A. アトリエ　B. アンケート　C. コンクール　D. ズボン　E. ピーマン

F. ピエロ

Parlez-vous japonais?

Theoman does, at least, to a certain extent.  But he decided to put aside his knowledge for the sake of fair and honest competition.  If the world was a fair place, this noble sacrifice would have earned him a correct answer.  KYPC is not a fair place, and thus he goes unrewarded.  I can see what you saw about “agreement,” but I don’t know why you linked that to surveys.  Everybody knows that the purpose of surveys is to create divisiveness and spread strife.  So yes, suitably shaky reasoning indeed.  Well done.  In fact, C is konkuuru, or in French concours, or in English, contest.  I mean contest.  Because as we all know, contests are about working together and making sure that everyone gets along.

A Fan may not speak Japanese, but he knows enough French to make pithy statements when the situation calls for it (or even when it doesn’t).  His obsession with flat furniture continues, and this presumably led him to identify not a table, per se, but the only thing on this list that would be likely to contain a table: A is atorie/atelier/studio.  His other answers were not quite so close, at least on the Japanese side of things.  We’ll have to take his word on the French.

Shirley did her best to channel the grizzled veteran, perhaps in an old war movie, which maybe could take place in France I guess?  Whatever convoluted logic you choose to apply, the tactic paid off for her.  She nailed D, the pants (Jp: zubon Fr: jupon), B, the survey (Jp: ankeeto Fr: enquete), and F, the clown (Jp: piero Fr: pierrot).  Perhaps these katakana characters, which have no reason at all to resemble the things they represent, are more easily recognizable than kanji, which have vague and misleading reasons for possibly resembling the things they represent.

E is the bell pepper (Jp: piiman, Fr: piment).  Not much more to say about that, really.

Or maybe there is.  Maybe, deep down, I’m hurt that no one paid much attention to this poor vegetable.  Maybe I’m torn up inside.  Maybe it’s only years of trained stoicism that prevent me from bawling, tearing my hair, and slamming my head down onto the keyboard like a afoj;asjkfaosoug.

Excuse me.  I guess I got a little emotional there.  But don’t worry: you can all get a little emotional too.  Once you’ve recognized the characters for it, that is.  Are you sad that it’ll be a whole week until the next KYPC?  Or happy?  Are you angry about my outburst, or merely embarrassed?  Maybe you’re scared about what the next challenge will be.  Or maybe you’re simply bored of these antics.

A. 嬉　B. 怒　C. 恐　D. 悲　E. 退屈　F. 恥

A. 億　B. 京　C. 千　D. 兆　E. 百　F. 万

People didn’t seem to be very interested in the smaller numbers this week.  I guess “Go big or go home” is the motto of the KYPC enthusiast.  It should be noted that the characters representing numbers larger than one hundred million are rarely used–that is, rarely used in their capacity to represent numbers.  “Trillion” and “ten quadrillion” have other meanings for which they more commonly appear.  So don’t feel bad if those ones misled you.

We salute A Fan for using Google to look up how many seconds are in a week, just as we used it to figure out how many years ten quadrillion seconds is.  Unsurprisingly, his “surprise pick” turned out to be incorrect, as, for some strange reason, the Japanese have no specific character to represent the number 604,800 (or 60,4800).  However, he did manage to pick the answer that was closest; F is ten thousand, or, in terms of seconds, the play/musical.  There is, in fact, a character used to represent “zero,” but it’s not E.  It looks like this:

零

But, once again, he cleverly managed to pick the one that was closest to it.  E is a hundred, the microwave lunch.  Also, we regret to inform A Fan that we will continue writing puzzles about tables as long as we like, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

We’ll give Theoman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he stuck to the large numbers because he already knows the smaller ones.  And even with huge sums he’s not that bad.  By process of elimination he was able to pick out D as a trillion, making it the cave painting, not the dinosaurs, which was A Fan’s theory.  This character also means “omen.”  The basis on which he established his elimination, however, was wrong.  Like Dragon, he leapt on the idea that the most complicated character would be the largest number, and they were both quite wrong.  A is the smallest of the “large” numbers: 100 million, the abbreviated college career.  And the one he recognized is one that he probably saw while it was playing its other, much more popular role.  B means “capital” and is the “kyo” of both Tokyo and Kyoto.  On the weekends, it means 10 quadrillion, or, in seconds, 316,887,646 years.

