This is hidden brain.
Im shankar vedanta.
If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it.
Koshli its werkse mal de porko olma polma.
There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable.
If youre studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks, but when youre hanging out with friends.
My name is Jennifer Giacone Cruz.
Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school.
And I ended up living there for ten years.
It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term, mendokusai.
Here's what she says it means.
It's this phrase that describes something between I can't be bothered or I don't want to do it, or I recognize the incredible effort that goes into something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort.
Still don't have a clear picture.
Imagine this.
It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside, and you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly, and maybe you're watching Netflix or something and you suddenly get a craving for potato chips and you realize that you have none in the kitchen and there's nothing else you really want to eat.
And maybe the convenience store, the shop, is really not that far away.
Maybe it's even less than 100 meters away, but you just can't bring yourself to even throw your coat on over your pajamas and put your boots on and go outside and walk those hundred meters because somehow it would break the coziness and it's just too much of an effort, and you can't be bothered to do it, even though it's such a small thing.
So it's Mendokusai.
The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized Mendok sai was incredibly useful.
It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way.