So yeah, this World is for stuff related to studying Japanese. Well, kind of. :) What I really mean is that whatever I plunk here will primarily be language-related, not fandom-related, although most of it will probably stem from fandom in some respect (as you can see below).
When I play games that are compatible with agth, I usually open a WordPad file and collect weird/interesting kanji. Seemed like kind of a waste to have me be the only one looking at them, so I'd thought I'd share them a couple at a time. The definitions I have listed are swiped from Jim Breen, but I sometimes double-check them against dic.yahoo.co.jp or ALC, etc.
1) 髑髏 【されこうべ】 (n) skull (esp. weatherbeaten); cranium
This doesn't come up much in regular fiction--頭蓋 (skull, cranium) seems to get used more often. [ETA: I realized I should clarify; I believe 髑髏 refers specifically to a bare skull by itself, like Yorick in Hamlet.]
2) 抛つ 【なげうつ】 (v5t,vt) to abandon; to throw away; to fling away
3) 牛耳る 【ぎゅうじる】 (v5r,vt) to lead, control
Cow + ear = taking the lead? lol. I just looked up the etymology for this, and apparently it dates back to a (very ancient) historical Chinese practice of swearing fealty by tearing up a cow's ear and having everyone sip blood from it. [/totally not pulling your leg, I promise]
4) 轢殺 【れきさつ】 (n,vs) killing by running over with a car or train
5) 下拵え 【したごしらえ】 (n,vs) preparation; pre-cooking
Ateji of the week:
亜米利加 【あめりか】 (n) (uk) America
This explains why 米国 (America) randomly uses the same kanji as "rice"--originally it was just borrowed for its sound. Apparently a very similar process happened in Chinese, except the kanji they used there was 美 ("beauty"). (...is what I was told; I know nothing a/b Chinese myself.)
One caveat--pretty much all of the kanji I include in this series of posts will be kind of useless, as far as improving your base reading ability goes. They're interesting because they're a little unusual or obscure or don't pop up terribly often, but they're not necessarily what you want to put on your vocab study sheets, haha.
