Come Again?

It's only fair that someone who grumps online about imports from English over here would make a stupid mistake himself. "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18)

So I was eating dinner yesterday with friends at a pretty good restaurant with a picture menu--standard here if most prices are under $10 a dish--and after we'd finished we decided to split one or two desserts. I went back up to the counter with my pastor, and we investigated the sweets section. What caught our eye was the subtitle of "hot ice [cream]," apparently of the green tea flavor.

The kanji characters indicating the official title were fairly indecipherable to me, but curiosity took over and led me to order the dish. For some reason, the waiter didn't understand my simple request the first time around, but I repeated my order twice and and pointing at the menu until he took it down.

Our whole table wondered how the cooks had overcome the apparent laws of physics to produce this paradox. Finally the dish was served and I saw it swish in its bowl; guess it was just heated until it melted. I took the first trial sip and was shocked at the unexpectedly bitter taste.

It was traditional green tea, no sugar included. Suddenly everything made plain, devastating sense: "hot ice" didn't imply 'cream' but a choice of temperature. No wonder the waiter was confused! Thankfully, I had just enough sense to order two dishes and the second one didn't disappoint.

All in all, I had it easy: my only losses from the false assumption were the aura of linguistic competence and $2.10 (reflecting the dollar's recent dip).