Shirley made good guesses but failed to hit the mark.  While it might feel like it takes a pot of water a trillion seconds to boil if you stare at it, it’s probably not quite that long.  The character for a thousand, the number of seconds it takes to boil water if you don’t watch the pot, is C.  I agree that B is the best looking of the characters here, but, sadly, it didn’t translate into a correct answer.

And now, from our Be Careful What You Wish For Department, we give A Fan exactly what he asked for: a quiz about French.  The following are all words in use in Japanese today that were originally borrowed from French.  This will also be the first KYPC challenge to not feature a single kanji character.  But don’t complain to me; it wasn’t my idea.  Instead, you should devote your energies to identifying the words that represent the following concepts: bell pepper, clown, contest, studio, survey, and pants.  Bonne chance!

A. アトリエ　B. アンケート　C. コンクール　D. ズボン　E. ピーマン

F. ピエロ

A. 移り気　B. 社交的　C. 心配性　D. 短気　E. 生意気　F. 楽天的

You may know your picture characters, but how well do you really know yourself?  Let’s see.

Theoman knows himself perhaps even better than he realizes.  He first noted that he is whimsical, and this trait above all else seems to have defined his responses.  The Japanese word for whimsicality is represented by characters meaning “movement” and “spirit,” calling to mind the image of a mind constantly in motion, flitting from one place to the next.  In this case, Theoman’s whimsical mind reversed his two answers.  He found C whimsical and A worrisome, but it turned out that they were the other way round.

A Fan ignored the instruction to relate his guesses to his own personality, which some might consider E, impertinent.  But he did his best to make up for it by telling a story about a table, which could in its own peculiar way tell us about the author himself.  Does he see himself as being like the table, the symbol of flatness, ever even-keeled, a personality trait that is not particularly well represented among this list?  Or does the saga of the table’s inevitable fall suggest a short-tempered individual ever teetering on the edge, as one finds at D? (Note: the word used here for “short-tempered” actually uses a character that means “short.”)  This second possibility seems more likely, as his usually reliable shotgun method failed to earn him a single correct answer this week.

Shirley, then, is the only contestant this week to get one right.  However, she may or may not be pleased to learn that her intuition was sharpest with regard to C, the worrywart.  Apparently knowledge of Scandinavian Angst is not to be scorned.  Her “whimsical thing” at the end of B and F is, sadly, simply a suffix used to turn nouns into adjectives.  Then again, by itself this character means “target,” and it is made up of components meaning “white” and “ladle,” so maybe the fact that none of these things seem to have anything to do with each other could be regarded as pretty whimsical (or speak to the whimsicality of whoever made the character up in the first place).  In fact, B and F are the sociable fellow and the optimist, respectively, making them probably the most well-balanced members of the group.  But where would we be without all the brazen, short-tempered, whimsical worrywarts to make things more interesting?

All this business about emotions and personality is pretty murky.  It’s time to get back to cold hard facts, and as facts go, none are colder or harder than numbers.  You may recall that, way back (roughly one year ago), we had a quiz on numbers.  It was our first KYPC challenge.  That quiz, though, only went as high as the number ten.  Surely you’re not satisfied with only knowing how to count that high!  It’s about time I expanded your horizons.  Those who are disturbed by large quantities of zeroes can stick to the small stuff, your hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands . . . that’s right, ten thousands!  While we in the west group our large numbers by the thousands (thousand, million, billion, etc.), traditional East Asian counting systems use ten thousand (ten thousand, hundred million, trillion, etc.)  Think of it as writing a comma every 4 zeroes instead of every 3.  But anyway, I’m expecting that these large, intimidating sums will be left to anyone who, say, happened to minor in math at a reputable educational institution at some point.

