“The Grim Reaper just went past now!” When there is a sudden lull in the conversation, children usually say that.
“He has his feet on the ground”. It says that he is a realist. Are these understandable expressions for people who are not Japanese?
Japanese have a lot of proverbs. For example, “The walls have ears, the shoji have eyes”. (Shoji = traditional Japanese sliding doors which have Japanese paper pasted over a wooden latticework) It says that you shouldn’t speak and act carelessly.
“It’s like casting pearls before swine” and “It’s like giving koban to cats.” (Koban = an oval coin formerly used in Japan in the Edo period) These proverbs say the same thing. It is meaningless for them who can’t see the worth, even though they get something valuable.
“That’s the sleep laughing at the snot” is the meaning same as “That’s the pot calling the kettle black”. We use different words, but we mean same things.
I’m really interested in comparing proverbs because I can see the differences between Japanese and others by comparing then. Those differences may come from each culture and history. If we see such differences, we can get over the language barriers and understand much more, I think.
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