I did not know there are so many varieties of pumpkins until my cousin, who is working overseas in Japan, shared with us the following photo taken in a Japanese supermarket last week. Even just in this photo there are four different kinds of pumpkins! Judging by the skin colors, they are green-, black-, yellow- and red-skin pumpkins! Wow!
Chippy and happy pumpkins!? Oh… that is supposed to be a joke - one that only Chinese speakers know. Let me tell you. As you know that there are many Han characters used in Japanese which is mostly understandable by Chinese. So on the product signs, the Han/Chinese characters they use to refer to ‘red-skin’ (赤皮) and ‘black-skin’ (黑皮) are pronounced very closely to ‘chippy’ and ‘happy’ respectively in Chinese (but not in Japanese). There we go… red-skin pumpkins are the chippy ones, and black-skin pumpkins are the happy ones!! And it is weird that chippy ones are almost twice the price of the happy ones (580 to 298 yens)! You know what to choose now, don’t you!?
HAPPY Halloween in advance!!
https://www.steemimg.com/images/2016/10/03/IMG_20161003_141727e2456.jpg
前兩天，在日本工作的表妹在群組裡分享了一張她在日本超市拍的南瓜照片，我才知道原來南瓜有這麼多種類跟顏色。光看照片裡的就有4種，紅、黃、綠、黑，形狀還都差異很大，這些南瓜還真是特別啊… 或許是我孤陋寡聞，也許各地南瓜都是這麼多種類，但我印象中在台灣是沒有看過，或許是因為這是較溫帶的作物吧？
上面說的英文笑話是這樣的。照片裡有「黑皮」南瓜跟「赤皮」南瓜的漢字，剛好就是happy跟chippy(煩躁之意)的發音，挺有趣的對應，但這只有說中文的人能懂，日本人恐怕不是這麼發音的，所以這個小趣味，可是很珍貴的跨語言趣味啊… 萬聖節不到一個月了，雖然我不過這節，但還是先說聲Happy Halloween吧！
This page is synchronized from the post: ‘Chippy Pumpkins or Happy Pumpkins for your Japan Halloween? 日本超市的多樣南瓜’