Pop quiz!

Our teacher surprised us with a pop quiz this week: 10 English sentences to translate into Japanese. Here are the sentences, their translations, and some explanation.

1. Gerda is a Dutch and Caline is French.
ゲルダさんは　オランダじん　で　カリンさんは　フランスじん　です。

2. That restaurant is cheap, quiet and clean.
あの　レストランは　やすくて、　しずかで　きれい　です。

3. That park is beautiful but always noisy.
あの　こうえんは　きれい　ですが　いつも　うるさい　です。

4. Parents are watching TV in the living room.
いまで　りょうしんが　テレビを　みます。 (or みています?)

いま = living room (not 'now').

5. He's wearing a hat as it is cold outside.
そとが　さむい　ですから、　ぼうしを　かぶっています。
Note that そと is a noun ('the outside').
かぶっています is from かぶる, to put on the head. This an 'effect' use of the ています form, that is, "He has put on a hat" -> "He is wearing a hat".

6. Every morning he is jogging in the park.
まいあさ　こうえんで　ジョギングングを　しています。
This is the habitual/repeating use of する (dictionary form)/します, because it says 'every day'.

7. He went out to buy some beverage.
かれは　のみものを　とりに　いきました。
Note that the word 'out' is not translated; apparently, it's OK to just say 'he went'.
This sentence and the next 3 all use とりに which comes from とります, to get, pick up, retrieve.

8. He has gone home to pick up something left behind.
かれは　わすれものを　とりに　うちに　かえりました。
わすれもの uses the -もの suffix: the forgotten thing.
I'm not sure if you can leave うちに out, because かえりました already implies going 'home'. But かえりました can also mean 'back to headquarters', e.g. the office, so it's less ambiguous this way.

9. He will come soon to pick up his umbrella.
かれは　すうぐ　かさを　とりに　きます。
No specific future tense because it doesn't exsit, and すうぐ already implies the future.

10. He went to the post office to pick up his umbrella.
かれが　じゅうびんきょうくに　かきとめびんを　だしに　いきました。
かきとめびん = registered mail. This is a tricky one:
-The びん means 'mail', also used in 'air mail', 'surface mail (by boat)', and indeed じゅうびんきょうく.
-かきとめ is in Jisho as (Abbreviation) registered mail; registration (e.g. of mail); writing down; putting on record; recording; making a note of. As Marco (?) mentioned, it combines かき, which comes from かきます, dictionary form かく, which means 'to write', with とめ, which comes from とめます, dict. form とまる, which means 'to stop, halt'. And of course, I could verify this by looking at the kanji: かきとめ is written in kanji as 書留, and 書く = to write, while 留 means 'to halt'.

Eeeewww

The packaging says:
大仏さまの鼻くそ
大仏 (だいぶつ) = large (statue of) Buddha
さま = humbler form of さん
の = 's
鼻 （はな）　=　nose
くそ = excrement
鼻くそ = snot
So the name of the product is 'The snot of the Great Buddha'.

How it helps to know kanji

We recently learned a new color name: ちゃいろい, meaning (light) brown.
You might think, 'oh no, not another word to memorize', but you would never think that if you could read the kanji that make up this word: 茶色い consists of 茶 (cha), meaning 'tea', and 色 (iro), meaning 'color'. Tea color is indeed light brown.
Come to think of it, this actually makes more sense for us Westerners than for Japanese, whose tea is normally green...

All about the kanji, part 19: 自

The Japanese gesture for 'me'.
This kanji is easily confused with 目, which means 'eye' (among others). It's not. Look at the little 'tick mark' at the top. This kanji means 'oneself'. on is し or じ, the kun is おの　（as part of some compounds). You may recognize じ as the start of じてんしゃ　(自転車 in kanji), meaning bicycle.
Our group of usual suspects (combos with kanji and kana we know) is small:
自国 (じこく) - one's own country
自ら (みずから) - for oneself, privately
自ずから (おのずから) - naturally, as a matter of course