Happy face

So there's this sensory institute that does different trials -- in the past they've done, like, olives, and chocolate, and cheddar cheese, and ice cream. Er, not at the same time, obviously, but. You get a sample and judge things like appearance and taste and texture -- in this case, it was a melon study, and it was first just judging the visual of the outside of the melons, then samples of that melon to taste and rage for color and firmness/softness and sweetness and juiciness and sourness. And then there's water that you use to cleanse your palate and then you get a different sample. The melon one was four samples.

It's kind of fascinating. Though you never learn the results of the study.

Also, you get a small amazon gift certificate. But that's just kind of a bonus.

Anyway, I did the melon tasting study today, and one of the people working at the sensory institute has her mom over, and the mom is practicing Japanese calligraphy. She's got premade kanji card things, and then adding someone's name in katakana to make it personalized. She asked if I wanted one, and hell yes ^_^

so I got one that means "fun" (楽 stylized to look like a person dancing) with my name in katakana :D :D

( picture )

And it gets better.

At the time it was described as meaning fun, which is true, but kanji have multiple meanings. I used the radicals I could identify (the lower half looks like the tree radical) to identify it on jisho.org, and it turns out that a) one of the readings is pronounced remarkably similar to how my rl last name would be japanesified, and b) the kanji can also mean music, so is found in words like musical instrument, sheet music, and orchestra, as well as in things like optimistic, hobby, enjoyable, delightful.

So it is unexpectedly extremely appropriate. I mean, I didn't know any of this at the time -- there were only a few base designs, one for enjoyment and one for love and I'm not sure what the others were, but I do like to have fun and to dance (or "dance") to music, and I liked how it looked. And then I went and looked it up, because curious.

So I super love it and I kind of want to write her a thank you note. In Japanese. lol.

...I did make the mistake of saying thank you in Japanese and also mentioning that I was learning, so she kept saying things to me expecting me to understand, and I then felt awkward because I can recognize occasional kanji and can say watashi wa amerikajin desu (i am an American) but not much more. Konnichiwa and sayonara (and the latter in the japanese pronunciation not the American one) and arigatou, but really I just can point to occasional kanji and go "that means tree" or whatever.