The Half Arsed Traveller: 2015-05-12: So Much Rain

We were given an umbrella today. This is the second time that a random person on the street has looked at us and decided we are simple (but pretty) fools and given us an umbrella. The first time we were walking 20 metres waiting for the traffic lights. A guy passing stopped and gave us his umbrella explaining he had another one at the office.

Her bag says Maison Gilf. I picture a brothel with aging french actresses selling their services. If you don't know why I thought that was funny I would suggest remaining ignorant, some internet things can't be unlearned

Today we did actually have one umbrella but the gentleman decided this did not meet requirements for the volume of rain. At least he wasn't giving us his only umbrella.

Linguistic Skills: Colours

In Japan the colours of the traffic lights are the same as everywhere else in the world. This makes sense. In Japanese however the colours are called Red, Yellow and Blue.
They acknowledge the "Blue" light is actually green in colour.

I am colour blind a bit so you decide what to call that light

But they insist on calling it blue.
Apparently this is because way back before traffic lights were invented they didn't have a habit of describing things as green and the books from China used the kanji for Blue to describe things that the scholars assumed were green.

I am guessing their art critics would have hated this picture

About a thousand years ago they decided they might make a new word (Midori, which is a "new" word and so has different grammar) to describe green things. But not all green things. Traffic lights and vegetables are still called blue.

See, I didn't even make this one up.

This is so complex and silly I love it.