Fun story. A few years back I picked up a hitchhiker, and spent a large part of the day taking her to see sights and meet people (as you do in Southwest Donegal). She was Japanese.
In those days personal devices usually had one function. Think - calculator. But she was carrying a personal translating device. And it was a great help in keeping the conversation going.
So, at one point the question arose - what is a typical Japanese breakfast? Out came the personal translation device... tap, tap tap... and the answer included a thing the translator called "go bad beans". I recognised that "go bad" probably was an attempt to translate "fermented", so I asked her "miso"? this being the only Japanese "fermented bean" thingy I knew anything about. She shook her head - "no". And proceeded to tell me the Japanese name, which I did not consign to memory.
However, after all of these years, I do get a giggle, every time natto gets mentioned, wondering if that was the thing that the personal translating device wanted to call "go bad beans".
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branchandroot
Re: natto
Date: 2023-06-08 08:18 pm (UTC)In those days personal devices usually had one function. Think - calculator. But she was carrying a personal translating device. And it was a great help in keeping the conversation going.
So, at one point the question arose - what is a typical Japanese breakfast? Out came the personal translation device... tap, tap tap... and the answer included a thing the translator called "go bad beans". I recognised that "go bad" probably was an attempt to translate "fermented", so I asked her "miso"? this being the only Japanese "fermented bean" thingy I knew anything about. She shook her head - "no". And proceeded to tell me the Japanese name, which I did not consign to memory.
However, after all of these years, I do get a giggle, every time natto gets mentioned, wondering if that was the thing that the personal translating device wanted to call "go bad beans".