Hi everyone, and welcome back to Happy Hour. 歡迎回來酒館.

Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, lulu, hi everyone.

And now let's move on to our favorite thing, food, food culture.

So pretty much, most of the food we just use the Japanese.

So for example Bento.

Bento就是便當.

Yeah.

Bento boxes,

Yeah, ramen.

Ramen.

Yeah. So we always use the Japanese to describe 拉面. We just say ramen.

Yeah, but even in Japanese is pronounced “la”men.

Well yes, I know.

They spell, for those of you who don't really know Japanese is Japanese people don't pronounce the “r” sound. They don't say “r” sound even when they write that the sound they pronounce it as “l” sound.

Yes.

So Ramen.

Sake.

Sake, I think a lot of English speakers would pronounce it “saki” or something like that.

Yeah, so we probably say it's “saki” or sake.

But sake, to be honest, you know that sake just means alcohol.

Oh yeah.

It doesn't really mean清酒或者日本酒.

Well exactly, that's the thing that's what I got a bit surprised about when I went to Japan and I asked for sake, they like which you want, because in English saki or sake, just literally means 清酒.

日本酒. They say “日本酒”（にほんしゅ，Nihonshu）like Japanese wine. So that's 清酒and then of course sushi, sashimi.

Yes.

壽司, 還有生魚片. Do you like sashimi?

I love sashimi.

Is that something that people in England or people in Europe actually can get on board with raw fish?

Well, my parents certainly not. They don't like the idea of eating raw fish. They think it's a bit dangerous, but I love sashimi, especially tuna sashimi .

Tuna sashimi is beautiful, I know that. But anyhow, would you say that because this obviously for you to eat sashimi needs to be a higher end restaurant, otherwise you're gonna get raging food poisoning.

Yeah.

So perhaps I don't know if this summary is correct, but I would say people who are more adventurous, probably more world travelers, they are the ones who tend to get more into like sashimi. Sushi, everyone probably can get on board with, but sashimi...

Yeah, You can get sushi in a restaurant, for example, you can get sushi in supermarkets.

Yeah, but they're not very good sushi.

No, it's not great sushi, but sashimi. I would say you can only really get at very expensive restaurant. You have to think that in England now ramen is becoming a bit more popular, but there's still that association that Japanese food is very sort of very very very expensive. It's sushi, sashimi. The type of I would say like comfort Japanese food...

Like curry .

The curry and the ramen also udon.

Cup noodle.

That is still not in most people's mind when they think about Japanese food. They do think about sushi and sashimi, which is always the very, very expensive restaurants.

So for example I love“丼”（どんぶり，donburi）

Oh So like Gyudon(牛丼), Oyakodon”（親子蓋飯）就是蓋飯.

I love those and I love going to the fast food restaurants in Japan which serve those.

I know you like “すき家”（Sukiya, 食其家）.

I do. I love “すき家”（Sukiya）

Cheap and cheerful.

I know there's one in shanghai, but I really really want them to be one in Beijing. There's only Yoshinoya, 只有吉野家沒有Sukiya.

Yeah. But in the UK people don't think of that when they think of Japanese food.

Actually, it's changing because last time I was in West End or around that area in London, there is a Japanese curry place. People are like lining up,

Yeah. Because it's still is a very new idea.

Yeah, Japanese fast food is a new idea.

And then also all sorts of yakis, like either the way you pronounce it Teriyaki.

Teriyaki.

就是照燒 teriyaki, 還有Teppanyaki, 就是鐵板燒, and our favorite yakitori.

Yes.

燒鳥, 就是烤雞肉串.

Teriyaki sauce is really, really popular in the UK.

Because it is sweet.

Yes, it's very, very sweet. Yakitori is still not as popular.

Skewers, because there are other skewers that are much more popular.

Exactly.

So like that, and 「焼肉」（やきにく，yakiniku）like the barbecue, Japanese barbecue.

Tofu. See, tofu is from Japanese. This is where they borrowed from Japanese, not from Chinese.

Yeah. So we use the Japanese word, we say tofu.

Yeah. But I think they borrowed from us.

So language is very fluid, very interesting,

Well exactly. It's normally kind of who you got into contact with first. So for example, the game “Go”.

圍棋

Yeah.

Go is Japanese.

Yeah. So “Go” is the Japanese word and that's only because we... the first time we heard about the game was in Japan. So we used the Japanese word. But I'm sure if we went to China first and we heard the word there, then we'll probably use weiqi.

Yeah, that's the problem like this is why I sometimes get a little bit annoyed because like shiitake, 香菇也叫「椎茸」（しいたけ，shiitake）, it's all from Japanese.

