Physical Examination

today we had our health screening at the company.
But I had a pass on the X-ray as I had one just about 3 months ago.

健康診断
けんこうしんだん
kenkou shindan
physical examination

Ｘ線
エックスせん
ekkusu sen
X-ray

レントゲン
roentgen
X-ray

健康診断 is a very common word in Japan. Vocabulary acquired at work when our officemates take a leave to have their check-ups.

I cant be really sure but I thinkＸ線 is more widely used than レントゲン because it had an entry on wikipedia. レントゲン on the other hand returned image results in the first results page displayed (google).

Minesweeper

yey! finished another minesweeper expert game today @ 174 (after lunch @work) ^ ^
second successful finish for my borrowed windows computer
played without flags. played without hints. played without the left+right click “cheat”
thats how i play minesweeper since i learned to play without marking mines with flags

poodle (computer name) fastest mine sweeper times:

• beginner: 12 seconds
• intermediate: 59 seconds
• expert: 166 seconds

the scores are not that high though
just reasonable scores for the first successful games
and which i did not attempt to beat for record (except for the expert though)

i also cant remember the best times i scored for each category since i started playing minesweeper. but i think i had an 8 for the beginner and about 30 for intermediate.
erm… im not sure ToT

***

so as usual here is the japanese word for minesweeper:
掃海艇 【そうかいてい】soukaitei

but i think this word is applicable only for sea mines (naval mines to be more accurate)

掃 means sweep
海 means sea (read as umi)
艇 means boat (also read as tei)
掃海 means sweeping the sea for mines

and for land mine, the japanese word is:

地雷 【じらい】 jirai
地 means ground or earth (read as chi)
雷 means thunder (read as kaminari)

there is also another word 地雷火 (jiraika) but it returned only about 250,000 results in google compared to 8million for 地雷

and after some googling i found this site with this image T_T sad sad world

and do you remember the scene in Finding Nemo where there were a lot of naval mines? AND did you know there is a Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage in Disneyland, California? the spooky graveyard of sunken ships surrounded by naval mines is also featured in the ride

Chapter 9. The Midnight Duel

真夜中の決闘
まよなかのけっとう
mayonaka no kettou
Midnight Duel

mayonaka (けっとう) – midnight
kettou (まよなか) – duel

Strictly speaking… in Japanese

厳密に言えば
genmitsu ni ieba
strictly speaking

A glimpse of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Spent a few minutes reading through the first paragraph of chapter one of the book ^_^ Yep, I finally decided to start with Harry Potter. Have to start getting used to reading vertically down T_T

Below is the first paragraph in case you are curious ninyo and interested to read the japanese version

ハリーポッターと賢者の石

第１章
生き残った男の子

プリベット通り四番地の住人ダーズリー夫妻は、「おかげさまで、私どもはどこから見てもまともな人間です」というのが自慢だった。不思議とか神秘とかそんな非常識はまるっきり認めない人種で、まか不思議な出来事が彼らの周辺で起こるなんて、到底考えられなかった。

Dai 1 Shou
Ikinokotta Otoko no Ko

Puribetto toori shibanchi no juunin Daazurii fuzai wa, [Okagesamade, watashidono wa doko kara mite mo matomo na ningen desu] to iu no ga jiman datta. Fushigi toka shinpin toka sonnna hijoushiki wa marukkiri mitomenai jinshu de, makafushigi na dekigoto ga karera no shuuhen de okoru nante, toutei kangaerarenakatta.

whew!