When I travel to a foreign country, I like to go to local markets. It is very interesting to see what local people actually eat or use. When you go to a Japanese market, you might feel the same way. Most vegetables have Japanese names, but some use English words with slightly different pronunciations. "Serori (celery)" or "Retasu (lettuce)" are two of them. "Peeman" is probably a funny sounding vegetable for English speaking people.


Can you guess what it is? It is green peppers. Red peppers are called "aka-peeman". When I didn't know English well, I thought it came from an English word. Later I was curious what the origin of "peeman" is. It turned out to be from the French word "piment." However, French people probably won't be able to figure out what "peeman" is either.

Japanese translation