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How (and how not) to learn Japanese through small talk in Tokyo
I vividly remember the moment when I learned the Japanese word for soft-boiled egg: hanjuku tamago. It wasn’t long after I had arrived in Japan in January 2009, with little more than a year of elementary Japanese floating around in my head.
I could survive most day-to-day interactions in Japanese, but moving from textbook to reality was jarring, and I had a seemingly infinite number of new vocabulary words and expressions to learn. As someone who often ate at the ubiquitous gyudon (beef bowl) chain, Yoshinoya, hanjuku tamago was one such expression.
A Tale of Two Beef Bowls
As a freshly minted commercial English instructor, the only thing tighter than my schedule was my lunch budget. This meant that my lunch breaks were lightning quick and took place at the closest restaurant I could find, which in those days, was a Yoshinoya in the heart of Tokyo’s Nishi-shinjuku business district. I often took my breaks at odd hours, so the shop was usually empty, apart from the occasional…
