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Japanese idiom strikes again

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

At the wedding, Manami-san's sixty-something parents invited us to come over to their house to play, sometime. To play?

I'd stammered out a few words of Japanese to them on differfent occasions through the day, and I suppose the speach that Mari and I gave had an impact, because they seemed pleased with us. At the end of the affair, they came up to me and asked in Japanese, "Why don't you and your family come to our house to play?"

Thinking that I'd misunderstood, and that perhaps they were talking about Jon's family having come to their house for the two-families dinner the day before, I wondered, "Was that yesterday?"

They looked very confused. So I asked, "Um, when?"

They said, "Any time!"

We exchanged a couple of words after that, but I'd confused them so thoroughly that it was a bit awkward.

I asked Mari why on Earth they'd asked us to come for a play date. Mari informed me that the verb "to play" (asobu) is also used when inviting someone to your home for a pleasant visit, and that in fact it's a bit of a formal way of doing so.

A little knowledge (of Japanese) is a dangerous and bewildering thing.