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Originally Posted by YuriTokoro
Hi.
Could you correct my English?
"Tea?"
When aboard in airplane, as you know, flight attendants ask you several times what you would like to drink.
I used to said, “Tea, please”. Then, they always gave me a cup of green tea.
I always wondered why they gave me green tea despite I asked tea.
However, this mystery has finally been cleared up. After I said “Tea, please “ as always, the flight attendant replied, “green or English?”
At last, I realized that I should have said “Green tea, please.”
If you are a native English speaker, this sounds very stupid to you. But I’m sure that most Japanese people believe when you say “tea”, you mean English tea. It must be a Japanese perceived notion, but if Japanese people want green tea, they say green tea, not tea.
This is a trivial matter. But now I’m a little bit afraid to speak in English because I might have a lot of perceived notions and cause confusion. Learning English is still very hard.
Thank you!
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Thats interesting. Maybe it depends on where you are flying from or to. When I was flying to Japan before, I had to go from London to Bangkok first. When the air hostess asked me "tea or coffee?" I was given black english tea. But when I flew from Bangkok on the same air-line just a few hours later, I was given green tea and when I flew back it was the same. Even when I started in Bangkok, when I was flying to England, I was given black tea again.
Now that I think about it, it's quite confusing!
[quote=YuriTokoro;800831]Hi, Columbine. I’m sorry! I had thought you lived in the US.
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The first time my friend tried it, her japanese freind's response was more or less "I can't come to your house for dinner; I don't have a kitchen," which caused a lot of confusion and we ended up doing something else instead. Eventually she came to dinner when she was in the UK, though, so it worked out in the end![/QUOTE
It must have been great confusion of your friend.
I’m relieved to hear it worked out in the end.
Actually, the mont blanc and other sweets in the picture were not Japanese confectionery. They are called “yougashi 洋菓子（ようがし）” =western confectionery. “洋” is from“西洋(せいよう)”.
Japanese confectionery is like this picture. I offer Japanese ones when the guests are male.
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Not to worry. Sometimes it's easy to miss the location tag.
My friend was very confused. She even thought maybe she had asked "can we have dinner at your house" by mistake because her Japanese wasn't so good. In retrospect, we all found it very funny.
Hee~ I know mont blanc aren't really Japanese sweets, but they're hard to find where I am, so I always assossiate them with my time in Japan. I like Wagashi too though. There's now a shop in London that sells them. I always go there if i'm in the city, and I always spend too much!