Yo Mama!

Whenever I'm out and about, I love to people watch, especially the little ones. The kids in Japan are absolutely adorable, and they have some things that are interestingly different about them. The first is that Japanese kids very rarely have pot bellies. The other is that I rarely see siblings fighting or bickering with each other. Instead I sometimes see them holding hands or wrapping their arm around each other.

So, one night while tutoring, I asked my student (Akihiko, age 35) about Japanese children. I asked him why Japanese children don't have little pot bellies and he said, "I dunno". I then asked him if Japanese children drink milk, and he said "no, they drink tea". Oh, right. I asked him if the tea has caffeine and he said that this tea doesn't. Its called Mugicha and its made from roasted barley and other oats. Ok, that still doesn't answer my first question, but I'm always interested to learn new things about different cultures.

So, then, I asked him why kids seem to get along so well. He said that they probably save it for closed doors and then scrap the heck out of each other. Now that I know that they fight, I wanted to know what the Japanese equivalent to "yo mama" is. You know, in America, you can get any guy furious by saying anything about his mama. The most popular of which is, "your mama is so fat, she..." But, I realized, in Japan, their Mama probably isn't fat. So, where does that leave us?

Akihiko started to laugh and he said, "In Japan, we say, 'omae no okaachan debeso'", which we found out translates as, "yo mama has an outtie!" That is so Japanese. Couldn't they think of something more crushing than, "your mom has a belly button that sticks out"? I guess its the "your mama" part that gets them mad anyways. They're already in the "don't you talk about my mama" state of mind by the time you get to the good part.

Its great to see that some things hold true all over the world.