Sawnja, the name I recently gave myself as the author of this blog (hakkaku→mumblebee→sawnja. It's the third one), was taken from an expression of my hometown dialect. It's transcribed そうにゃよか with hiragana characters, pronounced saw-nya-yoka, and it means "very good" or "very nice" in Kumamoto, a prefecture located on the island of Kyushu. Among all these words in our dialect, そうにゃよか is mainly used by older people, and my grandmother used to say this phrase often.
"Oh that jumper you are wearing is saw-nya-yoka."
"That is a saw-nya-yoka bag!"
Gran Midori's compliments used to make me feel good and a little embarrassed at the same time.
The phrase makes me nostalgic. I associate it with my grandmother. Thoughts of my grandmother lead to the memories of my chidhood; when Gran Midori was still active and driving the big blue lorry, and when Gran Kiku and Granddad Shigeyuki were still alive. My the other granddad died in WW2 when my mother was only a little girl.
I've lived my life with a policy of no regretting, no looking back, but these days I can't help myself but missing what's gone.
Sometimes I seriously wish I could time-travel to when I was 11, even just for a day, so that I could spend all day listening to my grandparents. There are so many things I want to ask them about and thank them for. And I want to do that being very much aware that it, the time I spend with them, is never going to come back.
