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When I arrived in Japan on my first exchange with four other students, our host families took us to a caf\u00e9 on the way home from the airport. When the waitress went around collecting everyone’s order, I asked for water. All conversation stopped as people jumped to tell me all the different kinds of coffee I could choose from – white, black, cappuccino etc, but I’ve got what the Japanese call a ‘cat’s tongue’ which means that my mouth burns really easily and I don’t like hot drinks. When I reasserted that I wanted water, I was offered tea – Japanese green tea, Chinese tea, English tea, herbal tea… Again, I said I preferred water. All the parents looked at each other and began sympathising with my hosts who would have to feed such a fussy person.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to 2018, and I had much the same experience when I moved in with a family in San Pedro. I was offered coffee on the first morning and refused, saying I preferred water. I was then offered tea with such enthusiasm that I accepted, but only sipped it. When asked, I told them it was nice, but I preferred water. The next day they gave me a mug of something hot and milky which was supposed to contain lots of vitamins. When I explained that my mouth burns easily, they seemed to accept it, but the next morning, my kind hostess spent a few minutes cooling my tea by pouring it from one mug to another and back.<\/p>\n
I’m still not sure why it’s so important to them that I drink a hot drink. The only reason I could think of is that they wouldn’t have to pay for filtered water if I was drinking boiled water in a hot drink, but then they always cook in filtered water themselves and it’s not that expensive at ~A$3 for 20 litres.<\/p>\n
Do coffee and tea drinkers really have such a hard time accepting that someone is happy with water?<\/p>\n
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[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=””… Continue reading Force Fed Hot Drinks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[175],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}