And for those of you who, like me, have trouble conceiving of what such giant numbers could possibly mean, try this helpful guide:

A hundred seconds is about how long it might take you to microwave your frozen lunch
A thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to bring a large pot of water to boil
Ten thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to watch a two-act play or a musical
One hundred million seconds is about how long it might take you to finish college if you came in with sophomore standing
A trillion seconds is about as old as the oldest known cave paintings
Ten quadrillion seconds ago is before the age of the dinosaurs

A. 億　B. 京　C. 千　D. 兆　E. 百　F. 万

A. 足　B. 腕　C. 肩　D. 手　E. 膝　F. 肘　G. 指

I have suspected for years that Shirley and Dragon were in some kind of fiendish cahoots with each other.  Now, at last, I have incontrovertible proof.

But first comes Theoman, who once again brought his mighty logic to bear.  He had a good idea, but he got a little too specific.  That part which appears on the left side of B, E, and F (and also, in somewhat more squished form, in C) typically refers to parts of the body in general, and if you look closely, it is the same as the character meaning moon.  Now, before you get a bunch of crazy ideas about the ancient Chinese having come from the moon–which can’t be ruled out–I should probably point out that this is a fairly well-known simplification of another symbol meaning “meat” or “flesh.”  It might seem then that this marker would be useless for identifying specific types of parts of the body, but, in fact, Theoman did not do too badly.  E and F are joints, and F is even the joint that he thought it was: the elbow.

Unfortunately, this means that ShirDrag’s identification of F as the knee is incorrect; she might want to check her elbows to make sure that they don’t give out at any moment either.  The tricky knee is located next door at E.  As for her other guesses, A, which is one of about a dozen characters that kind of looks like a person but doesn’t mean “person,” is the leg (or the foot.  They don’t really differentiate them all the time).  D is the hand she runs through her hair in an attempt to keep it under control, and C is not the hips but the equivalent structures located at the opposite end of the torso, in other words, the shoulders.

We can tell that A Fan is quite bitter that he still needs to use his finger to turn on his TV and is eagerly awaiting a time when it can be remotely activated with one’s mind.  In this case his bitterness may be due more specifically to the fact that he broke his TV because he tried to turn it on with his shoulder instead.  On ladders, however, he is rock solid: he knows that it’s best to use B, his arms.  The elusive finger, by the way, is hiding at G.

This business of people masquerading as someone else really has me concerned.  How am I supposed to know who’s who?  Ah yes.  While the appearance and the name can be easily disguised, it is much more difficult to conceal one’s true personality.  With this in mind, I have prepared a short personality test so I can identify you all conclusively.  Are you impertinent?  An optimist?  Short-tempered?  Sociable?  Whimsical?  A worrywart?  Let’s find out.

A. 移り気　B. 社交的　C. 心配性　D. 短気　E. 生意気　F. 楽天的

A. 砲口　B. 芳香　C. 縫工　D. 放校　E. 咆哮　F. 彷徨

First off, let it be known that Dragon has been awarded thirteen and three-quarters integrity points.

Now for things that actually matter: this week was another one of those rare occasions where Theoman was able to make quite successful use of his Japanese knowledge.  I doubt that he was already familiar with either of the words he guessed correctly, but I assume he was able to spot a character meaning “school” in D and one meaning “mouth” in A, which led him to properly identify them as expulsion and gun muzzle, respectively.  We salute him for taking a valiant stab in the direction of wandering, but unfortunately it was this last guess which kept him from batting 1.000.  That crazy business at the beginning of C refers to sewing, so this is our tailor or seamstress.

Luckily, not everyone was so stumped by the titular compound.  Dragon immediately spotted F as the noble wanderer, and then she made up some silly business about rain in order to justify it.

What does that character at the top of the page mean?  Hmm . . .

