "Kuki ga Yomenai")
"Kuki ga Yomenai" means "can't read air" in Japanese, this means that you can't catch the wind. I wrote about it on this this "Japanese woman" post. "To read air" is not a new phrase or words, but this year people say "he is KY" (he can't catch the wind) in such a short way like this, it is a new way to say it.
Victory!!
We have big "Billy's bootcamp" boom, actually I still do it at least 4 or 5 times a week since May, it works fine and everybody says I have lost weight!! Victory is the word Billy shouts at the end of the exercise. I don't think Victory will win the word of 2007, but I suppose it might win the banzuke of "what was big in 2007"..
Betsu ni...
This year, some rude Japanese young people became topics on the news. "Bestu ni" was what Japanese actress Erika Sawajiri said at her movie release. Even though she was the main star of the movie, she showed a negative and rude attitude. She apologized on a TV show a few days later, but she became "No.1" of "the ranking of actresses I hate" now.
Thumbing
Some other rude young people were professional boxers the 'big mouth' "Kameda brothers". Daiki Kameda had a WBC world flyweight champion match with Naito. Before the match, Kameda called Naito "cockroach" - very rude! The match was terrible and Daiki Kamdeda pulled some really dirty moves. One of them was "Thumbing". It means to blind you opponent with the tumb of the boxing glove. I thought Thumbling would be mentioned in the boxing rule, but I can't find it on English wiki. So only Japanese use this word? I don't know. By the way, also Daiki Kamada apologized a few days later and Koki Kameda apologized too. In this case, people criticised the media because they changed their attitude so quickly. They looked like they supported Kameda before the match, but after the match they bashed Kameda. You can read the detail in this post. By the way, in Japan guys cut their hair very short as a sign of serious soul searching.
Net Nanmin
Net Nanmin means an Internet cafe refugee. Sometimes homeless people stay at Internet cafes every night. I wrote about them in this post. Here is a good article about it on CNET Asia.
Enjyo
Enjyo means flamming. We use this word when someone's blog gets a huge number of critical comments. Enjoy is not a new word, though we had a lot of "Blog enjyo news this year. One of them was Sayaka Yoshino (Japanese so so idol, sorry), she wrote "I want to play the part of Motoko Kusanagi" if it (Ghost in teh Shell series) was made into a real movie. Then people attacked her "kiddingly", "Do you really understand the deep world of Kokaku?" etc,. The number of comments was over 500. The day befere, she got only 9 commnets, so we can say those posts were enjyo. I have no idea why Kokaku fans reacted this way, she didn't talk bad about Kokaku. crazy...
Dondake!
This year, we have O-ne character boom and one of them "IKKO" says "DONDAKE".. Here is an English post about IKKO and Dondake. I guess DONDAKE will get the word of 2007.