Today’s deck is the Three Trees Tarot.
It’s a cute forest-themed one.
Today’s reading reflects a sense of wanting to do stuff with others but being afraid. Mind you that’s not specific to anything in particular, it’s just a general Problem I have.
Had to drag my ass out of bed early to wait for the document from yesterday. All the days pushing myself to get out of bed early are definitely catching up with me.
Thankfully the mailman had the decency for once to arrive AFTER I got out of the bathroom. I love the mail system in this country (especially considering I come from a place with a non-existing one) but they have an uncanny timing for ringing the bell while I’m sitting in the toilet or showering.
Fridays have fallen into a routine of sorts, which I don’t mind. So as the first part of that routine, I was talking in Japanese lesson about the typhoon and how it was literally knocking on my door. This reminded me of the fun fact that Typhoon in Japanese is Taifuu.
I always heard it instead of read it so I just assumed it was one of those words that’s in english but everyone still understands… but no. It IS Taifuu (台風). I looked it up after the lesson and apparently it’s one of those funny cases of a word that by coincidence ended up sounding the same.
But the wild thing is that it’s not just from Greek and Chinese, but the Persians ALSO had a similar word for a similar thing.
Next bit of the routine is bar visit and aside from retelling how the trip went, I made a fun discovery: Japanese doesn’t quite have a term like “icebreaker”.
Usually when I explain A Thing, the reaction is “Oh, you mean like [word]?”. But that didn’t happen here. And that’s always interesting to see happen, by which I mean the idea that languages develop specific needs and so they might have or lack specific ideosyncracies.
For example, in Japanese the generic way one refers to a young person is the same word one uses for siblings, and the generic way one refers to older people is the same as the one used for uncles/aunts or grandparents. Which really gives you the impression of a language that developed in small villages where everyone considered each other family.
Likewise, Spanish has specific words for each kind of in-law, which gives you an idea of the language developing in a context where deliniating those kinds of relations was that important.
So finding concepts that exist in one language but not in the other is always fascinating. Like on one hand you’ve got Wabisabi and on the other side of the conversation you’ve got Icebreaker.
After returning a game I was looking forward to from DLsite came out, but I’ll talk about it after I finish it.