For a moment I thought that Shirley had managed to snag the fragrance out of the line-up, but then I realized that she had written her answers in the order “B, A” rather than “A, B.”  If she had stuck to alphabetical order she would have been right: B is the fragrance.  But she was able to make up for it by following Dragon in identifying our itinerant friend at F, which means that this is one of the very rare occasions when every single participant got at least one answer right.  You folks sure know your homophones.  You know them so well that no one even had to bother howling.  Just in case you had, you would have found it at E.

Some of you may remember that long, long ago we had a puzzle on parts of the body.  Others of you may still be trying to forget.  In any case, as that challenge only covered the head and face, I’ve decided that you need to expand your anatomical knowledge somewhat.  So here is the Body Parts Challenge 2: Limbs Edition.  The rest of you can try to find the simple stuff like arms and legs, hands and fingers, while Theoman’s task will be to sort out the various joints (shoulder, elbow, knee).

A. 足　B. 腕　C. 肩　D. 手　E. 膝　F. 肘　G. 指

A. 完全試合　B. 三振　C. 四球　D. 死球　E. 失策　F. 盗塁

G. 併殺　H. 本塁打

Theoman and Dragon both decided to be morbid and look for death omens this week, though they came up with different answers: the former focused on the actual, physical danger of the HBP, whereas Dragon sought out the soul-crushing shame of the strikeout.  They both looked to C, which starts with the character for “four,” which is indeed unlucky because it can be pronounced the same as the character for “death.”  But really, they should have been a bit less metaphorical and a bit more literal.  Whereas C starts off with a symbol that sounds like “death,” D starts off with the symbol that actually is “death.”  If they had realized this, then Dragon would have been correct; D is the Hit By Pitch.  C is actually a lot easier than it was made out to be: the second symbol means “ball.”  “Four balls” equals a walk.  C and D have the same pronunciation, which is interesting, because a walk and a HBP have the same result.  However, like most baseball terms, they also have equivalents based on English, and there they are differentiated: the walk is a foabooru (four ball) and the Hit By Pitch is a deddobooru (dead ball).

Well, we certainly know what part of baseball A Fan thinks is most important: offense (though this causes one to wonder why he roots for the team he does).  It is true that seeing the ball sail out of the stadium can stir the heart–though actually, the real drama is just after the bat connects, before you realize whether or not it’s going, going, gone.  But what could be more exciting than a perfect game, which has happened less than 20 times in the past 100 years?  This is A.

Shirley, not distracted by the fact that the first character meant four/death, correctly picked up on the fact that C is the walk.  However, while she told a good story, none of her other answers was right.  H is not the strikeout but the home run; the middle character it shares with D means “base,” thus yielding “home base hit.”  F, then, is the stolen base.  The actual strikeout can be found at B, with characters meaning “three” and “swing.”  The two characters she chose to ignore are E, the error, and G, the double play.

But that’s enough of baseball for now.  It’s time for another homophone challenge.  This week’s choices are all pronounced houkou and they mean: explusion from school, fragrance, gun muzzle, tailor or seamstress, roar or howl, and wandering.  Good luck!

A. 砲口　B. 芳香　C. 縫工　D. 放校　E. 咆哮　F. 彷徨

A. 明石覚一　B. 鴨長明　C. 紀貫之　D. 二条　E. 松尾芭蕉

F. 吉田兼好

I suppose I should have predicted that the only contestants who would chime in this time around would be the ones who understood the challenge in the first place.  Oh well.  That’ll teach me to give people second chances.

Dragon and A Fan were completely distracted by that overrated, permanently canonized, inescapable Tale of Genji and its author, who is in fact called Murasaki Shikibu (the “Shikibu” portion of her “name” is in fact a title associated with a rank held by her father).  A Fan was banking on the hope that she was a prolific author with many pseudonyms, and maybe she was, but as far as I know only two major works by her have survived to the present day: the aforementioned Tale (which many scholars agree she didn’t even write all of, but that’s another story) and her diary (which does indicate that she was nicknamed Murasaki in real life, too, though this may again have been due to the Tale).

