i'm working at the small hotel as a desk clerk. Yesterday my friend working at the same hotel with me told me a funny story about her friend. Her friend is a member of theatrical company and one day she went to see his drama. After or before drama, he told audiences his experience of visiting foreign country (i don't know where but it's somewhere people speak English). When he arrived at the airport, and got an immigration check, he was told "What's your name?" by a staff and "Kiryu," he said ( he didn't say "my name is $&'&%&" or "I'm $&%%$" at all. )As soon as he said his family name to her, her  face became strange and the other staffs came over immediately. He was like "What happened!!???" 

It's just the staff thought he said "Kill you" although he said his family name "Kiryu" It's funny. I talked about Japanese names with my friend a lot. My family name is "Sobue" , so unfortunately sometimes it's mistaken for "Subway". My friend was asking me "How about my name? how is it easily mistaken for???" Her name was Kamiya so  it might be mistaken for "Come here" I said.

There are some common but easily mistaken first names in Japan. These are  "Ai" (meaning "Love" ) and "Yuu" (meaning "Kindness" or "Friend". It depends on Chinese characters). Ai's pronunciation is the same with English "I" ,and Yuu's is the same with English "You". I had classmanes called Ai and Yuu at the high school and they were called their family names by Australian Englsih teacher not for confusion.  Just imagine if your first name were Yuu and the situation when you met someone at the first time. He says "What's your name?"  "Yuu," you say. And he says,"Me?? oh I'm $%&. And you?"  You say "Yuu" and he says "I told you. My name is $%&. How about you?"  "Yuu," you say..     It rarely happenes  like this, but isn't it interesting to think about it? I think it's interesting.

BEAR RAT

it's the name of rats living in Ryan's apartment. Cute name, not for their appearance though.

The bad thing happened in the morning last weekend....  I should write this bad but funny (for me not for Ryan) story later. I'm going to go to the hospital for my stupid hives.

I had a presentation about my graduation thesis on last Saturday and my parents and youngest sister came to my college to see my presentation. One of the classmates researched about the gay language and its codeswitching and she gave us a presentation about it. It was interesting to hear it. In Japan, some gays use their original  language, which is like old women speak but little bit different. Their language is called "One-kotoba." They have "Ogenkyu-?" and "Oparinko" for "Genki?" (How are you?), and "Iyan" for "Yada"( I don't like that), for example. They changed from common Japanese to Onekotoba in front of other gays, in gay bar, or at the gay website. BUT what's the interesting thing was they avoided to change language to Onekotoba if they met another man or gay they like. Some gays wrote "I definitely can't use Onekotoba if I meet a person I like" on the questionnair. Does that mean "Onekotoba" spreaded among gays must be disadvantage for them to show favor to another gay??? I don't know. maybe. Whatever,now  I'm wondering "how about American gays?" "do they use their own languages, it's not mean pronunciation,??"

Anyways, that was good my parents and sister came, but it was embarassing my dad was eager to eat candys, which my teacher prepared for us and our parents, even if they were free to eat. Not only that, but also my dad slept and dropped off during presentation. I tried to think that's better than he snored and dribbled. My mom and yister seemed to be so embarassed about him. I'm sure they must try to act like strangers with him.