Wednesday, 6 February 2008

Nazukashi = Nostalgic

So- if any of you guys remember (or knew me) back when I was studying at Bristol...you might remember how I morphed my AIM profile (remember those? hellz yeah, all the way back in 2003!) into a "British Slang Word of the Day." I usually tried to pepper it with stories of my local friends' verbal abuse and various awkward situations in which I'd managed to land myself. Things really haven't changed too much.

I enjoyed writing them every day so- how about a Japanese Word of the Day (a Nichi no Nihongo no Tango, if you will)? I figure the first one can bear reference to studying abroad the first time around so...

Nazukashi (nah-zoo-ka-SHEE) = Nostalgic

e.g. One night, I was at a bar in my tiny town called "Second Booze" (kickass name, I know!). This guy comes over and randomly starts talking to us. So he tells us that he lives in New York and he's here for the week and I’m like "Whuhhh? Where? When? Why? New York? Come talk to me!" Turns out- get this- not only did he just finish his Master's in Education at NYU, but we also met a couple times at Orientation! (As you may know, I worked at the international students office.) Crazy!


AND his dad used to work at the high school I currently work at (his parents are so cool, I heart them- they will be in many a future Word of the Day) AND my predecessor's predecessor just happened to be staying at their house that weekend so they called him up and I talked to the guy who had my job about four years ago. Weird night.

yet? WTF?” Wait for it…wait for it…>

So long story short, we become facebook friends. And he wrote on my wall telling me to do stuff around my apartment that he did when he was growing up (two blocks away). At the end, he goes “Wow, nazukashi! Nazukashi means nostalgic. It’s a useful word.”

Isn’t it?

Forgive me for the anticlimax. I swear, it’ll get better. And more succinct.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Pam, you just have demonstrated perfectly how small our world is (or flat?). It's like you're on the boat in the animatronic ride with all the dolls, and we are just little dolls in cute (awesome!) costumes doing our native dances and singing "It's a Small World" in our native tongue. Anyway, excellent post and blog theme. I hope to have a decent vocab for when we come to visit you to build upon: karate! ramen! sushi! pretz! sensai! and of course now, nazukashi! Gesundheit. Domo.

mapbackwards said...

Pretz! Awesome!! I still have yet to try those things!

haha Thanks so much, Christina, for the thoughtful comment and... disturbing imagery! (One particular episode of Family Guy taught me to fear that ride! Egads!)

But yay, I love your sweet promise of reading my word du jour!

And I am waiting for two things:
1) your mail which should be delivered in the next hour or so (thank you Japanese on demand postal system!).
2) your next blog post- that fashion game sounded so awesome I tried to d/l it but failed!

Wow, even my comments are super long!

Lux said...

sweeeeet! i too look forward to learning something.

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