Dragon had more realistic aims, but she was still thwarted by the fact that none of these people is Murasaki Shikibu.  And just in case there are any Marlovians or other crazy people out there who want to argue that maybe they could be, I will point out that none of the people on this list were alive even within two decades of Murasaki’s time.  The closest was C, the court poet Ki no Tsurayuki, compiler of and writer of the famous preface to the Kokinshu, in which he states that poetry can move the heavens and the earth, touch the hearts of gods and demons, soothe relations between men and women, and calm the minds of fierce warriors.  But apparently, according to Dragon, he was just twisted.

And now we get into the guesses that actually had a chance of being right.  Theoman’s knowledge of Japanese tripped him up once again; spotting the symbol for “woman” as part of the last character in F, he assumed that this person was a woman.  In fact, that kanji just means to like, favor, be positive, etc.

He then tried to make use of my unhelpful hints, but, surprisingly, they turned out to be unhelpful.  B, the name containing the bird and the river (they’re the same!  It’s the first character), is not the poetry compiler, as we already know; this is Kamo no Chomei, who left the city of Kyoto to go live in a hut for one of two reasons: if you believe his work, the Hojoki, it’s because the impermanence of life makes trying to maintain a home in the capital foolish.  Or, if you’re more cynical, you can look at the fact that he left shortly after being denied the position of head priest at the Kamo Shrine (Kamo, meaning “wild duck,” is the first character of his name, and is also the name of the river along which the shrine is located).

Finally, he tried his hand at D, but it turned out to be Lady Nijo, the concubine he had been searching for all along (Hmm . . . that sounds a little sketchy).  As Dragon has already pointed out, women of the court were often referred to by things that we would not ordinarily consider “names,” per se.  One common practice was to refer to them by the location of their residence, hence Nijo, or “2nd Street.”

Shirley, who accused me of being a sadist, fell into the same trap with D, leading me to wonder whether I’m the sadist for creating these challenges or you are all masochists for accepting them.  But after that her luck improved.  She gets half credit for sort of identifying B as the monk in the hut.  Her other option, E, was Matsuo Basho, who was named after a plant he had outside his hut, so I guess that’s worth something.  He was the travelogue and haiku writer; the “Matsu” of his family name means pine tree, and the “Basho,” his pen name, he adopted after one of his disciples gave him a banana plant to put outside his residence.  And her identification of F was spot on: this is indeed Yoshida Kenko, author of Tsurezuregusa, and provider of such helpful health tips as: “Don’t sniff fresh deer antlers.  There are bugs inside them that will crawl up through your nose and eat your brain.”  Her Hail Marys all fell short of the end zone, but she made up for it in overtime.

And no one was interested in A, Akashi Kakuichi (“kaku” meaning “write”), who produced the Tale of the Heike that most of us know and love today.

But that’s enough of torturing you with literature.  It’s time to worry about more important things.  That’s right: it’s baseball season again.  Let’s set the scene of a typical inning.  Actually, it’s not at all typical: bottom of the ninth, all tied up at zero, and the opposing pitcher is throwing a PERFECT GAME.  The leadoff guy swings away, one, two, three: an unceremonious STRIKEOUT.  Now, you haven’t been having a lot of luck with the bat lately, but the pressure’s clearly getting to the pitcher, and he’s losing his control, so you manage to finagle a WALK.  He tries to keep a close eye on you at first, but he can’t keep up with your speed.  You STEAL second.  This totally rattles the pitcher, and the guy at bat pays the price: he’s HIT BY A PITCH.  At this point the umpire comes out, reminds everyone to settle down, not cause any trouble.  The pitcher slides back into his groove and gets the next guy to hit a slow roller to the second baseman.  A tailor-made DOUBLE PLAY ball.  But the shortstop botches the relay, and his ERROR prevents them from getting the last out.  You’re safe at third.  You’ve worked hard to get there.  Only ninety more feet.  Then, of course, the next guy makes the whole thing meaningless by jacking a HOME RUN.

Can you identify the key events of this inning?

