ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

There are a lot of feelings, ideas, and experiences that are shared between American and Japanese culture, but there isn't an exact word for it in one language or the other.

My favorite such term is "中二病". A reasonable translation to English would be "middle school disease" or "middle school syndrome". But if you were talking to an American and you said, "My son is suffering from middle school disease," most Americans would not understand what you mean: that term isn't widely used in English. But if you said, "When I was 14, I went through a phase when I wrote really bad poetry and wore my hair hanging over my face, and now I'm really embarrassed that I did that," most Americans would understand that experience. We just don't have a specific word for it.

When I was going through my 中二病 phase, I got very interested in the paranormal and the occult. I did a lot exercises to try to develop ESP and I was moderately obsessed with UFOs. Around this time, I also became curious about tarot. Even then, I thought fortune-telling was kind of stupid, but I was fascinated by the art and symbolism.




When I was a young adult, I lived in Italy for two years. I learned local card games like briscola and scopa. The Italian card deck uses suits similar to the tarot.

For the past twenty years, I have thought about getting a tarot deck once in a while. Even though I didn't plan to use it for fortune-telling, there are some interesting card games that can be played with a tarot deck, and the symbolism of the cards could give me some inspiration if I was stuck in a writing or gamemastering project.

Recently, I have been preparing to take my family on a trip to Italy when the pandemic is over. I started thinking about the things I learned and saw in Italy, and the idea of getting a tarot deck came up again. I had a little money left over from Christmas, and I wanted to do something a little bit frivolous, so I decided that this would be as good a time as any to finally indulge in a tarot deck.

Do you have any favorite English words or expressions that don't have a Japanese equivalent?

Next Time: What is Tarot?

Thanks for reading!