Fun bits

[cjsmith]

It's weird when I go on a fairly brief trip and after I get home I start *missing* stuff.

I want to wander into someplace and hear someone who is paying just about zero attention to me or to anyone else call out nasally, "Irashaimasseeeeeeeeeee."

I want to watch five passengers AND all their luggage for three days fit jovially into a cab and zoom off.

I want mochi. At least that's what my coworker tells me they are called. The bean paste things.

I want to square dance to someone who says "reft arremande".

I want to get kissed on the head by a dragon.

I want to ride a subway with two full-color flat-screen displays over each door, one running ads and one spelling out the station name three different ways and diagramming how many minutes to the following stations and showing a picture of exactly which cars, in this next station, will pull up next to stairways.

I want prewarmed moist hand towels presented to me before each meal.

I want to watch a couple of friends greet each other, having a brief but animated conversation while bobbing up and down between about thirty and forty-five degrees off the vertical -- never once standing all the way up -- looking happy as clams.

I want to coax a semi-wild cat into letting me scritch him.

Ah, travel. Sometimes I recognize just a few more of the good bits after I've returned home.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is -- square dancing is always called using the same words. The names of the calls are just the names, untranslated. (Sort of like ballet is always in French and aikido is always in Japanese. They'll TEACH you in your native language, but the names for things are the original names.)

O'course, all the little hints and cues that a caller can give, and the jokes, and the introductions, all that is in whatever language you can get away with.

The hand towels do seem like luxury, don't they? As do the heated toilet seats. On the other hand they don't heat their friggin' HOUSES, so they'd think we're the wasteful ones!