A. 完全試合　B. 三振　C. 四球　D. 死球　E. 失策　F. 盗塁

G. 併殺　H. 本塁打

Not only did we have a late entry this week, there were also some contestants who seem to have not quite understood the challenge, which suggests that I did not explain it well enough.  So I’m going to give you folks a second chance at this second chance.  First, let’s review:

A. 奥の細道　B. 古今集　C. 徒然草　D. 問わず語り　E. 平家物語

F. 方丈記

These are the six works from two weeks ago.  They are: A. Oku no hosomichi, the poetic travel log, B. Kokinshu, the imperial poetry anthology, C. Tsurezuregusa, the collection of random ramblings, D. Towazugatari, the autobiographical tale of the imperial concubine, E. Heike monogatari, the war epic, and F. Hojoki, the story of a man and his hut.

A. 明石覚一　B. 鴨長明　C. 紀貫之　D. 二条　E. 松尾芭蕉

F. 吉田兼好

These, then, are the six authors of the six works listed at the top.  My intent was for this to be a matching game, not for people to attempt to pull names of classical Japanese authors out of their hats.  In the case of Heike monogatari, of which more than 100 versions are known to exist, I have listed the person associated with the most well-known version.  In the case of Kokinshu–which, being a poetry collection, has many authors–I have listed the most famous of the compilers.

And just to mix things up, I will provide some hints which may not be at all helpful.

A. This name contains a character that is a homophone for the Japanese verb meaning “write.”

B. This name contains a kind of bird and the name of a river.

C. This name starts and ends with the same syllable.

D. This name can be found on a map.

E. This name contains two different kinds of plants.

F. The second half of this author’s name is a homophone for “health,” “high spirits,” and “balance.”

So go ahead and guess again, if you’re not sick of this stuff by now.  Those who correctly interpreted the puzzle the first time may feel free to make additional guesses.  All answers will be judged next week.

A. 奥の細道　B. 古今集　C. 徒然草　D. 問わず語り　E. 平家物語

F. 方丈記

Dragon demonstrated terrific perception this week by picking up on the fact that the hut in Hojoki can be disassembled.  This was one of the key points made by the author, who preferred, in this impermanent world, to have a dwelling that he could relocate at will rather than being tied down to a house, which is nothing but a hassle.  Unfortunately, kanji cannot be so conveniently taken apart and rearranged.  The Hojoki (literally “Ten-Square-Foot Chronicle,” referring to the dimensions of the hut) is F.  It also may have been a poor decision to ignore the last character in B, because it means “collection,” which might have pointed her to the Kokinshu, the first imperial poetry anthology.

A Fan gave an impressive display of erudition, referencing many works I have never read and at least one I have never heard of.  He even made a joke . . . I think.  So let’s see how many matched up.  A: no, B: no, C: no, D: no, E: no, F: also no.  And thus we see why the field of comparative literature is a tricky proposition.  Hmm . . . maybe my theory that knowledge of the concept of literature in general will help is not supported by the results.  Shirley certainly seemed to think so, but she decided to take her usual shots regardless.  Sadly, her familiar Japanese author is Endo Shusaku, who wrote in the 20th century, and these works are all from the pre-modern era, so he can’t help her out much here.  Her investigations were mainly in the realm of poetry, though her decision at the last minute to label the Heike Monogatari, the epic war tale, as non-poetry is an interesting one.  You probably can’t really call it poetry, but, like the works of Homer referenced by A Fan, it derives from a recited, performed tradition rather than a strictly textual one (at least, the version we are most familiar with today does).  It is found not at C but at E.  C is Tsurezuregusa, part of a genre known as zuihitsu, literally “following the brush,” referring to just writing whatever comes to mind.  In addition to opinions on style, our friend the monk chooses to share with us his feelings on romance (they’re not very consistent), and even medical tips.

As for the other two, A is the Narrow Road of the Far North, in which a haiku master travels through northeastern Japan to visit famous historical places (and also to do a fair amount of self-aggrandizing, but he doesn’t write about that much in the book).  D is Towazugatari, literally “the tale that no asked asked about,” which tells of the difficulties of being a woman in the imperial court.

