Found this shot in google images, respectfully borrowed!A few years out of the workforce and you forget the true joys of a Japanese winter.
Remember your mother yelling "Don't sniff! Get a tissue and blow your nose!"?
An infamous difference in our (UK and Japanese) cultures is that the Japanese mother will advise the exact opposite. It is lamentably considered more polite to schneck it back up than take the scary chance of having someone actually inadvertently witness you blowing your nose in public.
There are few things I missed less during my 4 year sabbatical from teaching than the sometimes crescendoing symphony of snot that regales you during any 50 minute class with 40-odd virulent teenagers during the winter months. Honestly, morning sickness was more fun.
Although I am back at work, I don't know if it's down to the small class size, or the generally genteel nature of la creme de la creme that I teach (!), but I can't say I've noticed it so much this year. My days in the 45 strong all male 17 year old mechanics course in Miyazaki involved much more mucous.
But yesterday morning in Starbucks, reality came flooding (quite literally) back to me. The guy who came and sat next to me in the comfy chairs seemed quite normal at first, with his Americano and a muffin, but then it started. If you can imagine the most sonorous inverse snorting noise possible with one nose, that was it. And at a staccato rate of about 1 per second, it was too much to bear. Really, I don't know how his nostrils had time to fill up enough again to provide enough goo to make the ensuing noise.
I was trying to make a snazzy superteacheresque handout for my "gerls", but the CSI type images of bilious green mucous with a caffeine chaser hurtling through his bodily passages that invaded my brain every second, gave me "the boak" as we would say in Scotland (say it our loud and with expression and you'll know what it means!), and I had to flee to the safety of my car to stop myself from grabbing him by the neck tie and yelling:
" GET A F&#$`*@G TISSUE!"
(Sorry Mum, I know , it's not big and it doesn't become me).
I wonder if they have the same visceral reaction when we pour soy sauce on our rice....
Remember your mother yelling "Don't sniff! Get a tissue and blow your nose!"?
An infamous difference in our (UK and Japanese) cultures is that the Japanese mother will advise the exact opposite. It is lamentably considered more polite to schneck it back up than take the scary chance of having someone actually inadvertently witness you blowing your nose in public.
There are few things I missed less during my 4 year sabbatical from teaching than the sometimes crescendoing symphony of snot that regales you during any 50 minute class with 40-odd virulent teenagers during the winter months. Honestly, morning sickness was more fun.
Although I am back at work, I don't know if it's down to the small class size, or the generally genteel nature of la creme de la creme that I teach (!), but I can't say I've noticed it so much this year. My days in the 45 strong all male 17 year old mechanics course in Miyazaki involved much more mucous.
But yesterday morning in Starbucks, reality came flooding (quite literally) back to me. The guy who came and sat next to me in the comfy chairs seemed quite normal at first, with his Americano and a muffin, but then it started. If you can imagine the most sonorous inverse snorting noise possible with one nose, that was it. And at a staccato rate of about 1 per second, it was too much to bear. Really, I don't know how his nostrils had time to fill up enough again to provide enough goo to make the ensuing noise.
I was trying to make a snazzy superteacheresque handout for my "gerls", but the CSI type images of bilious green mucous with a caffeine chaser hurtling through his bodily passages that invaded my brain every second, gave me "the boak" as we would say in Scotland (say it our loud and with expression and you'll know what it means!), and I had to flee to the safety of my car to stop myself from grabbing him by the neck tie and yelling:
" GET A F&#$`*@G TISSUE!"
(Sorry Mum, I know , it's not big and it doesn't become me).
I wonder if they have the same visceral reaction when we pour soy sauce on our rice....
1 comment:
DRY BOAK.....DRY BOAK.....DRY BOAK
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