[Columbine]

Originally Posted by steven

I see what you mean, but if it's a bit of a stretch to assume that you (if you were American at least) don't know what ramen is. Again, I don't know the situation in the UK-- is it common in the UK as well?

Chinese food is vastly more popular in the UK than it is in the US I think; although if you say 'chinese noodle' to the average Brit, they'll probably think of those slightly coarser egg noodles, which aren't quite ramen, but it's a close enough comparison. Ramen's pretty reasonably well known here though; Japanese food is getting more and more popular.

Originally Posted by steven

Thanks for the picture of what you guys call flan over there!! That is quite interesting. As far as purin being 'baked' flan, they do have purin that says 'baked' on it or even 焼きプリン... they don't taste all that much different to me. I didn't realize that most of them were steamed though, so I guess that was my mistake.

I think the British view of food names has stuck closer to French names than the American english lexicon. In Japan, I'm sure there must be some shops that bake it (maybe in a bain marie though, which is basically half-steaming it) but don't forget a lot of places in Japan don't have ovens like that. They're also used to cooking chawanmushi, which is basically a savory purin. You can do them both pretty much in the same way.

Originally Posted by steven

This is instead of saying "radish" and having them tell you "you're crazy". This is probably one of those cases where you do need both the Japanese and the "English" version of the word.

see, this amuses me a little because I've always just told people who asked, "it's radish" and I've yet to have anyone freak out on me. I think the google idea illustrates your point pretty well, but don't forget, more of the english language internet is hosted from America than the UK so that does bias it a bit.