I was expecting 花柳病 to be some rare pollen infection until I found out that 花柳 means red light...

Marxy is SUPER SEXY!

ilovemarxy@aol.com?!? This sounds suspicious...!

If you eat too many ume-boshi you might contract 梅毒, baidoku.

If 花柳 means red light district, 花柳病 means red light district disease. Interesting.

Well, the word refers to the kind of diseases one gets in a red-light district...

The romaji is ka-ryuu-byou for anyone interested.

david,
in what context did you come across this term?

Just learning some new kanji. I haven't seen the word in context. I believe that it is not verbally communicatable, so you'll have to explain it to your friends when you use it.

daivd,
just a quick one here.
while i understand your basic beef with the 'rin' kanji being part of the 'standard kanji' i also think it is unfounded if you look at some examples in which it can be useful in modern japanese. i'll give you the english and you can tell me what the japanese (using 'ri' would have to be, ok? consider it homework)

1. a hundred to one
2. his batting average stands at .332

so anyway, as i'm sure you've seen by now, we don't use 'ri' in modern japanese to talk about an obsolete monetary unit, we use it for things like ratios and statistics.

but the meta-critique of even THIS use of 'ri' would be that most japanese just use arabic numerals or even just ENGLISH when expressing this kind of stuff nowadays.

so you were right, but for the wrong reason.

whatever.
have a good time in kyoto.

花柳病 is actually a venereal disease