Back to finish drinking that tea. Don’t you hat it when you leave a tea bag in the cup too long, and the last sip is so bitter it makes you gag? Or with real green tea, if you wait forever, the tea and the water will separate so that the bottom of your cup looks like the bottom of the ocean? Actually… that looks kind of cool now that I think about it.

Anyway, back to the language.

「毎日ストレッチをしたり、ゆっくりと急須で入れて、お茶の時間を楽しんだり、健やかなあなたの毎日、緑茶のある暮らし。」

「毎日ストレッチをしたり」is not too tricky. 「ストレッチ」 is the English word, “stretch”, and means just what the lady on the poster is doing so eloquently. The end of this section is a sentence pattern that you have probably encountered if you’ve studied Japanese formally, the したり、したり、する。 Pattern. You make the verb past tense informal, and add 「り」 on the end to create a list of things you did or will do.

「ゆっくりと急須で入れて」This one is pretty interesting. First off, 「ゆっくりと」is the same as the 「ゆっくり」 we saw at the beginning of this ad. The 「と」is a particle that comes between these parts of speech and a verb. For example, 「ゆっくりと話」or, as previously mentioned, 「ゆっくりと過ごす」.

「急須」is a word that I did not know before reading this advertisement. 「急須」is simply a Chinese style teapot… But I have no idea where these Kanji came from. Is this 「当て字？」Kanji put together just because of the sound? Or is there meaning behind it? Anyone know? 「で入れて」,  is put in. So, slowly put it (pour it) into the teapot. It, assumed to be the green tea.

「お茶の時間を楽しんだり」 Not much to explain here, “enjoy tea time”. The 「だり」on the end continues the list that we started with 「ストレッチをしたり」.

「健やかなあなたの毎日」 We have seen the adjective 「健やかな」before, it is not common in daily conversation… but turns up in things like this often enough. It is a 「な」adjective, so when describing 「あなた」so it includes the 「な」before it. Literally, this section sounds like, “a healthy YOU’s everyday”. So, something like, “your healthy daily life”.

「緑茶のある暮らし」「緑茶」is the world for “green tea”, as I beleive we mentioned earlier.「暮らし」is a word for “life”, with a feeling of, “daily way of life”. It is pretty tricky at first to get your head around the differences between the many ways to say “life” in Japanese ,「命」、「人生」、「生活」、「暮らし」、best way to do it is keep note of the examples that you see (such as this one) and eventually it will all come together. This phrase has put 「のある」after 「緑茶」to express that, this is a “life with green tea”.

That was a long one, but lots of interesting grammar patterns to keep it interesting.

Drink your tea! And stretch in the morning as well…

- Harvey