England’s King John did not quite well feel
Loss to France caused his finance to reel
When he tried to raise cash
The barons did backlash
Wrote a charter, and “asked” for his seal

Event: King John puts his seal on the Magna Carta
Year: 1215
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

The KYPC Champion of the Week award goes to Shirley, for being the only one to correctly identify anything this time around: F is indeed a mountain.  Unfortunately, the correct answer (which, just in case anyone wasn’t sure, was “lake”) was D, the only character not to be mentioned by anyone.

A. 川　B. 島　C. 原　D. 湖　E. 森　F. 山

A is a river, which means that when Shirley thought of waves she had the right idea but the wrong axis of orientation.  B is an island, which you can tell because it has F, the character for mountain, tucked away in the bottom there, and islands are kind of like mountains on the ocean floor.  And the rest of the character is a bird, so you can picture the image of an island surrounded by gulls.  And you can remember that the rest of the character means “bird” because, as we discussed in a previous entry, it looks like a dinosaur, and dinosaurs evolved into birds.  That may seem like a lot just to remember “island,” but sometimes the best kanji mnemonics are the most convoluted.

Anyway, C represents not the drainage pond in the cloverleaf loops but the field that used to be there before they decided to put in a freeway.  D is our lake, which offers little in the way of obvious explanation.  You may recognize the moon on the right, which could evoke the image of moonlight reflecting off a calm lake surface.  Or it may symbolize the vaguely crescent-shaped Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest freshwater lake.  E, sadly, is neither three water boatmen nor three acrobatic water skiers but three trees, and hence, a forest.  And F is the mountain, who, in typical mountain fashion, does very little to disguise his presence.

But enough of this small-time stuff.  It’s time to take on geography on a much grander scale.  Now we’re going to deal with countries.  In Japanese, the majority of foreign countries are referred to by names that use Japanese syllables to approximate their sounds: the U.S. is amerika, Mexico is mekishiko, and so on.  Today they are written with katakana, characters which have a sound but no meaning, but originally they used kanji.  These were ateji, kanji used for their sound rather than their meaning (Chinese, which has nothing but picture characters, uses a similar process to represent foreign names).  So, the meanings of the characters don’t have anything to do with the countries themselves . . . or do they?

While kanji are no longer used to write out countries’ full names, often times one of the old characters (typically the first one) has survived as a way of referring to the nation with which it was paired.  This is all just a long way of saying: find France.

A. 加　B. 独　C. 仏　D. 米　E. 蘭　F. 露

“Oh, the war,” said Tifa
“Yes, that’s what I thought, at first
Then I heard about the lab
And came to fear the worst

Tifa tapped Cloud discreetly
They would leave her to her grief
They snuck up to see Barret
A man filled with relief

Last week’s puzzle:

Two artists who got in trouble because of where they were travel to a place where they can get in trouble for what they are. When they end up having to flee from a mistimed birthday celebration, they escape with the aid of a man who refuses to let anything get in the way of what he wants.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Now, it is my sad duty to announce the indefinite retirement of Movie Two-Liners. I started with a considerable reserve, but it has steadily dwindled, and as the weeks go by it has gotten harder and harder to come up with new ones. I have already used just about all of the movies that I know very well, and as my familiarity with the details of a film decreases, so too does my ability to write creative descriptions. I hope to come up with something to replace this feature in the near future, or perhaps even return to it once I have taken a break and taken some time to watch more movies. In the meantime, however, there will be no new posts on Wednesdays.

But before I go, here is one last two-sentence movie description. I did not write this one myself, but I hope you will still enjoy it.

“. . . a movie about a bus that had to speed around the city, keeping its speed over fifty. And if its speed dropped, it would explode!”

And the answer is . . . ▼

The brand-new Constitution caused fights
Famous statesmen stayed up many nights
“Hamilton!  Hold the phone!
We got rid of the throne!
We ain’t signing ’til we get some rights!”

