Mina-san, this conversation was based off the above photo, but I wasn’t sure which gave a better angle of what the speakers were looking at, so here is the alternate photo.

Wawwww Chigusa is back! Great!

チグサさんお帰り

でも写真見えないよ

I do remember Peter saying a lot of these lessons were recorded in advance, and he didn’t say welcome back or anything, so I’m not sure that Chigusa is actually back…

Since the JPod crew was too busy to explain why an all-you-can-eat restaurant style is called 「バイキング」(Viking), let me suggest that this is because the word is much sharter and easier to pronounce for Japanese than “Smorgasbord”, which would come out 「スモルがスボルド」if transliterated into Japanese. But be sure to hit that final “gu” syllable; otherwise the word comes out ｢黴菌』 which means germs, bacteria, mold, and sometimes refers figuratively to vermin. This is similar to a few New Yorkers I knew who pronounced “Long Island” as “Long-gu Island”.

Hearing Chigusa-san again is just awesome!

she works at interfm.

here’s profile (and you can find a link to her blog there too):
http://www.blenda.jp/radio/personality/

i doubt they have a podcast as podcasts haven’t really caught on in japan

We have an all-you-can-eat sushi place in the US called “Todai”. I wonder if this is a contracted form of 食べ放題? Does anyone know? They have pretty good food and the price is reasonable. I don’t recall if there is a time limit, I’m usually beat after and hour of stuffing my face with sushi though!

That’s what I thought, it would have made a cool logo too. According to Wikipedia it does come from 灯台.

These lessons always make me hungry