What does this mean? Does this mean of “You can drink alcohol here.” ? I wanted to know the meaning and posted “Can somebody tell me please!!” on Facebook. Then one of my Dutch friends answered. Do you know or can you guess of the meaning of this?
I had a lesson with my beginner student yesterday and showed him the date format. It is vary between countries, therefore I selected Japan, the Netherlands and the US as example and wrote it on a whiteboard.
*日本（Japan）： 2020年1月18日（2020ねん 1がつ 18 にち） *オランダ (the Netherlands) ： 18th January, 2020 *アメリカ (the US)： January 18th, 2020
*日本（Japan）： 2020/1/18 *オランダ (the Netherlands) ：18/1/2020 *アメリカ (the US)： 1/18/2020
Month “18” does not exist and the date above is not difficult to understand but how about the date below? It seems to be easy to mistake if you don’t get used to it.
日本（Japan）： 2018/1/2 オランダ (the Netherlands) ： 2/1/2018 アメリカ (the US)： 1/2/2018
Then, do you know the English vocabularies, “Yoko Onoed (verb)” and “Yoko Onoing (noun)” ? I didn’t know them and my student from England told me about that.
According to Urban Dictionary online, it has meanings of “to completely ruin an event”, “the action of one’s significant other who tears apart the group of friends” and the other.
In the UK, every news is talking about Prince Harry and Meghan since they announced stepping back from Royal duties. When my student was listening to BBC radio, radio presenters were talking about this topic and also the words “Yoko onoed” and “Yoko onoing”. The tweet of American comedian, Ziwe Fumudoh is where it all started and her tweeting was“proud of meghan markle for yoko ono-ing the royal family“ After that many people retweeted it and it became to be a hot topic.
How come these words started to be used? The reason why is that Yoko Ono had a big influenced John Lennon and many The Beatles’ fans think she was the cause of their break-up. BBC radio also said, “Japanese people were surprised to learn it.”
Yes, I am one of them who did not know this word. You can see that “Yoko Onoed” was added to Urban dictionary in 2013, so it has been used for a long time. I just learned it yesterday and it got me surprised but that was hilarious and I could not stop laughing at the same time.
However, I think that is impressive even though this word is used with a negative way. That means she gave a big impact to the world and it is not usual that one’s name is put on a foreign language’s dictionary as a verb or noun.
Hello everyone, Have you ever made a mistake or done something wrong because you did not understand their language in foreign countries? I have many! Today, I would like to introduce an experience which one of my students had right after he moved to Tokyo from England due to a transfer.
One morning he stopped by a convenience store and bought a fruit soda, and then went to the office. His workforce found out that he was drinking it while he was working. She was very surprised and said, “What are you drinking?! It’s still in the morning now?!’
There are many kind of drinks at the convenience stores in Japan as photos below. Basically, any information inside of the stores is written in Japanese though many tourists visit to Japan from all over the world in these years.
では、問題です。下の写真を見て、どれがジュースでどれがお酒か分かりますか。
Now, here is a question. can you tell which one is a soft drink and which one is alcoholic drink in this photos?
答えは、、、全部、お酒です！
The answer is,,, all of them are alcoholic drinks.
では、どうやって見分けるのでしょうか。答えは簡単です。下の写真の赤いマークを見てください。
So how can you tell alcoholic drinks apart from others. It is easy. Please check the red circles on the photos below.
Now you know how to find a drink which you want to have! The convenience stores in Japan is very convenient! There are many things you can do like, buying delicious food & deserts, using ATM, borrowing toilet and etc… It is fun to spend time there and please stop by when you visit to Japan!
In the end, I would like to thank to a friend of mine, Taro who took these photos and sent me for this topic. He sent me 44 photos! The person who was taking a lot of pictures in a convenience store should have looked weird and suspicious. It was good that a staff of the shop did not came and talked to him.
By the way, I went to an Asian supermarket on 4thNov. I come from Japan and miss Japanese cuisines of course. Actually I can survive if I only have a soy sauce but sometimes I feel like eating some other taste.
As you know, Japanese foods and ingredients are expensive here in Amsterdam, so I took my time to think what I was going to buy. A Japanese traditional food named “Nattou” costs €3.25 with 4 packs here, though you can get it with less than ¥100 (=around €1.20) in Japan. It is very valuable.
切れてるやないかーい！（←For your information, this expression is in Kansai dialect.）
Anyway, I found a Tenpura sauce with 50% off price and I was like, “ Wow, I must buy it!”. It made me so happy and I checked the expiration date just for in case, then…..
“ Wait wait wait, isn’t it problem to eat items after the expiration date has past?!?!” Lately, the shops selling the item which the expiration date has been past increase in Japan, and this is what I saw on the news. The expiration date does not mean of “Low quality after the date” but “ the date it tastes good by”. If you eat them and you can reduce bins.
I could not buy that Tenpura sauce in this time because I had a little bit doubt, but I think it should be not bad to buy those items if they do not affect product quality. What do you think?
