Thursday, June 23, 2005

The Church Lady

On Sunday, Aukje and I attended our regular Sunday Morning church, which is a small Japanese church. Nobody speaks English (apart from the two of us), so it is a genuine immersion experience for me. After church we usually eat lunch together (the whole church) and some of the church goers have fun trying out their few English phrases on me as I try out my Japanese phrases on them. After the close of the service just before lunch the topic of discussion for some of the time was me.
As much as I try not to, I always seem to arrive at church with a very red face. Not because of embarrassment but from the walk to church which usually seems to take place in the sun. Sunday was no exception, and I was perspiring. Hmm, let me be frank, I was sweating. In Japanese the word to describe me is "atsugari" which means "a person who is sensitive to [can't stand] the heat" and the antonym is "samugari".
As one of the church ladies (the moniker "church lady" carries with it a lot of baggage, especially of the Saturday Night Live variety, none of which applies to this particular church lady), was trying to come up with an English equivalent (hot-blooded might be a potential English equivalent), she told me I was a hot body. Aukje laughed (bursting my bubble) and explained to our friend what describing someone with the words "hot body" referred to. After the explanation, to make matters worse (for me), she laughed too!
C'est la vie.

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