Music is an excellent way to learn Japanese. If you find a song you like, you can listen to it endlessly and the constant rehearing of the same words and grammar structures will help you learn them very effectively. In my personal experience, people who are better than your average JSL guys are the ones who just consume Japanese in their everyday life and don’t see it as ‘study’. You’ll also be exposed to a more poetic/figurative usage of Japanese (in particularly interesting kanji choices) that can really help you think about Japanese in a deeper way.
I used to find Japanese music I liked just generally from theme songs from anime, dramas etc that I would watch. The one we’ll go through today is the song from 1リットルの涙 (テレビドラマ), 3月9日.
流れる季節の真ん中で
ふと日の長さを感じます
せわしく過ぎる日々の中に
私とあなたで夢を描く
The lyrics start off with 流れる季節, a type of grammar that is very common in Japanese in which you use a verb to describe a noun, ‘flowing season’ and then a very common JLPT trick of 真ん中 which is read is まんなか, with 真 often used as a suffix to describe the ‘true’ or ‘pure’ version of something, definition 2:
真 ま (pref) (1) just; right; due (east); (2) pure; genuine; true; (n) (3) truth
ふと means suddenly, 長さ is a grammar point where you take i-adjectives and replace the い with さ to change ‘long’ to ‘length’.
Next we have せわしく過ぎる which is in a way an inverse of 流れる季節, with せわしい being changed to せわしく to act as an adverb. We have a kanji iteration mark which is technically called 同の字点 but generally referred to as a のま and results in this being read as ひび.
3月の風に想いをのせて
桜のつぼみは春へとつづきます
溢れ出す光の粒が
少しずつ朝を暖めます
大きなあくびをした後に
少し照れてるあなたの横で
新たな世界の入口に立ち
気づいたことは 1人じゃないってこと
Nothing too much here, but I will point out the use of transitive verbs in the sentence 少しずつ朝を暖めます, notice the pairing of あたためる with を. I’ve done a video on this grammar topic if you want to check it out here.
There is also the interesting case of おおきなあくび which may confuse some of you as you always thought of 大きい as an i-adjective. Both ちいさい and おおきい can be used in this way, either as an i-adj or na-adj. There are some caveats and generally the な versions are only used with abstract concepts, whereas the other tends to be with concrete concepts. However, in this song ‘a big yawn’ is not exactly abstract although as the above linked article points out, その歌を歌う人それぞれが自分でイメージできる木、時計（つまり、抽象的な存在）となり、余韻のある表現になります。
瞳を閉じればあなたが
まぶたのうらにいることで
どれほど強くなれたでしょう
あなたにとって私もそうでありたい
First line here has a handy construction, とじれば, which helps remember the ば conditional. There are few other handy grammar constructions in here including X ほど Y でしょう, ありたい.
砂ぼこり運ぶつむじ風
洗濯物に絡まりますが
昼前の空の白い月は
なんだかきれいで見とれました
上手くはいかぬこともあるけれど
天を仰げば それさえ小さくて
I can almost be 100% certain I learnt this word 砂ぼこり from this song, and if I didn’t, I certainly remember it because of this song. Ditto for つむじ風 and also for the pairing of 洗濯物 with the particle に and 絡まります.
There is also a smattering of N1, N2 grammar in there with いかぬ (which I can’t seem to find any source on but it’s just classical Japanese version of ない, if someone has a source please let me know!).
青い空は凛と澄んで
羊雲は静かに揺れる
花咲くを待つ喜びを
分かち合えるのであればそれは幸せ
この先も隣でそっと微笑んで
More JLPT N2, N1 vocab and usage, including the incredibly useful 羊雲 ひつじぐも (n) altocumulus cloud, as well as another adverbial usage in 静かに揺れる.
If you would like to go through your favourite Japanese music with me and have them translated, contact me through my website’s contact page, through email or via CafeTalk.
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