Trattoria Arino

"What do you say 'snow' in Spanish?

Last night I had dinner with my friend at Trattoria Arino in Hayama which is a small seaside town about 1.5 hours from Tokyo.  Even in the evening before a national holiday (11/2 is National Foundation Day in Japan), there aren't many customers at the restaurant, so we could stay at the counter stools and chat with the chef and the waitress.

The chef was from Italy who speaks Italian and English, the waitress is fluent in English and Japanese, my friend speaks English and Spanish, and me, English and little Italian - so we were talking in four languages.   We ordered red wine - it goes "Il vino rosso, per favore!"  Bread is "pan" in Japanese and "il pane" in Italian.  It was quite fun to discover the difference and similarity in each language or culture.

It was forecast to snow in Kanto area on the following day and the chef askd my friend, "what do you say 'snow' in Spanish?"  My friend who is from the southern part of North America couldn't remember the word, replyed, "Well, my friend, there's no word for snow in Spanish.  Because it doesn't snow in Mexico or Puerto Rico (those are countries belong to warm climate)."  Obviously there is word for snow in Spanish (la nieve - I looked it up on my dictionary later).  Sometimes we get lost in translation but it's really fun to communicate in multi-language!

Jun