And one last comforting note for Shirley: this time around, knowledge of Japanese didn’t help either.  The first character in E, which looks like a character that means “half,” in fact means “flat,” though in this case, as it’s part of a family name, the meaning was unlikely to help much.

This is the first time in a while that no one was able to get a correct answer, so I feel it’s only fair to give you guys another shot at these.  For Round 2, see if you can identify the authors of these six works.  In the case of the poetry anthology, I’ve listed the most famous of the compilers, and for the epic, I’ve listed the man associated with the most famous version (over 100 are known to exist).

A. 明石覚一　B. 鴨長明　C. 紀貫之　D. 二条　E. 松尾芭蕉

F. 吉田兼好

A. 風邪　B. 結核　C. 天然痘　D. 破傷風　E. 水疱瘡　F. 流感

Life has a funny sense of humor sometimes.  Last weekend I created a challenge about diseases.  Based on this, the universe decided that I am extremely interested in diseases and would like to learn more about them, preferably by experiencing them firsthand.  So, this week, when I am responding to a challenge about diseases, I have caught a kaze, one of the six sicknesses featured.

Dragon started off by assuming that kanji are nothing more than a funny way of writing the Latin alphabet.  To be fair, for someone who has no actual knowledge of kanji, this is probably as good a strategy as any.  Unfortunately, she didn’t read it quite right.  That last “letter” there may look like a B, but in fact it is a dented D, representing the fact that people are not in tip-top shape when they are sick.  Then, moving to the left, you can clearly see a large, somewhat angular letter C that has been rotated clockwise, and inside it is the letter O with an L running through it.  So you see that A is obviously a COLD, which is my current predicament.

Shirley engaged in a comparison study, with sadly predictable results (based on the general helpfulness of kanji in KYPC).  F may look somewhat out of the ordinary, but it is the all-too-common influenza virus.  And while A and D share a character, they have little in common, other than both being illnesses.  A, as already mentioned, is the common cold, and D is tetanus.

Theoman started off by assuming that a disease that can be caused by more than 200 different types of viruses can be accurately labeled as “simple.”  But he got it right anyway, coming up with the only successful diagnosis of the week, proving true the age-old trope of medical TV shows, in which first you have to make a mistake in order to eventually get things right.  His second guess, however, was off the mark.  We’ll assume that he meant to write “D” rather than “C” because of his reference to matching characters, though it doesn’t really matter, as neither one is the flu.  C and E are our two poxes, small and chicken, respectively, who have decided most unhelpfully to not look anything like each other.  And B is TB, so it’s a shame that A Fan chose not to ring in this time.

Now, I know some of you might think this challenge is unfair, given that one regular participant knows some Japanese and the rest do not.  So I’ve decided to even the odds a bit this week.  I also believe that those regular participants who do not know Japanese consider themselves fairly knowledgeable about literature.  Thus, this week’s challenge is about Japanese literature, and that way everyone will be familiar with half of it.  Specifically, the options will all be things that I studied this quarter in school, covering primarily works of the medieval and early modern periods.

Since I’m guessing you won’t be familiar with most of the titles, I’ll give you summaries to go on instead.  One is the first imperially-commissioned poetry anthology.  One is the memoir of a hermit who decided to abandon life in the capital and live in a hut in the mountains.  One is an epic war tale depicting the rise and fall of a mighty warrior clan.  One is a series of seemingly random and often contradictory observations written down by a monk.  One is the autobiographical tale of a woman forced into service as an imperial concubine.  And one is a combination travel log and poetry collection composed by a haiku master as he journeyed through northeastern Japan (a region that is very much in our thoughts and hearts this week).  So use either your knowledge of Japanese or your knowledge of literature and pick out whichever of those you would most want to read.

A. 奥の細道　B. 古今集　C. 徒然草　D. 問わず語り　E. 平家物語　F. 方丈記