Japanese Pod - Meet the Parents
First off, sorry I can’t give everyone a link to the podcast I’m talking about. I have Japanese Pod access through Hello Talk, and it doesn’t let you share the link outside the app. It’s like they’ve never heard of free advertising! But I digress - something regular readers of this blog will be all too familiar with! Come for the Japanese, stay for the digressions…
I finally got to go out and do some exercise this morning - a walk in our local park before it got too hot to move. I used to have a rule that I could only listen to my audiobooks when I was out exercising as a way to motivate myself to exercise more. That’s not been an issue lately, but I did want to catch up on my Japanese Pod sessions, I’d skipped since before MomoCon because of time and travel and getting sick and then the habit is broken…
When I’m out driving, I often listen to it instead of a book - but you can’t check the vocabulary and the kanji or other kana for what you’re hearing when you’re driving so you have to go back in later to check it and their cultural moment, which tends to only be in text. Be more embarrassing than wrecking playing Pokémon to have to explain to the police and insurance that you just took your eyes off the road for a second to check this kanji out…
So walking this morning seemed like the perfect time to catch up, except that it made me want to blog about the cultural piece, because the way they were explaining お土産 (おみやげ), I don’t think they have ever heard of “hostess gifts” before.
The people that wrote that pod must be really rude, because I got the impression from the way that they explained お土産 as if they were a totally alien concept, that they have never once in their life brought a bottle of wine when invited for a meal, or chocolates or something similar as a thank you when someone invited them to stay.
It was interesting to hear about how each department store has their own specialty in the お土産 gift department, to try to set them apart and compete - and really useful, you could rotate between three different stores so that you aren’t boring and bring the same gift all the time.
I also wonder sometimes about their grasp of English too - they explained きんちょします (to be nervous) when they were discussing the word meaning and shades of meaning, they said that it doesn’t have to be just negative emotion, unlike English, as if there is no concept in English of nervous excitement or anxious anticipation - like looking forwards to starting a Japanese college course, because you want to learn Japanese, when you haven’t been to college for three decades and you work full time… and you are wondering when you will even sleep.
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