Jan 23, 2025
Guests:
K-san, M-san, A-san
Discussion Content:
The nursery school kids were getting ready to go for a walk outside and the teachers were trying to get them ready, so I jokingly said, “Chaos has begun. But it’s a controlled chaos”. K and A were confused about the term “controlled chaos”, so I explained that it means not complete chaos, but also not zero chaos. The teachers are able to reduce the chaos that kids would normally cause by themselves, and create a proper routine for them to follow each day, but they can’t completely remove all the chaos.
K said that her husband, who normally lives and works away from home in Nagoya, is back at home here in Inzai for a while, and he has disrupted her normal routine, and thus there is a small amount of chaos in her house.
K then told us how she lost her diary, but her “kikou” therapist was able to use his psychic powers and tell her it was located near something green. When she eventually found it, it was on the upper shelf of a cupboard and inside a green box. Spooky.
M said that she has currently lost a pair of pants somewhere in her house, and can’t find them anywhere. I said, “Let’s do an experiment”, and asked Kanami and Asako to close their eyes and see if they could psychically (using psychic ability), see where M’s pants were. After trying for about 5 seconds, A laughed and said she couldn’t see anything. K said they were probably in a closet. I guessed that they were blown by the wind on to a neighbor’s verandah or on to the ground of her apartment complex.
Speaking of M’s apartment, I was reminded of the party set for this Sunday at the karaoke room of her building, and I said that I won’t be going as I’m worried about catching a cold or the flu. The room is a small, fully-enclosed room, with no windows, and there could be up to ten people in there, singing, talking, laughing, eating, etc., for three hours, so it would be a perfect environment to catch something.
M and K agreed, and considered whether they should let everyone know – especially since it is now mid-winter – and maybe even cancel the party altogether.
As M was saying that, she spoke an example of “Japlish” – meaning a sentence which is half Japanese and half English. She said, “The room is so small, na no yo”. I pointed this out, and so we talked about the meaning/usage of “na no yo”, and they said it was a female version of “da yo”, and is really just used for emphasis.
I said, coincidentally, a lot of English speakers use the phrase “you know” repeatedly when they speak, and it kind of sounds a little like “na no yo”.
Useful phrases:
chaos
proper
routine
disrupt
interrupt
work away from home
psychic ability
upper/lower
“Japlish”
fully-enclosed
mid-winter