Off to Japan next week. People keep asking me where in Japan I’m going to and it’s continually embarrassing to say I don’t know.
As I say, I’ve left the arrangements to others, although I really need to find out where the nearest big city is so I can find out what the weather is going to be like for packing purposes. So, that’s on my to do list.
On the other hand, my Japanese is coming on in leaps and bounds. True, the actual alphabets are still a struggle – far from being hieroglyphics or pictograms they’re still just a bunch of squiggly lines to me. But the language itself has an enormous number of loan words which I anticipate are going to make life very easy over there. For example: pasupōto (passport); hoteru (hotel); doresu (dress); piza (pizza); manga (manga); basukettobōru (basketball); sushi (sushi); tishatsu (T shirt). I’m wondering if our little group is even going to need my translating skills?