Gee

The Olympics started in Beijing. I’m following it on TV. I can watch canoeing, sailing, cycling, equestrian and boxing almost every day. These are not what I wanted to watch. I could watch swimming, athletics and gymnastics as well. I’m watching it carefully so I don’t miss watching the Japanese athletes. Whenever I heard “Japanese” from TV, I came back in front of TV and kept watching. I could easily check the result by Internet but it was difficult to watch them on TV. I looked forward to watching baseball games, but no baseball games have been broadcasted here till now.

The topic of my English class was also about the Olympics. Each of us said the name of events in Olympics. I said “Judo”. The teacher asked us “what do they wear when they play it? What’s it called?” I thought “Judo uniform” in my mind. It was direct translation from “Judo-gi” in Japanese. I was not sure so I kept silent. Then some Spanish class mates answered “kimono”. Although I didn’t know what it’s called, I was sure it was different from “kimono”. All Japanese class mates shook our heads. The answer was “gi”. The word came from Japanese, but I didn’t know the word. I never heard of it. I checked my dictionary and found “gi” as “Judo-gi or Karate-gi”. Gee I didn’t know it. I asked about the word to my American friend and she didn’t know it. It might be British English.

By the way if I search ALC web dictionary, I knew “Judo-gi” was called “kimono” in France and some other European countries.