In which I get my enkai on...
Sep. 1st, 2005 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanMy translations
Last week I translated fourteen newspaper articles about the mayor's visit to our sister city in the Netherlands. Yesterday, I was asked to translate the handouts the delegation received from the sister city's flagship hospital. This was interesting, due in no small part to the fact that on top of being chock full of medical terminology, they'd been translated into English from the Dutch. It took me a bit of time to realize that the 'delivery area' on the second floor referred to childbirth, not a loading dock; and that 'theatre' referred to operating rooms. And then there was 'Revalidation day treatment,' which is the new current bane of my existence. Popping 'revalidation' into my Japanese dictionary brings up a literal Sino-English transliteration of the above (再バリデーション), and Webster's brings up jack all.
My triumph.
I was invited to the celebratory enkai last night for my pains. This involved popping down twenty bucks to listen to a lot of speeches and then eat typical enkai finger food. This lasted for two hours, until one of the senior delegation members rose to give the closing speech. "This is the last speech you'll have to sit through tonight," he promised.
Only, he was a total liar, because he then proceded to invite me up to give a speech. I'd had no prior warning, no time to prepare, and had not been drinking beer at an appropriately sedate pace, either. Still, I popped up onto the stage and gave an extemporaneous speech, complete with keigo!! in front of the mayor's wife, senior city hall officials, the International Center staff, and a host of other big wig types. Go. Me.
Then came the after party.
This was held at a little hole in the wall izakaya. The first highlight of the evening involved takoyaki, which are balls of batter with a piece of octopus in the center. Here is a
. They're pretty good as far as Japanese drinking food goes (and incidentally, the first food I ate after arriving in Japan four years ago). They're also the basis of a drinking game – stick a large wad of mustard, wasabi and/or red pepper in the center of one of the balls as they're cooking, mix them up, have everyone take choose at random, and then wait to see who gets screwed with the flamingly spicy hot 大当たり (jackpot).
Japanese are major, no joke, hardcore wusses when it comes to spice (or flavor in general). I got the 大当たり...only, there wasn't enough mustard in it for my taste. You should have seen the jaws dropping when I slathered more of it on.
This led to the second big event of the evening, which was my being hit on, at great length and with great enthusiasm, by one of the middle aged, married public employees in the group. I managed to laugh most of this off (take that, JET interviewers who were convinced that Gender Studies major = humorless shrew) which was a tactical maneuver on my part.
"I can never show my face in the Information and Statistics Division again," he said last night.
Only, oops! That's exactly what he had to do this morning, to a round of loud and enthusiastic mocking from my coworkers. Rock on.
That will be all.
Last week I translated fourteen newspaper articles about the mayor's visit to our sister city in the Netherlands. Yesterday, I was asked to translate the handouts the delegation received from the sister city's flagship hospital. This was interesting, due in no small part to the fact that on top of being chock full of medical terminology, they'd been translated into English from the Dutch. It took me a bit of time to realize that the 'delivery area' on the second floor referred to childbirth, not a loading dock; and that 'theatre' referred to operating rooms. And then there was 'Revalidation day treatment,' which is the new current bane of my existence. Popping 'revalidation' into my Japanese dictionary brings up a literal Sino-English transliteration of the above (再バリデーション), and Webster's brings up jack all.
My triumph.
I was invited to the celebratory enkai last night for my pains. This involved popping down twenty bucks to listen to a lot of speeches and then eat typical enkai finger food. This lasted for two hours, until one of the senior delegation members rose to give the closing speech. "This is the last speech you'll have to sit through tonight," he promised.
Only, he was a total liar, because he then proceded to invite me up to give a speech. I'd had no prior warning, no time to prepare, and had not been drinking beer at an appropriately sedate pace, either. Still, I popped up onto the stage and gave an extemporaneous speech, complete with keigo!! in front of the mayor's wife, senior city hall officials, the International Center staff, and a host of other big wig types. Go. Me.
Then came the after party.
This was held at a little hole in the wall izakaya. The first highlight of the evening involved takoyaki, which are balls of batter with a piece of octopus in the center. Here is a
Japanese are major, no joke, hardcore wusses when it comes to spice (or flavor in general). I got the 大当たり...only, there wasn't enough mustard in it for my taste. You should have seen the jaws dropping when I slathered more of it on.
This led to the second big event of the evening, which was my being hit on, at great length and with great enthusiasm, by one of the middle aged, married public employees in the group. I managed to laugh most of this off (take that, JET interviewers who were convinced that Gender Studies major = humorless shrew) which was a tactical maneuver on my part.
"I can never show my face in the Information and Statistics Division again," he said last night.
Only, oops! That's exactly what he had to do this morning, to a round of loud and enthusiastic mocking from my coworkers. Rock on.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2005-09-02 12:14 am (UTC)If you type 'takoyaki' into google images you should get a working pic;)