Manga artist Okaya Izumi’s series “Won’t You Drink at My Place?” features inviting guests to his home for drinks and conversation. In the fifth installment, Taiwanese manga artist Gao Yan joins the show.
Gao, who finds that mealtime is his only chance to relax due to his busy schedule, enjoys a one-on-one drinking session with Okaya, who shows off his culinary skills (Gao drinks non-alcoholic beverages).
Don’t miss the recipe for the “Chilled Plum Miso Pork Udon” served on the day (recipe is at the end of the article)!
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Exploring Taiwanese Expressions Absent in Japanese
Gao: I have been looking forward to today very much! Please give me your best regards.
Okaya: Welcome. Are you busy these days?
Gao: Yes, I have 62 pages for next month’s installment of the series, which can be found at ……. In addition, I moved just this week, and my house is still full of cardboard boxes.
Okaya: Wow, that’s a lot of work. Gao’s pictures are so dense, so the effort is totally different from my 62 pages.
Manga artist and illustrator. Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1996. Gained significant attention with the manga Green Song – Collection of Winds, which portrays young people captivated by Japanese culture, including Happy End and Haruki Murakami. Currently serializing Sukima in Monthly Comic Beam.
Gao: I draw my manga in my native language first and then have it translated, so it takes a lot of time for translation, checking, and communication. Moreover, I don’t have a stock of stories at the moment. I have to draw the story while I’m working on the pencils.
Okaya: It looks like you can already translate it yourself.
Gao: No, not at all. I still find it unnatural to translate Taiwanese words into Japanese. What I found interesting recently is that some words commonly used in Taiwan cannot be translated directly into Japanese.
Okaya: What was that word?
Gao: “我想你”, or in English, “I miss you”. When translated into Japanese, it becomes “I miss you” or “I miss you,” but the meaning as it is is “I am thinking of you. It is a bit more ambiguous than “I miss you” or “I miss you.
Okaya: I see. In Japan, many people might be too shy to say “I miss you” or “I miss you.”
Gao: In Taiwan, it is very common. Not only to lovers, but also to family members. Even my father sends me a line saying “I miss you”.
Okaya: I don’t say “I miss you” to my family. It might depend on the family.
Gao: Around me, my father is the one who says “I miss you” the most. He says, “I want to swim to Tokyo right now.
Okaya: Your father is cute.
