アナウンサー：優勝おめでとうございます。
かんとく
監督：接戦でしたから、薄氷をふむ思いでしたよ。
Hakuhyoo wo Fumu
(Bareebooru no shiai no ato kantoku ni)
Anaunsaa: Yuushoo omedetoo gozaimasu.
Kantoku: Sessen deshita kara, hakuhyoo wo fumu omoi deshita yo.
(To the coach after a volleyball match)
Announcer: Congratulations on your victory.
Coach: It was a really,close match. We were skating on thin ice most of the time.
* * *
As expected, the middle of December is cold and "a thin sheet of ice" (usui koori or hakuhyo, the "on" reading) has formed on a marsh near my house in Yamaguchi. This week's.expression, hakuhyoo wo fumu, refers to walking on thin ice or, figuratively, to facing a dangerous situation.
In terms of this week's conversation, every time it seemed Team A would lose, one of their players would come up with a great block or Team B would send a serve into the net. Such matches are especially hard on coaches who watch from the sidelines feeling like the floor will drop out from underneath them at any moment. Found not only in conversations, hakuhyoo wo fumu can also be seen in the headlines for sports newspapers, as in "Hakuhyoo no shoori."
What other situations make us feel this way? (1) A magazine-editor friend of mine recently got married though he says he was really sticking his neck out when he went to the miai (an interview with a view to marriage). The reason is that he had once shared an apartment with a girl friend of the girl (now his wife) that he was to meet. My friend: "If she'd known at the time, it would have been all over for me." Me: "And does she still not know?" My friend: "It's hard to say." Me: "Soredewa mainichi hiyahiya shiteimasu ne" ("Then you must be always nervous she'll find out"). My friend: "No, it's OK now. Since we're married, she's all mine." (i.e., no matter what happens, she's not about to get up and leave.) This answer seems to express a common feature of Japanese married couples.
(2) How about when driving up a mountain road full of hair-pin corners, a cliff on one side, a valley on the other, one slip of the steering wheel and it's all over? "With so many other things to do in this world, why did I have to pick something as dangerous as this? I should be at home quietly listening to music.
The heck with this dangerous stuff. I'm too young to die!" And after pressing and releasing the brake a hundred times for every corner you finally come to a
flat section. Your nerves are shot. Hakuhyoo wo fumu omoi de unten shimashita (To drive feeling like one is always in danger). Considering the average person
wouldn'twant to navigate such a road twice, it's amazing there are bus drivers who drive over such roads many times a day. How do they keep those big buses
from falling off? Untenshu wa itsumo hakuhyoo wo fumu omoi darc (The bus drivers probably always feel like they are treading on thin ice).
A few years ago while in Taiwan I took a bus from the mountains into the city of T'ai-chung. the road began at an altitude of 3,000 meters and was more a path for bears than a road for buses. It was amazing the bus didn't slip over the edge. I can still see the Finnish boy sitting next me looking out the window the whole time. Watashitachi wa hakuhyoo wo fumu omoi de T'ai-chung ni tsukimashita (We arrived in T'ai-chung feelings as if we had just been skating on thin
ice).