Japanese Diary 2: Takeaway Lessons

[steepholm]

Once upon a time, this was the classic container for British takeaway food:

Okay, not many fish-and-chip shops used the TLS, but you get the idea. Despite their impeccable ecological credentials newspapers were discouraged as containers for fish and chips from around the late '70s, as I recall - from which moment the romance went out of cod.

About 15 years ago I bought a tiffin box, also ecologically impeccable, in order to carry takeaway curries from my local Indian - a sturdy and much-used device:

As of today, sitting next to my tiffin box I have (courtesy of newly-opened Japanese restaurant Yume) my own bento box. Here it is in action this evening:

Why takeaway, you ask, when Yume has such reasonable eat-in prices? Partly because I want a bento box - and partly because I'm still not proficient with chopsticks, especially in the right-handed posture that I understand is standard in Japan even for southpaws such as myself, and want to practice in a shame-free environment.

As you will gather, learning Japanese isn't something I intend to leave a purely academic pursuit - my downfall with previous attempts at language learning. I am working my way through Kurosawa and Sailor Moon (a kind of pincer attack on the culture), and on Sunday will be attending Yume's first Japanese culture evening. I even tried my first shy arigatou gozaimasu this evening! Such temerity!

Meanwhile, I am building up my vocabulary. Apparently there has only been a word for 'green' in Japanese since WWII, before which duty was done by ao (i.e. blue). Hence green traffic lights are even now called ao rather than green (midori). Not that this should surprise me, but it's a nice example for the Saussureans.

On a less happy note, it turns out it's impossible to say the Japanese word for lion (raion) without sounding like a Westerner doing a racist impression of a Japanese person trying to say 'lion.' This could be awkward if I ever go to a Tokyo zoo.

Comments

[larryhammer]

Um, I'm pretty sure Japanese has always had ways of distinguishing shades on the green side of ao, such as midori, from those on the blue side, such as mizu-iro (water-colored) and ai-iro (indigo). One piece of evidence: it was used in 9th century poetry.

Certainly, traditionally, midori was not considered one of the "main" colors along with white and red and blue, but the word existed -- and for that matter, ao is still often used for anything along the blue-to-green spectrum. It's more that under American influence post-War, more emphasis has been given to the midori side of things as its own color.

ETA: some more details.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I can't say it surprises me that Japanese from Zero oversimplified, though I've seen the same point made elsewhere. I appreciate the extra information, though - especially the poetry and the bit about crayons in your last link.

It's precisely because colour divisions are arbitrary in themselves (inasmuch as the spectrum has no sharp divides) that the baggage they pick up as they travel the world is so visible and so clearly culturally derived. For witness whereof, we need look no further than "white" and "black" (or "coffee-colour versus pinko-grey" as Forster put it in A Passage to India) as applied to people. A fascinating subject.

[larryhammer]

It still amuses me that general brown is cha-iro -- "tea-colored." (It also amuses me when fan translations render that literally, as if the author had been trying to make a point by using that as a description, when no, really, that's just the word for brown.)

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Duh - I hadn't made that connection. Great mnemonic!