Learn something new every day.

[elfs]

I'm reading a very silly catgirl hentai manga, and one of the characters uses the expression "色々". I'm totally bewildered by this. First, it takes me ten minutes to realize that the first kanji isn't a solid but a top-bottom (I'm a SKIP, System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns learner; it's a top-bottom 2-2-4). Then, I start digging through my own dictionaries looking for meaning for the second symbol, which I can find nowhere in SKIP. Now, given that this is a hentai, I'm led down the red-herring road that the first symbol is iro, meaning "color," although in combinations it is sometimes pronounced shiki, a root term for "lust or sexual passion." As it turns out, the second symbol has no pronounciation, although it's called a kurikaeshi, and it repeats the sound of the first kanji. Oh, good, so I look up shikishiki. It's an adjective, "various." Whee.

Then, curious, I go to the standalone pronounciation of color, doubled, iroiro. And sure enough, it too means "various."

Damn, I was hoping for something more exciting. Well, I'm not likely to forget the kanji for "color" anytime soon, I hope.