Event: James Madison first proposes the Bill of Rights to Congress
Year: 1789
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Congratulations to Shirley for taking a risk and sticking her neck out.  “Know Your Picture Characters” is not a game for the faint of heart.  Unfortunately, she would have been better off fishing just a few feet to the left, because the correct answer was not “F” but “A.”  I’m not totally sure how she was counting “elements;” kanji are generally classified by the number of strokes used to write them, which, with the exception of the numbers one, two, and three, typically has nothing to do with their meaning.  In this case, F is a 9-stroke character, and A and B are both 10.  In fact, none of the characters that appeared in this week’s challenge contain 7 strokes.

A consolation prize goes to A Fan, who completely failed to pick the right character but correctly identified that the Japanese love puns.  And special thanks to Dragon, for reminding us that, “there were a lot of wars in ancient times.”

The seven characters mean, in order: week, hour, month, year, day, second, and minute.  Many of these also have other meanings; longtime KYPC participants may recognize a kanji or two from our “Days of the Week” edition.

週　時　月　年　日　秒　分

But enough about time.  Let’s move on to someplace else.  Specifically, “place.”  Having taken care of the “when,” now we’re going to practice a bit with the “where.”  These characters all represent geographical features and should, theoretically, be easier to identify by how they look than things like colors or intervals of time.  So take a crack at picking out the one that represents the thing that there are 10,000 of in the state in which I live (I’ll give you a hint: it’s not mountains).

A. 川　B. 島　C. 原　D. 湖　E. 森　F. 山

“Knew this day would come,” she said
Her voice filled with regret
“My daughter’s been fleeing them
Oh . . . ever since we met”

“Met?” said Tifa, puzzledly
“A funny thing to say”
“Aeris did not meet me ‘til
Long past her first birthday”

“This’ll be long, won’t it?”
Cloud asked, stifling a groan
He was wishing he had brought
A flask to call his own

“This was way back in the war”
The mom said with a sigh
“My husband was at the front
Some place they called Wutai

“One day I got a message
That my man was home on leave
I waited on, for days and days
Ne’er him I did perceive

“There at the train station
Was a woman, destitute
I have to say, my first thought was
She was a prostitute

“With her was a young girl
For her sake she did implore
‘Help my daughter Aeris’
Then the mother was no more”

This week’s puzzle:

Two artists who got in trouble because of where they were travel to a place where they can get in trouble for what they are. When they end up having to flee from a mistimed birthday celebration, they escape with the aid of a man who refuses to let anything get in the way of what he wants.

Last week’s puzzle:

A man returns to a job he doesn’t especially want and pursues an achievement that he would rather no one knew about. A man who lacks control learns how to speak inanely and how not to think.

And the answer is . . . ▼

In the Era of the Warring State
Many daimyo ruled- some small, some great
He who conquered Japan
Was no hasty young man
He knew sometimes the key is to wait

Event: Death of Tokugawa Ieyasu, warlord and founder of Japan’s third shogunate
Year: 1616
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period

The correct answer this week was F.  Congratulations to Dragon for her keen eye.  Personally, I think that G looks more like a bunch of plants, but that’s not the right answer, now is it?  As for B, A Fan’s inspired guess, it’s not the figurative “green with envy” but much more literally the color of the boyfriend’s face: red, and growing ever redder as he watches those tourists ogle his beskirted gal.

青　赤　黄　黒　白　緑　紫

So, to finish things off, our lineup consists of blue, red, yellow, black, white, green, and purple.  Also, a point of interest: that first character can also be used to describe bluish green; it’s the color of the sea, the sky, and the “GO” portion of a stoplight.

But that was clearly too easy.  We’re going to ramp up the difficulty now, and see how well you really know your colors.  Can you distinguish between the kanji for scarlet and vermilion?  Magenta and mauve?  Turquoise, aqua, and azure?  Burnt sienna?  Macaroni and cheese?

Just kidding.  As a matter of fact, I was thinking it was about time we learned a little about time.  Since this is a weekly feature, I think you should try to pick out the character that means “week.”

A. 週　B. 時　C. 月　D. 年　E. 日　F. 秒　G. 分