Date: 2004-12-10 11:04 am (UTC)
Japanese is full of these wonderful 4-character idioms known as yoji-jukogo 四字熟語.

Some of my favorites are:

umisen-yamasen (海千山千) - "a thousand seas, a thousand mountains" - used in the same way as the English referring to someone as "sly old dog"

isseki-nichou (一石二鳥) - "one stone, two birds" - 'nuff said

kido-airaku (喜怒哀楽) - "happiness, anger, sadness, pleasure" - the gamut of human emotions, plain and simple

juunin-toiro (十人十色) - "ten people, ten colors" - similar to the English "it takes all kinds" or "to each his own"

senzai-ichiguu (千載一遇) - "a thousand years, one meeting" - once in a lifetime

It's very interesting (to me at least) how often some of these parallel expressions and idioms we already have in English.
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