moominmolly | (no subject)

1. Frozen my ass off on top of an active volcano, in the snow:

2. Wondered what the hell a golden turnip was doing balancing off the Asahi beer building:

3. Found a souvenir thingy with my name on it in hiragana! I could never find them when I was a kid, despite having a reasonably common name:

4. Drunk Mucha-themed coffees out of a vending machine:

5. Played House of the Dead III in its native environment, a shiny Japanese arcade:

6. Wondered whether all young Japanese schoolgirls have magical powers, because they sure do look it:

7. Eaten sushi off a conveyor belt (okay, I'm sure dozens of you have done this -- I even did it in Amsterdam -- but it was still SO COOL):

8. Seen a little slice of New Orleans inexplicably lodged in Kyoto Station (I love seeing non-English words I know spelled out in katakana):

9. ...

you just KNOW that font would have crosses through the Os if it were in this alphabet.

10. Marveled at how late-evening light can make even deer shit look beautiful:

I think that this list might be hard for me to make if I weren't in Japan right now. I can think of a whole host of things I've done that not many of you have done, but in general, I prefer to share weird and interesting things with partners and friends, so a lot of you have been there for the good stuff. :) Or, at least, the list I would make might consist entirely of dull things and stuff I did before the age of 18.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've heard that one before, but I'm fairly sure it's not actually true. "arigato" is usually written in hiragana (there's also Kanji for it, but I don't know them), and the usage predates the Portuguese -- apparently an early form of the word appears in the Tale of Genji. And if you think about it, it only sounds similar to someone who speaks English; the Japanese would have emphasized the "b" sound much more where we just sort of skip over it.

It's such a bizarre coincidence, though, that it feels like it should be true!

*stomps foot* darn it, it was such a cool story.

oh, well. I suppose it's also got a cool "how words get their backstories" story to it. Linguistic historiography.

Eh, this is the internet. Feel free to repeat it anyway ;)

But yeah, I love learning about the origins of words. I really wish it had occurred to me to study linguistics before I was a senior in college.

All I ever wanted to be was a linguist, because someone made the mistake of telling me they existed when I was ten. :)