May 15, 2025

Guests:

J, S, K, A, A’chan

Discussion Content:

K was the first to arrive, and she had bought some green beans and tomatoes at the unmanned stall outside the Indian restaurant. Four tomatoes for 100 yen! Pretty good.

We somehow got on to talking about the difference between beans and peas. I always assumed that a bean was the total container and that inside were the round peas, but when I thought about it, often the same small, round shaped item is called a bean (eg., baked beans, kidney beans, etc).

Then S, A, and J arrived, and the nursery school kids must have been noisy because J closed the door. The kids were all getting a medical check-up, and a doctor was visiting, causing most of them to cry for quite a while.

I wondered what made them cry so much, and K said they must have some kind of intuition, or an instinct that makes them sense danger. It’s also true that, like laughter, crying is contagious, and so once one child starts crying out of fear, perhaps it spreads to others as well.

Last week I suggested we go to the park, so this week K said she came prepared for the sun, having even put on sunscreen cream. As A’chan had also now arrived, I asked the others if they would like to go for a short walk, and everyone agreed, so we went to the local park near a baseball field where there were some benches and a roof for shade.

As it happened, I had to make an announcement about the salon, so this was a good opportunity. I’ve been asked by the company to teach some English classes at their school in Nishi-Shiroi on Thursdays, and, as I felt it would be too long a day to do both the morning salon and afternoon classes, this means I will need to cancel the free Thursday morning salon from June.

Fortunately, everyone understood, and said they were happy to have had this free salon for the past two years. Unfortunately, even though there will still be two more sessions before June, S said he won’t be able to come both of those weeks as he will be playing golf, so this was now suddenly his last day.

Just then, A’chan screamed as a large wasp (スズメバチ) appeared inside our bench area, so we all ran away from it. At first it seemed to follow us, but then disappeared. S and I returned to the bench area, and I said, “It’s gone now”, but J said, “No, it’s too dangerous now”, meaning it could come back at any time, so we walked back to the salon room.

Back in the salon room, we naturally talked about bees/wasps/hornets, and I mentioned “Bumble Bees”, which are fat and furry and not so dangerous. K said there’s a bee called a “Kuma-Bachi” (Carpenter Bee), which doesn’t sting. On the other extreme, I said a few years ago there was a Japanese species which seemed to suddenly appear in the USA, and they called them “Murder Bees”! (オオスズメバチ).

K said she had an American friend who once tried to cover up the hive of some hornets/wasps, but instead got stung about 12 times all over his body. Fortunately, he was alright, but he did have to go to hospital.
(Note: We almost always say a bee “hive”, but it is actually scientifically correct to say a “bee nest”, as a “hive” refers to a man-made structure).

J was reading something that said “beehive” can also be used to refer to a busy place where lots of people gather, but we usually use this in the phrase:
“A beehive of activity”, or just “A hive of activity”.

Another similar phrase, also using the bee hive analogy, is:
“The place was humming”,
where “hum” refers to the buzzing sound bees make.

Useful phrases:

Intuition/instinct
sense (noun and verb)
contagious (disease and laughter and crying)
bee/wasp/hornet
sting
hive/nest
man-made
“A hive of activity” (A busy place)
humming
buzzing

英会話サロンの会話内容, May 15, 2025