tana kara botamochi lit. ‘a rice cake falling off the shelf’
Japanese idiom, everyday. To be lucky, often by pure chance.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use 棚からぼたもち
?
Everyday Japanese, used about windfalls that land on you without any effort: a free upgrade, a job opening when the favorite drops out. In conversation most people shorten it to 棚ぼた (tanabota), which also works as an adjective-like noun: 棚ぼた式 (“tanabota style”), 棚ぼたの勝利 (a lucky win). The full phrase usually comes as a comment on what just happened, as in “棚からぼたもちとはこのことだ” (this is exactly what a rice cake off the shelf means).
Also said 棚から牡丹餅, 棚ぼた, たなぼた
棚からぼたもち
in real sentences
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棚からぼた餅とはこのことだ。
Tana kara botamochi to wa kono koto da.
This is what they call a lucky break.
Tatoeba, sentence by small_snow, translation by Zifre, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does 棚からぼたもち
come from?
The picture, as Japanese Wiktionary explains it, is a botamochi (a rice ball coated in sweet bean paste) dropping off a shelf straight into your open mouth. The earliest use the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten gives (via Kotobank) is in the proverb collection Tatoe zukushi (1786): “like a botamochi dropped from a shelf”. Nobody has recorded who first said it. Japanese also has the grumpy counter-proverb 棚から牡丹餅は落ちてこない (rice cakes don’t fall off shelves).
Mistakes learners make with 棚からぼたもち
Using it for luck you worked for. The whole point is that you did nothing: you were just lying under the shelf. If you trained for months and won, 棚ぼた sounds like an insult.
Other Japanese idioms like 棚からぼたもち
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?
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