Chai Loving Mumma

If it’s not strange enough that I’ve come to Japan and started learning flamenco, the class dynamics are definitely somewhat unusual: The majority of the class are japanese women, apart from myself and Amanda. The teacher is Spanish and speaks spanish and japanese. Amanda is still learning Japanese but speaks spanish so instructions to her are given in Spanish. One of the Japanese ladies also speaks spanish (and german and russian) and translates when our teacher can’t express something in Japanese. Our teacher doesn’t speak english so any conversation I have with her must be in Japanese – always fun having two people speaking broken japanese together! On top of that, the person who does admin for the class speaks english, but no spanish. Following so far?!

Anyway, last night we started discussing mistakes we’ve made in the various languages, and how the same words can exist in different languages but have completely different meanings. It started off innocently enough… I was saying how I always mix up ‘to bring’ and ‘to take’ in japanese. Amanda agreed; she always says ‘bring’ and I always say ‘take’. Our teacher said she also mixes those up, and the forms for ‘I’ll pick you up’ and ‘can you pick me up?’ (all these forms are based around the verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’, which are used back to front to how we use them in english.)

Our teacher then told us a story about the first time she went to buy rice at a small supermarket here. Do not continue if offended by coarse language