Today’s Destructive Force - Mushrooms

[snarp]

Sensu-sensei is secretly a twelve-year-old boy. She drew boobs on my homework. The rationale for this was that I had used the wrong word for “milk” - I’d used the one meaning “breast milk/baby formula” rather than the one meaning “cow’s milk.” I am, however, fairly certain that there exist other means of expressing that.

Things learned on Food Vocabulary Day: According to a very scientific survey of like seven people, people in Japan, Taiwan, China, and Korea do not eat mushrooms raw! Ever! Because it’s dangerous! Fretful-sensei was extremely emphatic about this!

The Pierced American and I took several minutes to get past this, while our Asiatic counterparts professed to be astonished that America has not yet gotten itself killed on all these poison mushrooms we keep eating.* The European and Brazilian guys looked upon us all with amused condescension. Presumably they do some secret third ultra-civilized thing with their mushrooms.

Also, according to Fretful-sensei, Japanese people do not eat carrots raw. (Fretful-sensei: “Wouldn’t they be too hard?!”) Also, apples must be peeled and sliced before they can be eaten, and the crusts must be removed from all sandwiches. These tendencies do not, however, seem to be pan-Asian in nature - Myuu-san (Taiwan) said she felt it was okay to eat carrots raw if they were sliced thin, which possibility Fretful-sensei accepted with some dubiousness.

We took a mock version of the JLPT 2 listening test today, and I passed with a pretty safe margin. Yay! Though the listening section is apparently easier than the reading/writing?

* This is the rest of the world’s default assumption about us. “What do you think the Americans are doing today?” “They are probably eating poison mushrooms.”

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)