A while ago, my mother sent me a newspaper clipping about Japan and its love for Baumkuchen, a German cake specialty that is rather time-consuming to make. It turns out that the Japanese discovered baumukuuhen, as they call it, as early as in 1919, when a German pastry chef baked it in a Japanese prison camp. Today, according to the article, baumukuuhen is omnipresent in Japan, whereas it can only be found in a handful of bakeries in Germany. There are even shops specializing in baumukuuhen, and it comes in a variety of different flavors (e.g. green tea or pumpkin.)

Click here for the newspaper article about the phenomenon (in German.)

The image is from http://www.kitakaro.com/item_detail/24. A big thank you to Stefano Suigo for finding it for me!

This week, another one of those admirable words that made it to the other end of the world (albeit not without losing its original meaning.) 

For reasons not entirely clear to me, the German word Gelände  (terrain, area, grounds...) became the Japanese term for ski slope, as illustrated by this gerendemappu. As usual with Japanese, the word suffered somewhat in the adaptation process. 

My thanks go to Bettina Ortmann for pointing gerende out to me and to Stefano Suigo for finding the gerendemappu for me.

The picture is from http://www.nozawaski.com/winter2011-12/course/map.php.

This week's gem is brought to you with the help of my friend and colleague Stefano Suigo. The Japanese have turned Arbeit (work, a job) into arubaito (アルバイト). However, arubaito is used exclusively for casual, student-type jobs, not for the serious business of a real job. Much like jobben in German, in fact! Can we detect a pattern here? Do you know of any other languages that borrow slightly disparaging terms for "work" from other languages?

The picture is from http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/htm/4812415667.html