The staff ate it later

Humorous Reinterpretations of Religious Texts

A recurring theme is the humorous interpretation of biblical passages, often by drawing parallels to modern technology or by finding wordplay.

• "staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff
• "I get it now. More staff engineers than I expected in the Bible."
• “Jesus and his disciples were all in one Accord”
• "And don't forget that Moses received the Ten Commandments on tablets, although it doesn't say whether he used iPads or something running Android."
• "It's rumored that God was wary of humans having apple products."
• "Perhaps because of the temptations of walled gardens?"
• "And that Revelation 5/6 contain the original doomscroll."
• "I thought it was warning of poorly chosen file permissions (0666) and the evils of “simulation” —- the evils of userns namespaces and VMware!!!"
• "Joshua 6:27 KJV: 'The Lord was with Joshua and his Triumph was heard throughout the land.'"
• “The one driving the chariot drives like Jehu, the son of Nimshi. He’s driving like a crazy person.”

Food Waste and Cultural Attitudes

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the concept of food waste, contrasting Japanese cultural attitudes (mottainai) with those in Western cultures, particularly the US. This leads to discussions about parental influence, historical context (post-war scarcity), individual responsibility, and the practices of the food industry.

• "It's related to the concept of Mottainai (もったいない, 勿体無い) in Japanese culture. Where any waste is considered bad, specially related to food."
• "In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence. So ironically, the more one wastes the more 'conservative' one is considered to be. Pretty much the opposite of the Japanese concept of mottainai."
• "Many Boomers may have heard something along the lines of 'Many kids in Japan are starving and would love to have that food' even, bringing this somewhat full-circle."
• "This is why when you buy a book about mottainai in a Japanese bookstore, it comes with a detachable cover page, the bookstore gives you a cardboard cover so people can't see what you're reading, then puts the book in a plastic bag with a nice twist on top and then puts the bag in a branded paper bag. (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.)"
• "Maybe I'm wrong, but from my personal experiences in NA and Europe, even though wasting is 'frowned upon', there's no feeling of 'guilt' with the action of 'waste'. Honestly, I'm not sure how to explain it."
• "To understand 'generational' behavior it's helpful to understand the prevailing conditions at the time. Obviously these become somewhat sweeping generalizations but they largely hold. A concern either waste directly correlates to abundance. Countries with historical (ie post war) food insecurity treat food like it is precious. Even if it has since become abundant."
• "From my experience, the idea that you shouldn't waste things, and food in particular, is similar in Japan and France. That was even stronger with my grand-parents who lived through food scarcity during WWII in France. US however seems pretty unique in its not caring about waste."
• "I wish they put this on screen in Germany, too (though in German, maybe, instead of Japanese). In cooking shows, I always fear they throw the food in the gargabe. With that note on the screen, if they do throw it in the garbage, at least they would be evil liars. Which might be less likely, and so I could feel better."
• "I feel like I’m talking to aliens when these discussions of “unique Japan” things come up that are, in my experience, plenty present abroad."

The Nuances of Translation and Cultural Phrasing

The discussion delves into the complexities of translating Japanese phrases, particularly politeness markers and idiomatic expressions, into English. The specific example of translating 美味しくいただきました (bishoku o itadakemashita) highlights how direct translations can lose cultural nuance, leading to debates about conveying the intended meaning versus a literal rendering.

• "My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as 'the staff enjoyed it later'. It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse 'ate', and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ('deliciously'). I would expect plain old 'ate' if they used 食べました."
• "Not Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of 'enjoy' in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later."
• "English doesn't have rules as clear cut as Japanese's for politeness—especially nuances! I think it's fine to translate it to 'ate'."
• "It isn't literally, but it takes on this meaning in context. If you 'enjoy' ('receive pleasure or satisfaction from; have the use or benefit of' per M-W) food, it's hard to imagine that you did anything else with it (er, let's not explore that here, please)."
• "The nuance of the JP here is that it's using a polite set phrase, not describing whether people enjoyed the food or not. A bit like how 'a good time was had by all' is used to wrap up a story, not really to describe what kind of time people had."
• "IMO the bottom line is Japanese-English language pair don't translate natural AND verbatim at the same time. Either you're going to paraphrase heavily... or give it up and let it be 'staff ate it'... Some amounts of balancing act is always going to be needed."
• "The whole “the staff ate it later” routine is really just a symptom of a broader intolerance in Japanese media. After years of getting complaints over the most innocuous things, Japanese TV shows have started slapping disclaimers on everything, even the most trivial situations."

