Now that z is off gallivanting with his wife in France and Spain and Belgium, I can post about the e-word!

I found on the Epicurean site (October 20th post) a discussion of "epicaricacy." I loved this definition: "Humor is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience."

But here is my question. Does anyone know if these are real words (as posted on that site)? "幸災樂禍 enjoying (other's) calamity (and) laughing at (others') misfortune 他人の不幸は蜜の味 (tanin no fukō wa mitsu no aji, 他人の不幸は蜜の味?), translates literally as 'others' misfortunes are the taste of honey.'" Was he pulling my leg, or does that word(s) (language?) translate to "misfortunes are the taste of honey?" I love that definition.

It's Japanese. Using this it seems that the second sentence does mean "other people's misfortunes are the taste of honey."
他人の不幸 tanin no fukou "another person's misfortune", 蜜の味 mitsu no aji "honey's taste". "Misfortune" is 不幸 fukou and "honey" is 蜜 mitsu - not to be confused with 密 mitsu "density, thickness".

I'm not sure about the first one. The second sentence is listed here for what it's worth.

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So the Japanese have a similar word. Interesting! This is not on topic, but I really can't understand how they can learn to write all those intricate symbols. Is each one a letter or a word?

Well it's a whole sentence, not a word. Here are the "words":

他人 tanin: another person
の no: possessive marker
不幸 fukou: mistfortune
は wa: topic marker
蜜 mitsu: honey
の no: possessive marker
味 aji: taste

The possessive marker acts much the same as the English apostrophe-s. The topic marker marks the preceding noun phrase as the topic of the sentence.

So it's literally "another person's misfortune (is) honey's taste". Since Japanese doesn't make a singular-plural distinction, it can also mean "other people's misfortune (is) honey's taste".

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