Friday Funny --Lost in Translation?

Let's face it. Traveling to Asian countries without knowing any of the language is a challenge. Thankfully most tourist areas and guides speak enough English (often very well) that you can get along. When we are traveling with our grandchildren who are proficient in Japanese thanks to their mother (our son speaks it but the kids correct him), we rely on them to help us out since many times when we are with them we are not necessarily in tourist areas.

When we visited a couple of years ago and we all decided on climbing Mount Fuji, our tour guide spoke relatively good English but he was only getting us to the mountain where he handed over the guide responsibilities to a man who spoke little English. Since we were with mostly Japanese, the mountain guide spoke all of the instructions to our group before setting out in Japanese. He rattled on in a fascinating melodic cacophony of Japanese for about ten minutes or more.

Our granddaughter stood next to us the whole time but if I remember correctly, she may have been fingering her phone. When our guide was all done and nodded his head and waved his arm for us to follow, Bob turned to our granddaughter and asked, "So what did he say?"

She shrugged her shoulder and wrapped up fifteen minutes of instruction in two English words. "Be Careful."