Well exactly, yeah.

All right. And apart from that, I think other things that got into other Japanese words that made into English, general English vocabulary have something to do with either history or like sports, like sumo 相撲.

Sumo wrestling. And karate, karate 空手道.

We would pronounce it karate as in the karate Kid. (《功夫小子》：一部1984年上映的美國電影，講述了一個年輕男孩通過學習日本空手道來克服自己的困難和挑戰的故事。)

Judo 柔道.

Judo.

My dad was a judo sensei.

Did you actually say judo sensei? 就是柔道教練, 柔道老師這個就是「先生」（せんせい，sensei）那兩個字,

So when we say about someone who teaches martial arts, we call them a sensei.

Well, Japanese martial arts.

Japanese martial arts.

Because if it's Chinese martial arts then you have to call them Shi fu.

Which well as in like Kung Fu Panda.

Shi fu.

So does your dad speak any Japanese then?

He knows the numbers and he knows like a few basic commands in Japanese that they have to use.

Because he need it to teach.

Yeah. But he doesn't speak Japanese. No.

Was he like a black belt or something?

He was.

Wow, that really did not... You really don't have any of that.

I really do not. I know he was a black belt in judo.

Okay, and then also in other word zen. Yes.

You know that nowadays in Chinese with Oh, 這個人很佛系when they ask me Lulu how do you translate that? I always say that’s a state of zen, very zen,

You describe someone or something is very zen.

Like就無欲無求, need not want not that sort of state of serenity. And what else?

Ninja.

忍者 ninja.

And samurai

武士.

Yeah.

That's probably from some old Japanese films or some games. I would imagine.

Oh yeah, some Japanese films like particularly those by Kurosawa(黑澤明) are really popular.

Oh, Kurosawa is popular?

He's got a huge cult following in..., and also Murakami(村上春樹) as well. So Japanese literature, Japanese films, they got a really large cult following in the UK.

Murakami is popular in English speaking world as well.

Yeah very much so.

Haruki 村上春樹是吧, did you read any of his...

I tried to, I couldn't get into it.

He doesn't sound like your type of writer.

No.

Okay. Apart from all those categories, before we finish, let's do a few more, for example. what is the first like Japanese phrase that you probably learned.

Probably “かわいいです”（kawaii desu可愛的）or"おいしいです"（oishii desu好吃的）

If you watch like Japanese sort of, I don't know, like just any entertainment, Japanese entertainment, that's what you hear constantly “kawaii” or “oishii ”

Over and over and over again.

Everything is “oishii”, everything is “kawaii”.

Now this I didn't actually know was Japanese. Emoji.

對, 繪文字, emoji，英語叫 emoji,其實就有點像表情符那個東西 emoji.

Okay. And disasters like tsunami

And also sudoku.

數獨, I used to be hugely into that.

I never had the patience for that.

Yeah, for me, it was just like an exercise that I do when I'm waiting for the bus, the train, the fly and all that.

So sudoku is basically all numbers. I know you're not very good with numbers. It’s like a numbers puzzle.

數獨. Okay. Before we finish, I just wanna say, do you know that actually a lot of those words like nowadays we have some Japanese loan words in Chinese.

Yeah.

But most people don't really realize those were Japanese loan words.

Okay.

Because what Japanese do is they will loan words from English, there are words from English and make it their own. And make like a Japan version of English, and then that those things then got into Chinese vocabulary and then we just assume it's from English, for example, like 打 call.

你知道打call是什么意思嗎? You're supporting like your favorite celebrity. 你給他打call, 其實我們都認為打call call是英文的, 其實是日語里面的“コール”（kooru）, 把call借到日語里面去, 然后再從日語再傳到中文；還有加油, 好多人說 fight, have you heard Chinese students saying that 加油是 fight, but English speakers will never say “fight” . No.

Unless you want people to fight.

Exactly. That's what you do when you want to see people actually fight.

So use 加油 would be like come on.

Come on. Exactly. But the reason why that's fight is because both in Japanese and in Korean they probably say fighting. But in Japanese is ファイト（Faito）, it's Faito, Faito. So it's like fight.

That makes a lot more sense.

I know, and there are a lot more.

So as we're wrapping up this episode, leave us comment in the comment section about some of these interesting, fascinating loanwords from whichever language to whichever language. Yeah, language is a fascinating thing and this really is constantly evolving, changing, transforming and it's fluid.

Absolutely.

So enjoying the process of learning language and cultures.

Yeah. If there's any topics that you want us to discuss, let us know in the comment section.

And we'll see you next time.

Bye

Bye.