Girlfight

What an interesting thread! I train at a karate school in western Japan and we use ossu A LOT ( ossu is the standard romanised spelling). If we say `hai` to my teacher or any other member of the club we get told off and told to say `ossu` instead. We are not allowed to say `hai`. We also use ossu as a greeting and say it before and after sparring. I`ve never been told it`s rude before, in fact in my dojo it`s considered the norm. We even have to use it when we send e-mails. I have occasionally heard it used on the street and on TV, mostly between guys and it doesn`t seem to have caused offense. However, as was said, Okinawa is very different from mainland Japan and the language is very different, so the rules there may well be very different too.

Hi do you mean sanchin as in 3 conflicts?? Like sanchin-ryu karate?? If that might be it have a look at this page: http://www.okinawakarate.org/katalist.htm Sorry if the link doesn`t work, I`m not good at this techno stuff. If that`s not right, sorry I couldn`t be more help.

omoshiroi yo!! minna-san wa genki desu ka? watashi mo nihongo o benkyou shite imasu. nihon ni sunde imasu kara. doushite nihongo o benkyou shite imasu ka? anata mo nihon ni sunde imasu ka? I`ve been studying on and off for about 3 years now but it`s slow progress. I`m hoping to take my level 2 Japanese proficiency test next year so I have to study hard. Ganbarimasu!! alanseijas-san ganbatte!!

Sorry not sure about that one but glad I could be of help.

I know this is a stupid question but which new Jet Li movie are you talking about?? It`s just the release dates of movies vary between countries. This weekend I saw `Hero` the Chinese title is `Ying xiong`, starring Jet Li. It`s in Mandarin and many people have compared it to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I can`t comment as I haven`t seen that movie but I really enjoyed Hero, it`s visually stunning, a really beautiful movie. On the fighting front, I wouldn`t say it`s exactly realistic, especially when they fight on the surface of a lake (that`s not a spoiler by the way) but then again it`s not supposed to be realistic.

Ok, I will try and explain but it`s a bit complicated. Sometimes an individual kanji can have different meanings and different readings depending on the context. For example the `kara` from karate means empty (as in empty hand). It can also be read `sora` which means sky and also `kuu` which means air. Furthermore many kanji are written differently but read the same way (sort of like piece and peace in English, they sound the same but they are written differently and have different meanings). So even though the kanji for `4` and `death` are written differently they are both read as `shi`. In fact there are over 50 kanji which are read as `shi` including the `shi` in sushi. There is no real connection between these kanji, even though my kanji teacher claims there may have been a connection in ancient Chinese but these connections have long been lost. The shi in bushido means `military man` and is used in many words such as officer, warrior, soldier etc. but is also sometimes used as a suffix for some professions eg. in `bengoshi` which means lawyer. [/img]