At least, Bush's controversial trip
threw up a new Japanese verb
by John Woodruff
Baltimore Sun
Although historians and economists may debate for years whether President Bush's trip here (Japan) helped or harmed his cause, one achievement can be recorded immediately. The trip enriched Japanese with a socially acceptable verb for one of life's unspeakable miseries.
The new verb is Bushusuru: to do a Bush.
The new verb has found its way into popular magazines, television variety shows, even into a popular trained- monkey act. When he hears the verb, Jiro, the animal, imitates what gastroenteritis made the president do at Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's dinner, complete with realistic sounds.
In Roppongi and others of this city's (Tokyo) dozens of thriving night-life centers, such a verb has a special usefulness because of Japan's particular drinking customs.
Each night, tens of thousands of Japanese men deliberately get as drunk as they can as fast as they can, one of the few widely accepted ways of escaping the rigidly stylized manners that dominate social relations here.
As these tens of thousands head for the subways around midnight, dozens each night get no farther than the sidewalk before they Bushusuru.
