kanji and the art of embarrassing yourself

When I say - `I am about to tell you an embarrassing story`, i can tell that the first thought that runs through your head is this - That`s just not possible. Sarah is so full of class and dignity and grace, she wouldn`t ever do something to cause herself humiliation.

I don`t know where you got such a lovely bunch of hogwash from.

I am one of those people who falls down, drops things, spills things, sets things on fire (my own hair, twice), who yells out `wow, he`s HOT` just as the room goes completely silent and everyone turns around - on a daily basis. My grandmother was the head mistress of an all girls Catholic school and everything she does is with the posture and finesse of someone who aced their way through charm school. And she raised me with the hope that I would be the same. I`m not.

This story really isn`t all that embarrassing as it is funny. I don`t air my embarrassing stuff out in public. I would die of shame. Die I tell you. But I thought I would start small.

So I moved to Japan (that you know, right? :p ) and the first thing that hit me was that I didn`t understand anything. It was like being in a foreign country (hahaha). If you don`t know anything about the Japanese language - all you need to know is this - it`s made out of THREE different alphabets. One called katakana which looks like this セーラ　(that`s my name), hiragana which looks like this ありがとう！(which says arigato! or thank you) and thirdly, Kanji (ancient chinese characters) like : -

my favourite kanji. This says みらい　or `future`. I don`t know why I like it. I just do.

And when you write, you mix all three like this - 南アフリカから来ました。　Which says `I`m from South Africa.`

I desperately wanted a kanji name. Kanji is so freaking cool. So, I set about finding one that matched the syllables of Sarah - Se & Ra.

I started with Se - 世　which means World.

Ra was a little harder. There aren`t all that many Ra kanji - so I found a bunch and asked my friend Masa what they meant. The one I liked best was this 裸- and I asked him to translate. He said `noodle`. And since my family calls each other `noodle` (Sarah-noodle, pass the salt, please etc) as a term of endearment, I thought that 世裸　World Noodle, would be a fitting and apt name.

Only, he didn`t say Noodle.

He said Nu-do.

Which means naked. And for about 3 weeks I went around showing everyone (my students! friends! boss!!) my new kanji name - 世裸　World Naked.

I should have had business cards made. Only I`m not so sure people would`ve known what kind of business i was in exactly.

P.S. I would have auctioned my Africa Cheese Miracle off on Ebay and made my millions (retired on miracle cheese money). But alas alack - I have no forward thinking. I ate it! It was delicious)