Nomunication
Last night, after getting off a phone call that totally boosted my mood from were it was yesterday after noon, I went out to the uptown for a beer and some din din. After I ordered a quesadilla I got a phone call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time wondering if I wanted to go grab a beer. He ended up meeting me at the uptown. I was glad to hear from him. He’s in the same boat as me: single, no single friends. So it’s nice to have a new (read: lone) person to go grab drinks or do single kinda stuff with.
He spent a couple of years in Japan teaching english. When he went there he knew very little Japanese. Among the few words he knew were “drink” and “watermelon”. He told me that Japanese for drink is nomu (no-moo). I can’t remember what he said Japanese for watermelon was but it was something like suika. After he had been in Japan for only a couple of weeks he invited a fellow coworker over to his apartment for drinks. His fellow coworker knew very little english as well. My friend explained that they had communicated all night by means of exaggerated hand motions, laughing, dancing, games, and excessive drinking. He said the alcohol had allowed them to loosen up and speak to each other in a unique and unlikely ways. He later learned that the Japanese actually had a word, a combination of english and Japanese, for this type of communication. They called it nomunication. I though that was rather clever and have since added it to my vocabulary.
He also told me that 7-11 convenience stores have signs that read seben ereben.
Damn I’m moody.







1 Allison Says:
Man- that must’ve been fun!! The nomunication, that is…
2 deb Says:
Fantastic! Finally, an explanation for why I have second dates with people who were quite boring on the first, how I often get the balls to say what I really mean, and why my parents and I are getting along so well as of late. Cheers!
3 chevy Says:
im not buying the seben ereben thing.
4 ginni Says:
i think i would like to see a picture of the 7-11 signs.
5 Ho Says:
HA HA HA!!!! That was funny.. real or not… lol
6 Assy Says:
I’m sure you’ve been to engrish.com but if not, check it out. I believe the seben ereben.
7 hubs Says:
That engrish.com site is hilarious. I can’t decided if I believe the seben ereben thing, but I really want to.
Near where I was rasied, there was a chinese restaurant. It was located on the corner of Coal Mine Ave. & Pierce St. The restuarant was called the Coal Mine Dragon. But what made it funny was the menus said the Core Mine Dragon. We always joked that they must have ordered them over the phone. The restaurant has since gone out of busines and been replaced by another restaurant called the Lucky Something-Or-Other.