One of the lessons I sometimes do with my students is about unusual foods. I ask the students if they have tried any foods which might be considered rare in Japan, such as insects.
During that lesson, one of my students said that she had eaten rabbit.
“What made you decide to order rabbit?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “In actual fact I thought I had ordered eel.”
I had to laugh. “Eel” is “unagi” in Japanese, and “rabbit” is “usagi”. After a few glasses of wine in the restaurant, it seems like my student got the two similar words mixed up.
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I remember going on a family holiday to Belfast in Northern Ireland when I was a child. We found a café with a menu advertising “soup of the day”.
My father and I both fancied some hot soup to warm ourselves up on the cold day, so we asked what the soup of the day was.
“Tsalgon,” said the waitress.
My father and I glanced at each other, neither recognising the word.
“What was that?” said my father.
“Tsalgon,” repeated the waitress.
My father and I looked at each other again, still confused. We both thought that it must be some kind of Irish speciality that we had never heard of. Seafood soup, maybe?
“I’ll just have the soup of the day then,” said my father.
“Me too,” I said.
The waitress sighed, and spoke more slowly this time. “It’s all gone.”
So I never got to taste tsalgon soup.
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