Flying cats
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The text reads:
Neko tobidashi chūi
ネコ飛出し注意
"Beware of cats jumping / darting [lit., flying] out"
The Japanese have a special affinity with cats. If you do a Google search on — cats jumping out japan — you'll find a zillion interesting / amazing things about cats darting / dashing / jumping / leaping / flying / springing out that are going on right now.
Selected readings
- "Is Hello Kitty not a cat?" (8/30/14)
- "I am a cat?" (8/19/16)
- "Cat and mouse on the Chinese internet" (7/30/15)
- "Turkish 'kedi' and English 'cat'" (7/25/20)
- "Cat chat" (5/19/21)
- "Cat huffing and snorting in Japanese and Chinese" (6/15/22)
- "Cat phonetics" (3/13/16)
- "ChatGPT cat wound healing conversation" (2/27/25)
My favorite cat novel:
Wagahai wa neko de aru
吾輩は猫である
"I am a cat"
1905-1906 by Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916)
[h.t. Victor Steinbok]
Michael Carasik said,
September 14, 2025 @ 11:08 am
This is Chinese, not Japanese, but I remember many decades ago reading a chapter (in English translation) from a science fiction novel called "Everybodyovskyism in Cat City."
Frank L Chance said,
September 14, 2025 @ 11:10 am
Japanese has a plethora of ct related expressions from "neko no hitai" (猫の額 a cat's forehead) as a metaphor for something extremely small, such as a student's room in a dormitory, to "neko no te mo karitai" (猫の手も借りたい [I] even want to borrow the cat's hands/paws) as an expression of how busy one is or how hard one is working. I personally find these to be absolutely the cat's meow!
Neil Kubler said,
September 14, 2025 @ 5:24 pm
It's interesting to note that nèko "cat", which is usually written with the kanji 猫, is here written with katakana as ネコ, probably to make the word stand out more.
Josh R. said,
September 14, 2025 @ 6:48 pm
We mustn't forget 猫糞 nekobaba, "cat feces", which is when one does something bad but acts entirely innocent and unknowing. Particularly, say, picking up a wallet that's fallen in the street and pocketing the money, rather than turning it in for the owner to find.
HS said,
September 14, 2025 @ 7:21 pm
Reminds me of the Australian Drop Bear – see here and here, or do a Google search to find many other encounters with this terrifying man-eating creature….
When it comes to scaring gullible foreign tourists, the Giant Weta fills a similar ecological niche here in New Zealand…
Tom said,
September 14, 2025 @ 8:06 pm
I have "cat tongue"–I can't eat hot food.
Some cat expressions came into Japanese from English, and Japanese people are unaware. The one I don't know about is the superstition over black cats.
Philip Taylor said,
September 15, 2025 @ 3:45 am
"When it comes to scaring gullible foreign tourists, the Giant Weta fills a similar ecological niche here in New Zealand …" — when I visited the Waikato caves in 1987, even the standard (i.e., not Giant) weta was enough to cause an outbreak of screaming amongst my fellow cave visitors. Photography was strictly forbidden, but when our guide discovered that not only was I not scared by the wetas but was fascinated by them, she very kindly allowed me to photograph them once the other visitors had moved on.
Chas Belov said,
September 24, 2025 @ 12:25 am
@Tom: ¿Hot as in temperature or hot as in spicy?