lost in transmeation

It's been particularly difficult not to learn any Japanese here in Japan. Try as i might, some Japanese words and phrases have seeped into my vocabulary alongside the small amount of Dutch that i know. Occasionally these phrases even spout forth from deep within my diaphragm like some sort of linguistic spit-take, often at other people, with mixed results.

Actually, i've been trying to learn as much Japanese as i can. Though, sometimes i want to speak Dutch to the people around me for some odd reason. Perhaps my brain hears a foreign language and immediately begins rummaging around the "foreign langauges" memory bank pulling out nothing but Dutch words and tossing them back on the pile (yes, sometimes i feel like my memory is just a giant pile but much like the state of my room, it's an organized chaos. eventually i'll find what i need. if i know it to begin with...).

Anyways, it's been fun learning Japanese syntax and structure and trying to put the few words i know into some semblance of a sentence. But one of the most interesting and humourous things about the Japanese language is their onomatopoeia. They don't have onomatopoeia just for sounds like "thud" or "bark", they also have sounds for different states of objects or certain actions.

For example, something that spins or an object that curls around in a spiral goes "guru guru". Like if you want to tell someone to roll up the garden hose, you could tell them to "guru guru" the garden hose. "Hokka hokka" is another good one. It's used for things that are hot and steamy. Hot, steamy rice is "hokka hokka gohan". Or you can "chun chun" (dip) a french fry in some ketchup. Or "badda badda" (take apart) some fresh peas or a Lego creation. These words just kind of give a physical feeling to these actions. I love it.

Best part is, there are these more widely known ones, a lot of them used in manga, but you can pretty much make up your own. I guess as long as there is two words together and people can guess what you're talking about, sometimes you can get some pretty funny reactions.