A couple of little Japanese experiences in the last two days. The first: last night I was coming home from the elementry school and I bump into the old catering lady who used to work at the junior High. She once taught me how to make Goya Champuru, anyway, we had a little chat (she works up at the BOE now and I don't see her often). She asks about my cooking, I say I only cook Udon now (it's true, it only takes a minute or two to cook and therefore suits my lifestyle at the moment) so she starts telling me about some vegetable. She tells me it is easy to fry up and eat with rice or fish and adds lots of flavour. I ask if it is in the SUPA (supermarket) and she says yes, I tell her I will buy some. Later that evening when I return from my bike training I have a missed call on my phone, it is Taika san (the catering lady) but she is speaking in broken english and I cannot work out what she means, I hear `my house` and `your house`. Later as I am putting a load of washing in the machine (outside by the back door) I notice a plastic bag hanging from the door handle. It is a meal of rice, chips and previously mentioned vegetable she has cooked for me. I call her and thank her. It is actions like hers that endeer us outsiders to japanese culture and demonstrate it's peoples incredable hospitability towards guests in their country.
The second happened recently today. Today there were only a few students in each class (5 or 6) as most were at an athletics meet on the main island (Okinawa Honto) so with the ninensei (2nd yrs) I played pictionary. One girl who is usually very inatentive in class and mainly draws anime and manga characters (amazingly well I must add) impressed me. Her word was 'nine' and I was confused when she started drawing circles, maybe she will draw 9 circles I thought, but no she only drew 3. Then one girl guesses correctly! I was bamboozled! It turns out Kyuu means ball and nine in Japanese. Neat. Next for 'win' she draws a bowl of food being eaten. Turns out she drew Katsu don (fried breaded pork on a bowl of rice), Katsu also meaning 'win' in Japanese. I don't think we can quite do this with the english language.