Apr 03, 2025
Guests:
K, M, S
Discussion Content:
S arrived first, and had an umbrella with him since it was raining. I felt like it was the first time I had ever seen an umbrella in the salon room – meaning in almost 2 years, it had never been a rainy day on the salon day!
I asked him how his wife was, and he said she is getting better, but still needs to use a crutch. I mentioned the other types of walking assistance devices – canes and walkers – and that many decades ago men used to use canes as a fashion accessory.
K arrived, and she also had an umbrella, and said that she didn’t come last week because she mixed up the days of the week. She thought it was Wednesday when it was actually Thursday. I said, “That’s funny”, meaning unusual.
Soon after, M arrived, and she wasn’t holding an umbrella. She said it wasn’t raining much and it’s just a short distance from the car. When I mentioned again that I hadn’t seen an umbrella in the salon in 2 years, K said that usually she brings good weather with her (晴れ女), but not today. I said, in English we don’t have such a convenient phrase as “hare-onna”. We can say someone has a “sunny personality”, but that means they are a happy, bright person.
I asked the group if they knew anybody who lives in Thailand or Myanmar, following the big earthquake that happened there recently. M said she knew of somebody and was able to contact them and they were okay, but they had lost contact with some other people they knew.
I asked if the group understood the difference between the two phrases, “I haven’t had any contact with him” and “I’ve lost contact with him”, and S said the latter means you aren’t able to contact them.
Just then, we could hear the kids in the nursery school singing a song in English. I explained that the English teacher is a lady from Uzbekistan, and K thought that was near China - which it is really – but S said it was near Russia, which is also true. I said it’s hard to know where many countries are, and K agreed, saying for example African countries. I said yes, but jokingly added that I know where South Africa is. I then wondered how much the average non-Japanese person would know about Japan, and said they probably wouldn’t know the locations of Japan’s cities on a map – maybe Tokyo if they have actually been there.
M then asked me why I came to Japan, which is quite a long story, and I explained how I went to a Japanese language school in Sydney, and that I met my wife there, and we both moved back to Japan when her visa expired.
My wife went to the Japanese language school in order to take a Japanese teacher training course, and that reminded me that S sometimes teaches Japanese. I asked him how many students he has and he said two.
That further reminded me of a question I had about speaking Japanese. I was wondering about how to ask someone, “Do you have kids?” in Japanese, and that it’s confusing because they don’t use the verb “to have” when referring to children, and so the question, “kodomo wa imasu ka?” could be confused with asking “Are there any kids?”.
This is especially so in a location such as a nursery school where I work, because there are always lots of kids around, and so if I suddenly asked a teacher, “Do you have any kids?”, they could think I was asking if any of the nursery school kids are nearby.
(Strangely, Japanese does have a verb for when referring to having pets or to having a car, etc., but not for having a person’s own children.)
However, the problem was solved when M used the phrase “O-ko-san wa imasu ka?”, and as S said, because “O-ko-san” is an honorific form of saying “child”, it would naturally be clear to the listener that you are referring to their own children and not some random child.
And, of course, you could always use the honorific form of “imasu ka?” – which is “irasshaimasu ka?”- to make it even clearer.
Useful phrases:
crutch
cane
walkers
“That’s funny” (meaning unusual)
she brings good weather with her
A sunny personality
I’ve lost contact with him
honorific form