Welcome to another edition of the Deskwarming Diaries, where the best part of the day is most certainly lunch. Today’s post features bugs, birds, frogs, and the words ‘stranger’ and ‘chunky.’ Let’s jump in!
Bugs, and birds, and frogs, oh my!
Today’s picnic with the usual crew was lively and the conversation varied. It started off with one teacher pulling out a small, plastic container out of his lunch box…
「あら！イナゴ？」 “Oh! Is that inago?” another teacher asked.
It was indeed… Here’s a picture! Can you guess what it is? Click on it for a larger image.
Not sure? Ja jaaaan! Grasshoppers! They’re a famous food of Nagano and, despite being here for almost 3 full years, I’ve never seen this dish or been offered some to try. As soon as he took the lid off, they passed it to me. “Want to try one?” they asked. I smiled, picked one out, looked at it a little, then popped it in my mouth. “Wow, you ate that fast!” they said. Then they laughed as I whipped out my phone to take some pictures, saying that I couldn’t wait to send them to my family.
It was fairly crunchy and didn’t really have a taste other than soy sauce (what they’d been cooked in). The legs, which apparently aren’t always left on depending on where in Nagano/the country you’re in, were hard like fish bones. I had to make sure they were thoroughly chewed before swallowing. Overall, my opinion on inago is neutral: they’re not super tasty but they’re not super terrible either. I’m not going to go out of my way to eat them though! Glad I got to try them!
Everyone now happily eating their lunches and munching on inago, the conversation changed to things we could hear around us. We talked about our favorite bird calls (and tried to mimic them with hilarious results) and how people who can listen to a bird and know what type it is are super cool. If anyone is curious, here are my favorite bird calls for America and Japan.
Later, we talked about the frogs we could hear from the rice paddies below us and how to tell certain frogs and insects apart by the sounds they make. I couldn’t follow the conversation very well (not exactly fluent in frog/insect names in Japanese), but it was still interesting!
Word of the day: Stranger (Monday) and Chunky (Tuesday)
Stranger
I’m not super sure how we got onto the topic, but my lunch buddies started talking about the English word ‘stranger.’ Here’s the conversation we had in Japanese:
| Teachers: A stranger is someone you don’t know, right? | |
| Me: Hmm… well… that’s right. But it’s more than that. The word ‘stranger’ has a kind of scary image with it. | |
| Ehhh? Really? But in English textbooks and stuff there’s a part where A asks B for directions and B says, “I’m sorry. I’m a stranger here.” | |
| Yeah, I don’t really like that part. You could say that, but a more natural way of saying the same thing would be, “I’m sorry. I don’t live here. I’m a tourist.” or something. In America, kids are taught ‘stranger danger;’ maybe its because of that or because I’m a woman, but the word ‘stranger’ has a dangerous meaning. That part in the textbooks is probably old. | |
| Ehhh? I see. So if I go to an English speaking area and want to strike up a conversation with someone, I shouldn’t say, “Hello! I’m a stranger.” | |
| Well, you could, but it would be better to say you’re a tourist or something. | |
| Huh. Wait, what else in the textbook do you think is weird??!! |
What do you guys think? Does stranger carry with it a dangerous/scary connotation, or is it just me? I’m only talking about situations in which you would use stranger when speaking; writing is a whole other story.
Chunky
This came up when we were discussing different types of bees. More specifically, my co-ALT and I were talking about bumblebees (蜂, hachi) vs. carpenter bees (熊蜂, kumabachi, literally ‘bear bee’), and he said that bumblebees are chunky compared to carpenter bees. My lunch buddies, who have a habit of picking out one word in an English sentence and repeating it, latched onto ‘chunky.’ Cut to me explaining what ‘chunky’ is and providing sample sentences haha.
| Co-ALT: Bumblebees are chunky compared to carpenter bees. | |
| Buddies: Chunnn…ky? | |
| Me: Yes, chunky. It’s like… *gesturing* | |
| Oh, I’ve heard that before! It’s like ‘fat?’ | |
| Yeah, but chunky is kind of… cute? Like when you see an overweight dog and their legs are short. | |
| I get it! What else is chunky? | |
| Hmm… Babies, ice cream… You can also say ‘chubby,’ but not for ice cream. [Specifically thinking about Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey haha] |
I wonder what we’ll talk about tomorrow?
[…] English with me. She’s usually the one who decides the ‘Word of the Day’ (Deskwarming Diaries #12). She sits next to […]
Great post!
A couple of things on this one. I love the Japanese Warbler – fantastic!
About stranger: I agree that we’ve morphed the word into having a negative connotation when referring to people. Maybe you could compare it to foreigner (gaijin) and they would understand better, LOL But when we use strange to refer to an object, it doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation then. Like eating grasshoppers…that’s strange to me. Or people who don’t like chocolate; that’s strange.
About chunky: my mind goes to something plump but it all depends on the context. English is difficult to explain! It’s kind of a comparison thing. So if you’re calling a person chunky, that would be in comparison to a thin person. Or chunky yarn is thick, bulky, compared to regular yarn.