Animal Welfare and Media Disclaimers

A significant thread explores media practices related to animal welfare, particularly the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer. This leads to discussions about the filming of movies and TV shows, historical treatment of animals in media, and contemporary concerns about animal representation and cruelty on social media. The disconnect between concern for individual animals versus large-scale industrial farming is also highlighted.

• "In the west we have “No Animals Were Harmed in the making of …”, which I’m only just learning comes from the American Humane Society"
• "Tripwiring (and thus fatally wounding) horses was quite a thing back in the day."
• "You're probably thinking of Milo and Otis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Otis#Animal_welfare_allegations"
• "There’s a weird disconnect where people ignore or are wilfully ignorant of cruelty to animals in industrial food production but are sensitive to it in virtually every other context."
• "The same way I chuckle when I hear people (often practicing martial arts) talking about how 'a Sensei' would be a word you can't translate, to talk about some kind of magical mentor... Dude, it just means 'teacher' or 'professor'."
• "Easier to sympathise with a live animal that looks like an animal than with a brown rectangle covered in sauce. Also much easier to sympathise with the plight of one entity rather than millions: a GoFundMe for a relatable charity case rather than helping the billions of people worldwide who need it"
• "A hurt wild animal is alive and right in front of you. Meat from the grocery store is a prepackaged product that isn’t mentally associated with the bloody process behind the scenes required to get it there. The commercial aspect is pretty dependent on this distancing."
• "Mencius, a thinker from over 300 BC, once said: 'A gentleman, in his attitude towards animals, having seen them alive, cannot bear to see them die; having heard their cries, cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore, a gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen.'"
• "We kill around 50 billion chickens every year. That is 137 million chickens every day. Chickens that are used for eating are alive for around 28 to 42 days."
• "Social media is like TV and cinema before regulations. It is full of cruelty, and all kinds of abuse to animals but also to other people. (Recently there was a death related to this)."

The Practicalities of Food on Film/TV Sets

The discussion touches upon why food presented on screen isn't always eaten by actors, citing continuity issues, food safety regulations, and the sheer impracticality of eating the same dish multiple times for different takes.

• "Restaurants (at least in the US) have very strict standards about how long you can keep something at room temperature before you have to throw it away."
• "Often nobody actually puts anything in their mouths. It was made hours ago while you were off shooting something else, and still more time while they got costumes, lights, makeup, etc. right (and for several takes). By the time film is rolling it has gotten quite gross."
• "BUT if you eat the food in one shot you need to eat it in all the shots for continuity, so you can edit it together. Get ready to start barfing after 40 big bites of the same damn thing."
• "If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot."
• "I assumed the drink cups were empty/opaque so there was no continuity problem. If you splice together different shots, but the liquid level bounces around, it could be distracting."
• "I wish some of these cooking competition reality shows would declare this kind of thing. One recent competition one 'Is It Cake?' constantly trucks out these sort of demonstration items where some true wizard behind the scenes is making a ton of lifelike items that the actual contestants have to guess about just to determine their own order/ranking in the competition. I always wonder what happens to all of the cake from just that portion of the show (and some other segments)."
• "When I worked at a family diner, it was a free for all on the buffet leftovers which could not be recycled for the following day."

Vegan Cheese and Food Preferences

A smaller but distinct theme emerges regarding vegan cheese, with users sharing experiences and opinions on its quality and how it's used.

• "Most of them, I imagine, in order to accommodate vegan customers. Some advertise it louder than others."
• "Vegan cheese is an abomination. Even if one is vegan they shouldn't eat that crap, just eat something else instead. You can make much better vegan food if you focus on trying to make vegetables good versus torturing them into a facsimile of animal products."
• "Eh, there’s some that are perfectly meh and are useful for texture reasons. I don’t really bother with them, but 'abomination' is quite amusing me."
• "US cheese-in-tube is an abomination (I’m French ;-) ) and my Italian neighbor thinks the same about pinanle-fat-dough pizzas."
• "I thought I liked vegan pizzas, having only tasted the restaurant varieties which either don't have cheese or have some sort of savoury dressing instead. Then I tried a vegan frozen pizza, and I found out what people hate about them. Some gray slimy substance which apparently someone, somewhere, thought was similar to melted cheese."
• "Whole Foods is an offender here. They were selling a slice of fresh vegan pizza, which I assumed just had vegetables on it. Instead it had this obscene goopy “vegan cheese” that had more in common with mochi than cheese."