I’ve always struggled explaining this to people. I was taken aback for a long time in that one of the first questions upon meeting someone new was how old I was. I didn’t understand that it’s embedded within the language to establish this.

I read an interesting linguistics essay once that asserted nobody is fluent in Korean because the vocabulary changes as you age. I don’t agree with the thesis, but found it intriguing nonetheless.

(Also, I was there in the nineties. I’ve heard that agashi has since become a word one doesn’t want to use. When and how did that happen?)