Natariiあるいた

Updated March 2020 for clarity. Also, to share news and pack it full of incomprehensible references that make it kind of not a joy to read. Gomen.

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Since I just figured out the pun and am proud of myself, here is my very first 駄洒落(dajare: a punny form of Japanese word play).

Natariiあるいた (Natarii aru ita; Natalie Was There) is pronounced

aruita; Natalie Walked.

"But Natalie, aru is for objects! People (and cats!) use the verb iru, not aru! "

未来の俺様

　　　　　　　　 (future me)

Yes, that is true. Also true is the fact that I never claimed to have even N5 Japanese level, so now you just look silly,

未来の悲観論者-kun.

令和二年の私

(2020 me, on behalf of 2018 me who was an idiot doing her best)

Also, I am an object. . . of desire.

I will be using ナタリあるいた as my blog name. It's fitting because I'm going to be doing a lot of hiking & urban exploration in my spare time. I hope that my journey takes me to many beautiful places! The phrase could also be parsed as ナタリーアルた, which sounds like "not a real..." with any Japanese word that can be read as ta. And there are many of them *BA DUMM TSSSS * PLEASE LAUGH AT MY HILARIOUS JOKE (多,タ：many, multi).

Altogether, this combination can be roughly (&crappily、笑) cross-lingually interpreted 'it's not really real' (( 多本当のものじゃない )). And that's how I feel about this trip- it's a dream come true!

"But Natalie, that doesn't make sense either. And now I'm starting to get chotto embarrassed for you . . . uwu"

未来の俺様

That is also accurate, but the fucks I have to give are actually a great example of the many unreal things in this world. Like the female orgasm (IT'S A COMMIE PLOT), or war in Ba Sing Se.

Also, future me, here's the thing. I lowkey don't know if 'the great amazing pompous me of the future' should be translated as mirai no oresame? Might you not consider using 将来（しょうらい、shourai), instead? Or perhaps you actually just don't know the difference between mirai and shourai and are too scared to ask? SO maybe you should just sit down shut the fuck up and let 2018 Natalie do her thing. THANKS.

I do feel the need to point out that post-JET me of 2020 is much less optimistic. I'd now interpret 'it's not really real' as the idea that everything is meaningless, nothing matters, and there is literally no point so just do whatever the fuck you want because even if you fuck up severely while on JET, the worst thing that could happen to you is you get transferred to another board of education, so fuck it.

Here are some OTHER examples of kanji with the yomikata 'ta', and how it could fit in to my blog title (hahaha 他, タ：other) - why aren't you laughing? Since originally posting the first draft of this in 2018, I have tirelessly worked and foregone sleep just to come up with this pun.

• 田　rice field. Not a real rice field. It's actually a front for inakuza drug crimes.

• 太 fat. I don't have any, not really. This isn't even my final form. I'm just wearing a meat suit.

• 誰 outdated kana, but i'm counting it. this kanji is だれ (dare), 'who'. Not a real who? And honestly, real talk, adulthood is all about growing up wanting to be Marsha May Whovier because she's like a sex symbol, but realizing something went wrong along the way and you are fully the Grinch.

By now you should have a pretty clear idea of my sense of humour and raw determination to make shitty jokes in broken japanese. I'm sorry (but not? who knows!) in advance.

It's almost time for me to head off. I've been looking forward to this so intensely for months, and spent years dreaming about being a JET. I'm finally doing it, and I'm so pumped for that, but it's bittersweet for me. ⊂(イェイ)⊃

That was another example of a type of dajare, because it’s the sound ‘yay’ in brackets but it looks like a 泣いているク(crying bear) 顔文字 (kaomoji)¹. I'm so excited to start my

journey, but also a little intimidated! I'm going to be out of my element and I'll be too far away from my F.R.I.E.N.D.S.² to see them regularly (sob). But that just means I'll have the opportunity to make a lot of new (&better- u kno what u did, h8r ;) ) friends.

Bonus Milestone:

For the past few years I’ve just been using a chrome extension to type with a Japanese-language keyboard. Well, I’m off to Japan in a few months, and I’m going to need to use Japanese for more than just the internet. :)

I just updated my mac’s keyboard input sources so now I can type in ひらがな (hiragana) and カタカナ (katakana)。I can't believe how long I waited to do it! I didn't realize how inconvenient the old way of doing it was! This is so much better (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

¹ For those who don't know, kaomojis are a popular Japanese emoticon styleformed by the combination of two words in Kanji, “kao” (顔 – “face”) and “moji” (文字 – “character”).

kaomoji can express not only individual emotions, but also complex actions, objects, and even whole stories. They're great!

² the entire squad loves that show & we actually are that codependent on each other, lol