I'm on my way to Kobuchizawa. It's Friday, Not Monday so what the heck?! right? The schedule changed a bit and we juggled the 4th Monday to the 4th Friday instead.
And that means...
A different lunch menu!
No fry teishoku today so instead I'm having...
Oh! A lovely businesswoman just sat at my table for lunch ... so I chatted her up! Her husband studied English in Victoria BC, they went to Vancouver, Banff and Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, and she oks in sales in the food service industry.
How did I start it all off? Well, knowing that she would think it was cold, I said to her, "It's finally starting to cool off..." and away we went from there talking about low pressure zones, typhoons, and nihongo ga jouzu desu ne conversations.
Sitting outside the station now enjoying the cool breeze as I wait a bit before heading into the pits of hell to catch my train for the mountains.
Ive got my (fake) leather jacket with me. I dont need it now so Im carrying it. But tonight waiting for the train the wind will be cold off the mountains on both sides, it will be strong, and the temperature will likely be about 8C or so therefore one layer won't quite cut it.
Have a great day!
I love you!
Cam
P.S. If you find some double yous W missing, just fill them in for me, will you, please? Ive done so much typing on this keitai over the year that that key seems to have gotten a wee bit... desensitized. It gets skipped a fair bit these days.
*laughs Well at least you really ARE fluent in Japanese! Sometimes people say this to me when I pronounce ANY Japanese word correctly. *sigh Considering I'm still utterly flailing when it comes to speaking Japanese, it feels a bit patronizing at times, but I keep trying!
ReplyDeleteLunch looks great - hope you enjoy!!! Stay cool!
Though, uhm, to be fair? Sometimes when I hear Americans speaking Japanese, I can't understand any of what they're saying, but a Japanese person says the same thing and I "get it." I blame the accent? Or maybe that whole "An English speaker is using Japanese! Really!" mindset is contagious?
ReplyDeleteJaime - One of my former ... people I knew in Fukui was endlessly frustrated. When he arrived from the USA he prided himself in the fact that he could speak Japanese. The only problem was that none of the Japanese could understand what he was saying in Japanese. He used to get so angry that he would yell at them for being stupid while all the while the problem lied with his pronunciation. You see, no matter how hard he tried he would pronounce everything with his American intonation and totally butcher the katakana words to the point that no Japanese could understand. His biggest transgression was to pronounce the katakana words the english way which is not the Japanese way. Japanese understand koohii, not cwaafee. Although the words are borrowed from other languages they become Japanese wordws with Japanese pronunciation and Japanese intonation. This was his biggest failure, to grasp this concept, and thus his biggest frustration with all the "stupid Japanese" around him.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous day out here! 8C on the platform but with only a light breeze so quite refreshing. I am now sweating up a storm in the too hot train. Soon they turn on the seat heaters and I feel nauseous on the trains for the next several months. Especially this rough route.
Love!
Oooh I am so familiar with that! *laughs I try, but I wind up writing out words sometimes so that I can show people what I"m trying to say. I know I'm saying it wrong but don't know the correct pronunciation in some things. Luckily we're pretty spoiled by having so many people used to seeing/hearing Americans attempting to speak Japanese!
ReplyDeleteI can't fathom calling a native speaker of a language "stupid" because they dont understand someone with a heavy foreign accent or a slew of pronunciation issues! Crazy Americans! :oP
I have to admit the heated seats on the train always make me feel like I've sat in something inappropriate. Not fun!
Jaime - Katakana really is difficult for foreigners to reproduce because our brains have been hardwired to say it a certain way for decades, by the time we are exposed to a different way of saying it. I was just talking about this in my class today, how for Japanese speakers of English, it is very difficult to say the "si" sound without the little "sh" creeping into it. "Enthusiastic" was a very hard one for them all to say today; the following "si" messes up the preceeding "thu" causing it all to come out something like "enshushiashitikku". "Synonym" was also difficult because it came out as "shinonimu". However, I did give a good example showing them that they CAN pronounce the "si" sound... When I wrote "Please, sit.", everyone said it properly.
ReplyDeleteFunny about that, eh?
Do you like warmlets? I hear a lot of europeans feel funny "sitting" on them, as if someone had just "shat" there before them. I don't like "sitting" on cold toilet sheats". I'm shpoiled.