Ochita
Difficult situations often make a person learn something new and stick it to his mind. This is usually the case, well, at least for me.
The Japanese word “ochita”, is the past tense and colloquial form of the word “ochiru”.
ochiru (落ちる) means:
(1) to fall down; to drop; (2) to fail (e.g. exam); (3) to crash; to degenerate; to degrade; (4) to fade; to come out (e.g. a stain);
One time, I felt like I was a walking zombie on my way home. I was holding my train ticket as I got out of the train but a Japanese lady was so impatient that she dashed into the train and bumped into me. Being half-awake as I was, I was shocked when my train ticket fell into the train tracks through that narrow gap between the platform and the train. The lady stared at me and then rushed inside the train without even apologizing, while I felt other pair of eyes looking at me. I felt so stupid. I actually thought of just leaving my ticket there but I still have to explain what happened. So I approached a train station personnel. I forgot the Japanese word for “fall” so I just used my broken Japanese and sign language. Fortunately, the personnel understood me and confirmed it by asking “ochita?“ I nodded and she rushed down the platform and had a colleague pick up my ticket using that very long clipper.




March 10th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
for a second, i got worried that being half asleep made you jump to the tracks to pick up your ticket!
March 10th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
half-awake? You lucky you didn’t get pushed down onto the tracks.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
japanese can oftentimes be rude if time is at stake.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
oh my .. do take are. i was afraid you might jump to get it yourself too. *sweat*
March 12th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Thank God you are not the one who fell! Ki wo tsukete kudasai!!
March 12th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
@charlotte, kljs, levian, grace
because of my sleepiness, I actually thought of pressing that red emergency button!
@rose
so true…
I sometimes miss the “old people and ladies first” in the Philippines…