Happy St. Paddy Day

Pulsegleaner

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Book 2

Yoki funbesu wa setchin de deru, "wise judgment comes when on the toilet" (Inspiration strikes in the most unlikely of places")

Shikakau na zakishi o maraku haku, "sweeping a four cornered room in a circle" (cutting corners)

Nusubito to chisa no so (line) wa onaji, "Thieves and scholars look the same" (don't judge a book by it's cover) (though I think the original is the negative (hidden danger) rather than the positive (hidden quality)

Nasake ni hamukau yaiba nashi, "No sword can oppose kindness" (you catch more flies with honey than vinegar) (though again, I think there may be a second meaning here more along the lines of "kindness beats violence"

U no mane o suru karasu, mizu ni oboreu, "A crow imiatating a coromorant drowns in the water" (to thine own self be true"

Mekura hebi ni ojizu, "the blind do not fear snakes" (Ignorance is bliss)

Aru ichi mon nai sen ryo (line) , "to have one mon (sort of the feudal equivalent of a penny*) is better than to not have one thousand ryo (sort of the Japanese feudal equivalent of a dollar**" (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush)

Endo (line) wa higake de mo hajikeru, "beans grow even in the shade" (there are those that thrive on adversity)

Tori wa furusu ni kaeru, "Birds return to old nests" (there's no place like home)

Ware-nabe ni toji-buta, "a repaired lid on a broken pot" (two of a kind)

Abata mo ekubo, "even pockmarks can look like dimples" (love is blind)

Setchin de yari o tsukau yo (line), "like wielding a spear in the toilet" (no room to swing a cat)

Tonari no hana wa akai, "the neighbors flowers are red" (the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence)

Hisashi o ka****e omoya o torareru, "lend the eaves, and the main building will be taken" (give them an inch and they'll take a mile

Suso totte kata e tsugu, "taking from the hem to patch the shoulder" (robbing Peter to pay Paul)

Hebi ni kamarete kuchi-nawa ni ojiru, "a person bitten by a snake will fear a rotted rope" (a burnt cat will avoid a cold stove)

Amadere ishi o ugatsu, "raindrops will wear through a stone" (slow and steady wins the race)

Deichu (line) no hasu, "a lotus flower in the mire" (a diamond in the rough)

Sode kara kaji , "a fire from a kimono sleeve"

This is more or less like "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost (I'm not going to do the whole thing) It comes from an actual historical event, after three young girls died after inheriting and wearing the same kimono, the robe was thought cursed, and was taken to a temple to be ritually burned. The fire from the sleeve escaped, spread and caused the Great Edo fire, which more or less burned all of Edo (now Tokyo) to the ground

* These sort of look like Chinese cash , round bronze coins with a square hole in the middle. I have several in my coin collection

** koban (one ryo pieces) are those kitchen match box sized loaf shaped gold coins that nekomata (those cat shaped statues you see in resturaunts) are holding (actually those look more like oban (ten ryo pieces, gold coins the size of a actual loaf of bread) since the value is black (oban had the value written on in ink) and they actually say they are ten thousand ryo but they're the same shape. I do NOT have one of those (they tend to cost a couple of thousand bucks) but I do have all the ones in between.
 

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