May 1, 2025
Guests:
M, A’chan, J, (J’s daughter, Y), S
Discussion Content:
One of the nursery school kids was playing on a swing, and I wondered about the origin of the Japanese word for swing – “buranko”. It doesn’t sound Japanese really – more like Spanish – but in Spanish the word “blanco” means “white”.
When S arrived, I asked him about it, and he said it may come from the Japanese word “buran”, which means to swing.
After checking Google, he then said another theory is that it’s from the Portuguese word “Balanco”, meaning to swing or vibrate – which looks almost exactly the same as the English word “balance”.
Just then, M and A’chan arrived, and so I got S to explain to them what we had been talking about.
After that, J arrived, and he brought one of his daughters with him today, who is 8 years old. He said she was reluctant to go to school, and being Golden Week, he decided to let her stay home, but decided to give her a different kind of experience than usual, so he brought her to the English salon. She told us her name and age in English, and she read a sentence in English from a book, as well.
When we explained to J what we had been talking about regarding the swing, he said he was very sensitive to the word “balance” these days, because his investments are going up and down due to the Trump tariffs, so his account balance (残高) is fluctuating a lot.
A’chan said she went to a beach called “O-Arai” beach, and caught some kind of little shellfish that looked like clams.
I talked about a news story I saw the night before about Japan’s water pipes. There was a burst water pipe in Kyoto and when they dug it up you could see how dirty and rusty it was on the inside. They said the pipe had been there since 1959 – so it’s over 65 years old!
All the water and sewer pipes laid in Japan during the economic boom of the 1960s are now due for replacement, which will be a massive job taking lots of time and costing lots of money. Apparently, there are over 170,000 km of pipe to be replaced.
Still, even though the pipes are so old and rusty, the water that comes out of the tap is completely clear. However, it does smell and taste of chlorine, so we always filter our drinking water with a Brita filter. M said she makes something called “Hydrogen water” (水素水), but a bi-product of that is something called “acid water”, which you cannot drink or even use on the garden, but it is okay to use it in the bath, she said. A’chan said she uses something called “Ozone water” at the dentist where she works in order to sterilize/disinfect things.
M or A’chan used the Japanese word, “mendou-kusai”, and I asked if she knew the English translation, and they offered several good words: “too much trouble”; “troublesome”; “annoying”; “bothersome”. (“Annoying” is sometimes the same, but sometimes different.)
A’chan then mentioned that her hot water heater had broken, so the family had to have a cold-water shower. J mentioned something about using the cheaper electricity during the night, which I said is called “Off-peak electricity”.
I used my pointer stick as a headrest, placing it against the metal bars behind me, and J said that he learned that the word “headrest” in a car actually comes from “head restraint”, in that it restrains the head from falling backwards.
J likes cars, and he recently checked up on the English words related to cars, as the words used in Japan are often quite different. For example, in Japanese they say “handle” (steering wheel), “kurukshon” (horn), “front glass” (windshield), “axel” (accelerator), etc.
Finally, M asked about the difference in pronunciation between “won’t” and “want”, and J asked about “can” and “can’t”.
Useful phrases:
Reluctant
balance
water pipe
burst water pipe
sewer pipes
rusty
economic boom
massive
Apparently
chlorine
tap water
drinking water
Hydrogen water
acid water
Ozone water
sterilize
disinfect
too much trouble/troublesome/annoying/bothersome
hot water heater
Off-peak electricity
“headrest” in a car = “head restraint”
steering wheel
horn
windshield
accelerator