Thursday, November 13, 2008

Hoshi kaki & Mogura

So one of the otoshiyori is campaigning hard to be my Japanese boyfriend. Heh! No, the furry guy below isn't a picture of him! This morning after I did my little run and joined up with my friends, my wanna-be suitor handed me these 2 shrivelled things wrapped in plastic. Fortunately it wasn't the first time I'd seen hoshi kaki (persimmon that have been 'dried' while they hang on a line - you can even see part of the tie on the left one), so I didn't think he was really trying to be a dirty old man. (but the jury's still out on that one!). I like kaki - but prefer them when they are hard and ripe - this version is a little too sweet for me. But they're generally perceived as beautiful objects as seen drying on the line.
So once I was settled with my kaki, another man pulls out a sizable dead mouse/rat and gingerly picks it up and asks me if I've seen one....WHAT?

No one else seemed remotely concerned...the ladies even seemed to think it was CUTE (remember, I've seen some of them FREAK OUT over a moth that got trapped in a room). Upon closer examination, I realized it was not what I'd thought, it was actually a mole! Apparently they're quite rare in these parts, and I don't know why he had it, but I (hopefully) graciously declined his offer to give it to me to bring to school...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ummm....you sure those hoshi kakis (ies?) aren't actually something removed from the dead thing ? ? ?

Anonymous said...

is the mole dead?

Tracey said...

The mole looked to be pretty stiff - so my guess is "Yes, Jim, he's dead."*

And no, the kaki were not taken out of the mole! Wow - I'm REALLY off hoshi kaki now!
(grammar note - in Japanese they don't distinguish between singular and plural, so on one hand it's easier not having to learn how to make words plural, but on the other hand it's difficult to sprinkle Japanese words into English as sometimes they don't make sense in context! The whole sing/plural thing also makes Japanese all the more interesting to try to understand!)

*obscure "Star Trek" reference...I wasn't a huge fan of the show, but for some reason I remember hearing a sound clip of all the times Bones (the doctor, right?) told Captain James Kirk that someone had died. As I recall, there was very little deviation from, "He's dead, Jim." and "Jim, he's dead." OK, so I admit this is probably much funnier in my head as I imagine my brother or dad doing an imitation of this ridiculous clip...and maybe I should mention it's 5:30am here?