Coming to live in Japan means remapping some of the English words in your brain to fit the way the Japanese use them. Sometimes it’s little things, like the way “juice” is used to refer to any canned or bottled drink including tea or cola, or a winter scarf being called a “muffler,” or the way a “bike” always refers to a motorcycle and never to a bicycle, as it might in my own dialect of English (California). If you’re hungry, have a “sand” (what sandwich is often shortened to) or perhaps some “ice” (ice cream), and if you work very hard you might be able to buy a “mansion” (an apartment that’s owned rather than rented). In some cases the English words that sound unfamiliar to me may come from Britain, such as the owner of a restaurant or coffee shop being referred to as “Master” or the use of pantsu to mean underwear rather than its North American meaning of external trousers. Sometimes the words are different because they represent entirely new concepts. In the world of high school baseball, the English word “manager” always refers to females who will join the team and do things like wash uniforms, keep score and generally see to the well-being of the team members.
In Japan, a scarf is called a “muffler” which can be hard to get used to.
