Customer Reviews

Kodanshas Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

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There's a little down and a lot of up. I wouldn't say it's a must-have, but it is enjoyable to "thumb through."

The Down

I've had this book for a while, and referenced it considerably little because it seems i rarely find what i look for. Like just now i was looking for something like "be picky" or "pick and choose" and "take your time" but they are not in here.

There are definitely phrases that no one uses; this may be due to the phrases being antiquated, or the Japanese person who tells you "we don't use these" is from a region that doesn't use them.

The Up
However, along your search for your phrase of interest, you'll run into *tons* of things that you would find yourself saying in English. For example, I was just looking for "picky" and found "pick at" (which made me think of "nitpicking" which i looked for, and, of course, didn't find). I looked for "take your time" and found "take it easy", "take someone seriously", "ten-foot pole", etc. Which leads me to the next thing.

The index is very good.

The organization of the book is intended to clump idioms under the one element that they all use. For example, "pick at" uses the element of "foot/leg," which is "grab someone's foot while it's in the air." So, too, does the idiom for "have your head in the clouds," which is "someone's feet aren't touching the ground."
The two idioms are both under the "Foot/Leg" section. There are also sections for "spirit/mind", "head", "blood", "butterfly", "frog", "neck", "body", "eye", as well as others.
This dictionary puts them in alphabetical (yes roman, not kana) order based on their romanization. So the the section for "mimi" (ear) comes before the section for "sune" (shin) because "m" comes before "s", even though "'su" ' comes before "mi'" ' in the kana.

This may be an interesting dictionary for three reasons to you.
1) the number of English idioms you'll find that you never really think about is pretty high. Idioms make up a significant part of everyday language, and you realize this as you read through the index in this dictionary, and deduce that it must be the same in Japanese (or any language for that matter)
2) The difference in the way Japanese express the same idea will have you laughing out loud. And again, you reflect this, but instead of to Japanese, back to English. Like why did we settle on the term "block head", or "meat head?" It's ha-ha funny!
3) For some sections (like the above mentioned, or "crow"), there is a paragraph explaining why the element is used for the ideas that these idioms express. I like that kind of stuff.

More on the Up side, the print is clean and clear, and the pages are easy to read.

My Recommendation
Since we're not learning Japanese to talk to ourselves we should make sure we confirm with a native speaker to see if the phrases of interest are in use the first time you get a chance to use it. You don't want to sound like that dude going around saying that something is "crazy fresh!" when folks stopped saying that 5 minutes after they started. That kind of "old" should be avoided. But classics like "something else" (e.g., I tell you that Kobe Bryant is something else on the court) and "meat head" are "cool" to use.

But you never know what you'll run into while reading fiction that takes place in different times, or the main characters are children at school where you might see the idiom for "copy catting" (which i just saw is in here -- monkey mimicking).

what struck me most about this dictionary is the number of example sentences for every entry. These example sentences sometimes develop into a full paragraph. I do not know for sure whether these idioms are practically used in daily conversation. Yet I find it is useful for improving my Japanese.

This is a good book to learn the basic idioms in Japanese. Easy to use and easy to learn.I would tell anyone who is learning Japanese to buy this book it's worth it.