The World Through Your Eyes
coralinecastell
#357
Speaking of languages…
I had my first ancient Greek lesson today, folks! 
And it seems like I’ll be learning some French too… 
Funniest bit was that I walked into the class and one if my favorite psychology teachers was sitting there and we just stared at each other like
“OMGAREYOUALSOTAKINGTHISCLASSTHISISSOCOOL”
Seriously. Have any of you ever been students alongside one of your cool teachers in a class? Rad AF. 
Bonus points because the class is free and the teacher is a hella funny knowledgeable old man with hearing impalements so I had to loudly scream my name in a class full of people I’ve never met three times while my cool teacher laughed her ass off.
Good day 
PS: @YQMaoski I may have a similar painting at home I’d like your thoughts on. Pretty sure it’s Japanese, though. Once I find it I’ll post it here.
coralinecastell
#359
Lmao my autocorrect is so funny and I love the mental image so much I’m just leaving that there for posterity. 
YQMaoski
#361
@coralinecastell, this is definitely a Japanese piece just by the style of art. But you are in luck, the two words there are both Kanji, and very easily legible.
The piece is titled:
初雪
Meaning literally “initial/first snow,” indicating the first snow of the season.
You and @kovec are providing examples to make me look edumacated… 
most of the time I have a lot of trouble reading inscriptions on artwork…
Fraggles
#362
Far faster than me, I got yuki 雪 easily, but the first one I would by no means call easily legible. Closest I got, before you posted, was hirigana yu ゆ and that didn’t feel right at all.
Where are you all finding these awesome prints? Weird how they’re not lying littered around in Swedish thrift stores.
coralinecastell
#363
Pretty sure it was 
but didn’t want to assume. So thanks for confirming and for translating! Certainly makes it more special to me. Thank you so much!
And gee it was certainly not my intention to make you look edumacated…
My parents had it since before they had me. F if I know where it came from! They probably don’t remember either but I’ll make sure to ask.
Pylinaer
#364
Oh darn, imagine that. My vehicle no longer having factory warranty. What ever would give that away?
I think I’ll do this instead:
YQMaoski
#365
At dinner, and still thinking about things here. Enjoying a pretty nice brew from Belgium, and immediately thought of @Gnuffi…
Now back to dinner!
Fraggles
#369
Yes it’s upside down and pretty easy since it’s perfectly legible I’m sure anyone can feed it into google translate.
白山神社安交主通征尸守
is what I get out of it, which google translates to “the official shrine of white mountain shrine”. The only tricky part is whether or not some of these are meant to be one 2 part character or simply 2 or 3 characters on the same line. As the 3rd and 4th are possible 2 parters, but also possibly 2 separate characters, where as line 5, 6 and 7 I do not think can be combined to be one character. Though I’d love to hear from Maoski to see if I’m wrong on that.
YQMaoski
#372
@Pylinaer, while it is impossible to tell just by looking at it whether it’s Japanese or Chinese, I did a little searching and concluded that it is a Japanese sequence of words.
The reason why it’s impossible to tell: each one of the characters depicted is being used both in Japanese as Kanji and Chinese regular language commonly.
The individual words, and @Fraggles was very close. And yeah, the way it’s written out is funny, it’s not written in complete top down order, this is the way it’s broken up (Click image to see whole breakdown):
So the word sequence is:
- 白
- 山
- 神
- 社
- 交
- 通
- 安
- 全
- 御
- 守
白山 = White Mountain
(This was a little tricky at first, because there’s a city called that in China, there is also a city called that in Japan.)
But putting those together with the next 2 words, and we get this:
白山神社 Literally meaning White Mountain Shrine.
Of course that was the biggest give away that this this is a Japanese stamp.
Next:
交通 = Traffic
安全 = Safety
御守 = Guard
This last set of 2 words was the next give away for it being Japanese than Chinese.
A little Google Translate gives a direct translation for this from Japanese:
But if you try it in Chinese, you get nothing.
Why?
Because it looks like an abbreviation of four character combination from times of imperial China, and not used currently in regular speech, but okay, but nobody uses this abbreviation even when talking about it. (At least I don’t think so.)
The full four word combination is as follows:
If you look carefully around the edges of this piece, you can see a faint seal as well:
It’s kind of squarish on the outside and circular on the inside, I don’t know in detail of what it is:
But I imagine that this is a personal identity/proof of ID for the shrine’s guard, and that the seal was probably once a red stamp that has since faded. Kind of like you have a print, and that is the official authorization seal. The series of words on there is clearly a stamp, possibly and likely a woodblock print. The seal is to make if official.
Cheers!
Pylinaer
#373
Doubtful it’s a proof of id for a guard. I would think more likely a tourist stamp. Either way…it’s…err…in the trash compactor.
kovec
#374
Why would you ask about it if you were just going to throw it out?
Also, i made 비빔밥 (Korean: bibimbap):
