Today we’ll wrap up translations of Izzo’s series of Japanese proverb vignettes. I’ve said before that he’s presenting them in hiragana order, which means he created a LEGO vignette for each kana character in the Japanese syllabic alphabet. Some of you may be expecting 50 vignettes, but there are only 44. Let’s have one last Japanese lesson to explain why.

The Japanese alphabet, or Gojuon, is represented in two scripts (or kana), hiragana and katakana. Goju means “fifty,” and on means sound, implying that there are fifty kana in the Gojuon. Children memorize the Gojuon in tables. There are ten columns of five kana each. The first column contains the vowels; the next nine contain consonants combined with those vowels (plus an N sound in its own eleventh column that nobody counts). However, the “Ya” column includes two duplicate vowels, and the “Wa” column includes another duplicate vowel, two archaic kana (unused in modern writing), and the vowel “Wo” that never begins a word. Thus 44 instead of 50.

(Now combine hiragana with their corresponding katakana forms, Latin letters and numbers, and nearly 2,000 Kanji characters derived from Chinese — each with multiple possible readings depending on context, and you get an idea of how complex the Japanese written language is.)

Now, on to the final batch of Izzo’s vignettes:

Japanese: The seed of pleasure is pain; the seed of pain is pleasure.
English: No pain, no gain.

Japanese: A flower in each hand.
English: Have one’s bread buttered on both sides.

Japanese/English: Like attracts like.

Japanese/English: There’s an exception to every rule.

Japanese: Evidence instead of discourse.
English: The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Japanese/English: Fortune enters by a merry gate.

Izzo has finished his sequence of Japanese proverb vignettes. Now Bruce and I just need to catch up!

So let’s get cracking!

Japanese/Japanese: Fine feathers make fine birds.

Japanese: The mummy thief becomes a mummy.
English: Go for wool and come home shorn.

Japanese: The pestle handle I took hold of in the past.
English: Skills you learn as a young man don’t wane as you grow older.

Japanese/English: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Japanese: A sword returns to its sheath.
English: To kiss and make up.

Japanese/English: Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Japanese: Carelessness is the greatest enemy.
English: Danger comes when you least expect it.

Japanese/English: The biggest trees give the most shelter.

As regular readers of Pan-Pacific Bricks and VignetteBricks already know, Izzo has been posting LEGO vignettes based on Japanese proverbs. So far, Izzo has posted 30 vignettes on his Web site and in two Brickshelf galleries. I’ve translated the first twenty, and am genuinely looking forward to the next thirty. How do I know there are going to be thirty more? Izzo is posting the proverb vignettes in hiragana order, and there are approximately fifty hiragana characters.

So let’s get started with the next ten, shall we? :-)

Japanese: A bee to a crying face.
English: Misfortunes never come alone. / When it rains, it pours.

Japanese/English: He who runs after two hares will catch neither.

Japanese: Millet with wet hands.
English:Like taking candy from a baby. / Easy money.

Japanese: Wearing a cat.
English: A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Japanese/English: There’s luck in leftovers. (“Luck” sounds the same as “clothing,” so there’s a pun in this one as well.)

Japanese: Dumplings rather than flowers.
English: Function before form. / Better fill a man’s belly than his eye.

Japanese: Beauty and luck seldom go together.
English: The fairest flowers soonest fade.

Japanese/English: Candle in the wind. (To have one’s life hang by a thread.)

Japanese/English: He that shoots oft, at last shall hit the mark.

Japanese: If you’re in love, travelling a thousand miles seems like only one mile.
English: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Bruce has posted again that Izzo has posted another batch of Japanese proverb vignettes in his gallery.

Here we go…

Japanese: Strategem 36: If all else fails, run away.
English: He that fights and runs away lives to see another day.

Japanese/English: Dead men tell no tales.

Japanese: When one god deserts you, another one picks you up.
English: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Japanese/English: Good and quickly seldom meet.
(It’s a fast-food noodle stand. Not exactly gourmet cooking.)

Japanese: Providing is preventing.
English: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
(In other words, always be prepared. Thus the Swiss Army robot.)

Japanese: A bird taking flight does not pollute the place it left.
English: It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest.

Japanese: Even dust piled up will make a mountain.
English: Many a little makes a mickle.

Japanese: The moon and a soft-shell turtle.
English: As different as night and day.

Japanese/English: The nail which sticks out gets hammered down.

Japanese/English: A near neighbour is better than a far-dwelling kinsman.

As before, check out Izzo’s if you want to see Flash versions that include the original Japanese text.

I just saw that Bruce posted about a new set of vignettes by Izzo (whose New Year’s creations I posted about earlier this month). Quoth Bruce: “Hopefully Dunechaser will be able to shed some enlightenment via his Pan-Pacific Bricks blog.” Well sir, I shall give it my best shot.

Here’s what I’ll do. The vignettes won’t make sense unless you understand exactly what the Japanese proverbs say, but you still might not get what the proverbs actually mean, so I’ll try to find a corresponding English proverb or provide a brief explanation.

Japanese: By hiding your head you expose your butt.
English: Burying your head in the sand.

Japanese: Even a one-sun bug has a five-bu soul.
(Sun and bu are units of length that are no longer used in Japan, where the Metric system is used instead. There are ten sun in one bu, so this proverb is saying that even a little bug has a big soul.)
English: Tread on a worm and it will turn.

Japanese: If you gossip about someone, their shadow will appear.
English: Speak of the devil (and he’s sure to appear).

Japanese/English: A drowning man will clutch at a straw.

Japanese: To gain one of your nine lives back.
English: To have a narrow escape from death.

Japanese: The son of a frog will be a frog.
English: Like father like son.

Japanese: Prayers to God in difficult times.
English: Danger past, God forgotten.

Japanese/English: Art is long, life is short.
Latin*: Ars longa, vita brevis. *Bonus language!!!

Japanese: Unless you enter the tiger’s den, you can’t steal her cubs.
English: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Note: I used Izzo’s site to determine which proverbs go with the vignettes in his Brickshelf gallery, but I couldn’t find this one, so I’m not sure what the proverb is. Sorry folks!

Bruce has explained how the vignette “genre” seems to have begun in Japan about a year or so ago. I recently got a comment from Japanese LEGO blogger kazzen, and perusing his blog for a bit I found a second blog in which he sets forth a fairly interesting idea — a diary illustrated in LEGO.

“Illustrated diaries” are a type of diary in which you draw your diary entry. They’re fairly popular in Japan, especially among kids. (In fact, keeping a daily diary was part of my homework at the Japanese school I attended while growing up in Japan. I still have several years’ worth of illustrated diary entries in a box somewhere. I dug them out a couple of years ago and found that I had meticulously drawn several of my early LEGO creations for posterity.)

So here’s how it works:

1. Create a category in your blog called “LEGO Diary” (or create a new blog for your diary).
2. Recreate interesting events in your daily life in LEGO.
3. Photograph your MOC.
4. Post your pictures to your “LEGO Diary” category or your diary blog.

That’s it!

In all honesty, I don’t have time to maintain much of a LEGO diary, but I thought this was a good enough idea to pass on to the English-speaking LEGO community as well.

Kazzen has created a LEGO diary portal (“I just wanted to use the word ‘portal,'” he jokes), and if there’s enough interest among non-Japanese LEGO fans, perhaps someone can do the same in English. (I could do it easily enough with another blog, but a “real” Web site might be better.)

Well, if you’re interested in trying this out, I’d be interested in hearing about it! :-)