Gary Kleppe asked me about the characters on Ucchan's clothes,
and I decided to respond to the list as I thought the results would be
worth sending to the list as a whole -- the attached images are only
6kb in total so it's no worse than much of the spam that gets tossed
around here.  Below is a copy of what I sent him.  (Note that Gary is
at least somewhat literate in Chinese, which is why I assume a
certain level of knowledge regarding the characters in the attached
files... though knowledge of kanji isn't necessary to follow what I
say below.)


Gary,

I checked my copy of volume 9 and found the answers you were looking
for.  I've attached two image files, "okonomiyaki.gif" and "konomu.gif",
and I'll refer to them below.

Firstly, the character that adorn's Ukyou's black shirt.  You will find it in
"konomu.gif".  As you can see, it is a compound character; its
components mean "female" and "child" in Japanese.  The character
overall means "like" or "favourable", and has several readings:  the
"on" or "Chinese" reading of "kou", meaning like, be fond of, love,
favourable, good, fine, or friendship; and two major "kun" or Japanese
readings of "kono(mu)" and "su(ku)", the part in parenthesis not
forming part of the kanji reading itself but written using kana.  "konomu"
is a verb meaning to like, be fond of, prefer; "suku" is a verb meaning
to like, be fond of, love.  The continuing form of these verbs is "konomi"
and "suki" respectively... I'm sure you'll recognise the former as a
component of "okonomiyaki" and the latter as a commonly-used
word meaning "liking".  There are lots of referential meanings to
Ukyou's relationship with Ranma there as well as to her own
characterisation here.

I'm glad to see that my memory was working on that score
when I was talking with you earlier.

Secondly, the word that adorns Ukyou's apron is "okonomiya", which
you will find in "okonomiyaki.gif"... though to correspond with what's
on Ukyou's apron (and the name of her shop), drop the last character
("ki").  I suspect this is actually a really bad pun by RT.  You will no
doubt recognise the second kanji as meaning burn or fry; in this
usage it means to fry food... so the word "okonomiyaki" means
"fried food, as you like it".  Pretty general really, but given that many
okonomiyaki bars are cook-yourself, it makes perfect sense.  What
do you think that black grill on the countertop in Ukyou's shop is for?
It's not for decoration.  :-)

The pun is that by dropping the "ki", and ignoring the meaning of
the final kanji and going by the reading, you get "okonomi-ya"...
as-you-like-it-seller, or likeable-seller, etc.  To get the idea, know
that "hon-ya" means both bookshop and bookseller.  More
references to Ukyou's character and relationship with Ranma.
All in all, not at all subtle... though of course it's a layer of meaning
that almost all western fans miss out on completely.

Yet another layer of pundom is that in Kansai, the dialect that
Ukyou speaks, "da" which is the informal form of "is/to be",
is pronounced "ya".  So we get "okonomi da"... "I'm likeable".  :-)

--
David Eddy - Senior Consultant, Progress Software Melbourne
dje@progress.com

Screening Coordinator and Subbing Bunny, Melbourne Anime Society
My fanfics are archived at http://nabiki.newberry.edu/DEddy