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Nar3: Japan

No more class
Posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 at 9:58pm by Brett.
(Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 10:58am Japanese Standard Time)

Classes are over...One more report to write, and I'm done with this trimester completely.

I lose my net connection today, which SUCKS because I have over a week before I leave, so this may be the last post...definitely the last post from my room.

So, in honor of this, I have one more amusing story.

I've been tutoring these girls lately, and it's been actually pretty fun. Two of them are really cool, and one of them is, as far as I know, a filthy whore. That one doesn't show up for lessons often...

Since it's nearly time for me to leave, the two girls wanted to take me out for a going away dinner. We were going to eat unagi (eel) but the unagi shop was closed, so we ended up going to a restaurant that served Okinawa food. Everything was really good, and since it wasn't a lesson, most of the conversation was in Japanese.

I was sick a couple weeks ago, and the sickness progressed into what has to be a sinus infection. I was sniffling and little bit and coughing, and one of the girls asked me if I was still sick. I was wanting to explain that I had a sinus infection, so I grabbed my trusty electronic dictionary and looked up sinus, but it wasn't there. So I was trying to explain in crude drawings and pictures what sinus cavities are.

The girls started guessing in Japanese, and I would look up the words in my dictionary. They guessed bones, nerves, muscles, cells...but none of those are correct, obviously...

Finally, after about 5 minutes of this, they said, "<Maybe Japanese people don't have sinuses?>"

I said "Aru yo! Nihonjin mo ninjin da kara!" which in my mind was "<You have them! Japanese people are human too, so you have to have them!>"

Well, when I said this, they both just started cracking up laughing...so loud the entire restaurant was looking at us. They asked me to repeat what I said, so again, I said "Nihonjin mo ninjin da yo!" And this time the people next to me started cracking up.

I had no idea what was going on, and the girls were laughing too hard to explain it. Finally, they said that I'm not saying what I mean...So I wrote the kanji for "ninjin" on my hand, and they started laughing again.

Ninjin means carrot. What I meant was Ningen...human being. It was all very amusing once it was settled....

Anyway...like I said, my net connection will go away soon, and I will cancel my cell phone probably next Monday or Tuesday...

If you need to get ahold of me, you can probably email me, and I will probably be able to get it from the school's public computers.