Peanuts

　　I don't have much luck with lotteries, but I received a fairly large amount of peanuts today. It was the award from the organizer of the marathon. When I took part in the Chiba Aqualine Marathon, which I wrote about here, I put a slip of paper with my name and address filled in into a collecting box. The slip was handed out at souvenir shops around the finishing site. I had forgotten about it and it took some time to realize the reason for the arrival of the peanuts.
　　Anyway, all of the different kinds of peanuts were nice and they went well with beer. While drinking my beer and eating the peanuts, I thought to myself how funny it was that idioms containing peanuts belittle things, for example, "work for peanuts" or "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys", but actually, winning peanuts as an award is really great! (grin) FYI: Chiba Prefecture is famous for the production of peanuts.

(Vocabulary)
peanuts [U](インフォーマル)  はした金, すずめの涙ほどの金
work for peanuts  はした金のために働く
if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys   はした金ではまともな働き手は集まらない
belittle  〈人・努力・重要性など〉を軽視する, 見くびる, けなす

Comments

[KUMO]

Dear Freya,

I'm happy and glad to receive your comment and to know you learn Japanese. I'm also struggling to learn English and other languages. Don't hesitate to ask me about Japanese. I became interested in Britain since my youngest daughter was dispatched to Oxford Univ. Medical Department by Japanese Government and I'm going to visit your country not in a distant future. Where in Britain do you live? My hometown is Matsuyama City in Shikoku, the fourth biggest island of Japan.

[Freya]

こんにちは、私は日本語を学んでいます。それは学ぶのが本当に難しく、日本のイディオムは理解しにくいです。
ありがとうございました、
イギリスからのフレヤ