English student running wild 1 – “Kudokareta” －暴走生徒１ 『くどかれた』－

Bousou-Seito is a Japanese lady in her fifties.  I have been teaching her now for about four years.  She hadn’t studied English since high school, and so started at quite a low level.  But little by little she has been improving. 

A while ago, she had the great idea of studying English by writing a diary.  When she started studying with me, she hadn’t studied English in decades, so her diary used only simple sentences.  It also contained a lot of mistakes.  But I corrected her sentences and practiced any new vocabulary with her.  It has been a great way of studying, since it seems much easier to remember new language which came from something she wrote, rather than something which happened to be written in a textbook.

I call her “Bousou-Seito”, or “Student running wild” because of the unexpected directions her stories run off into.  “Bousou-zoku” are the motorbike gangs that drive up and down the streets late at night, revving their engines.

Bousou-Seito gave me permission to publish some of her diary entries on my blog.  I hope you find them as interesting as I did.  Some of the names of people and shops have been changed to protect the innocent.  And the guilty. 

Diary entry: “Kudokareta”

Last week a customer I know came to Cafe Celery.  He said, “Long time no see, onee-san.”  He had been sick, but he loves alcohol.  He was the only customer.

He said, “I was kudokareta by the onigiri shop’s owner.”

The owner of Cafe Celery said, “Don’t be silly!  Really?”

He said, “Recently the onigiri shop is quiet.  The customers only eat one onigiri.”

After a while, the owner of Cafe Celery said, “I understand now.”  The customer was born in Fukushima.  By “kudokareta” he meant, “guchi wo iwareta”, or “He complained to me.”

I was surprised.  I had thought that the onigiri shop’s owner was gay.  In standard Japanese, “Kudokareta” means, “I was seduced.”

I told this to the customer.  He said, “Don’t be silly!”  We laughed.

Japanese is very difficult.

 

Vocabulary:

to happen to be – By chance is; Incidentally is

to rev (an engine) – especially of a loud engine such as on a motorbike, to sharply increase the power output of an engine, causing it to make a loud noise