I was flittering around on Twitter today and noticed a question posted by someone who had just been in Japan (Dr. Beth Meyer), asking why buffets over here are called baiking (viking).

I replied it was because of: buffet > smorgasbord > From Sweden > Land of the Vikings

Dr. Beth then told me she had found a longer (and much more interesting but unsubstantiated) story of the origins of the term here.

Would any of the Japundits like to chime in on this?

So my Japanese roommate and her friend (also Japanese) were browsing through my bookshelf one day, looking at my English language literature, when they stumbled upon an old paperback of Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road). They picked it off the shelf wondering how haiku, something so intimately Japanese, could be translated to English.

After just a few minutes browsing through the pages, my two fluent-in-English friends burst out into laughter. I overheard the uproar in an adjacent room and went over to ask what the fuss was about.. Apparently, the original message was so unbelievably lost in the translation from Japanese to English, they thought it was downright hilarious. They said it was way too modern and conjured up images of Basho wandering the forest with an iPod Nano, mobile phone (with bluetooth headset), and Macbook (which he of course used to write his haiku).

I have decided to take this idea and run with it for haloween. I’m tentatively calling it DJ Basho, and it’s gonna be rad.

More to come.

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In the “Story’s URL” box on the screen that appears after you click the “Submit Story” tab, paste the URL where the photo is located.

We will be trying to work out a way to make it possible to include both an image and a link to the story that includes the image, and we will let you know as soon as we figure it out.