Aug 29, 2024 Salon
Guests:
T-san, K-san, A-san
Discussion Content:
I saw T waiting in her car in the car park at 9:40am, 20 minutes before the salon. When she came in I asked her why she was so early, and she said she had to give a friend of hers a lift somewhere, so she was in this area early.
T said: “She doesn’t have car”, and when I corrected her to say “a car”, this led to a discussion about using English needing to use “a” and “the”, but Japanese not needing to.
T said she heard that if you say “I ate a chicken”, that would mean you ate the WHOLE chicken Which is true. It does sound like that.
K arrived and said that she ripped her top but her friend mended it. She also said that her friend made the top that T was wearing today. I asked if her friend made it “from scratch”, and she said that she did. She even prepares the thread herself.
K talked about her hand-made accessories workshop coming up in September, on the 18th and 19th. T was disappointed because she said she wanted to go, but unfortunately will be busy on those two days.
T talked about her two new cats and taking them to be neutered. She said the vets in this area are too expensive, but in Ibaraki Prefecture there’s a rescue facility which will do the surgery for only 600 yen.
I mentioned that my cat in Australia used to love to eat corn on the cob – in fact, it was probably its favorite food. T said one of her cats also likes it and pumpkin as well.
I showed them the photos on Instagram of N-sensei’s cat, and how she said he was “not fat, just plump”. I said that the words “fat cat” sound good because they rhyme, and English speakers love things that rhyme. One of the first rhymes a kid ever hears is “The cat sat on the mat”.
I said all English songs have rhymes, and that it was unusual to me to hear Japanese songs because they didn’t use rhymes. T said that Japanese tongue-twisters often use rhymes.
We talked about “catnip”, which is a type of herb that is like a drug for cats, and A said it can be dangerous to give a cat too much and it might go crazy.
T said her cats go crazy on the scratching pole.
I asked K if she had a cat, but she said she was scared of them because when she was a child she was chased by an angry cat.
T said that’s unusual, because usually cats are cowards and easily scared. I mentioned the English phrase “scaredy-cat” which kids will say to each other if they are afraid of something.
Useful phrases:
I ripped/tore my clothes
Make something “from scratch”
thread
corn on the cob
plump
rhyme
rhythm
tongue-twister
catnip
scratching pole/post (for a cat)
chased by a cat
hard to get away from a cat
scaredy-cat