Ribingurūmu
リビングルーム

From the Cabinet of Curiosities

Japanism

In a well-known, picturesque university town in southern Germany, there has been for several years now a restaurant called ‘Ribingurūmu’ .
The premises were previously home to a pub called ‘Bella Italia’. There are other pubs nearby, such as “Esszimmer (Dining Room)”, ‘Last Resort’ and ‘Schwarzes Schaf (Black Sheep)’.
Guests are told that ‘Ribingurūmu’ means ‘living room’ in Japanese.
According to the venue’s own description, it offers the following: supervised drinking, and on TV Bundesliga football and the TV crime series 'Tatort'. The pub, deliberately furnished in the style of a “grandfather’s living room” with old, partly worn furniture, is mainly frequented by students and other young people.
A visit to the recently opened branch in the capital of the Land, bearing the same name “Ribingurūmu”, revealed the venue’s core concept: slowing down.
The service is deliberately very slow. Guests should allow plenty of time to feel at home in the living room.

Ribingurūmu



Wohnzimmer

Living room

Salon

Soggiorno

Foreign words in Katakana

Words written in the Japanese syllabary katakana are mostly loanwords. Today, the vast majority of these originate from English. Loanwords are phonetically transcribed using the Japanese sound system. This can cause particular difficulties for understanding, partly because no distinction can be made between L and R.

リビングルーム ribingurūmu: ri = li, bi = vi, n = n, gu = g, rū = ru with long u, mu = m. Results in living room.

1 レザー rezā: re = re or le, zā = tha with long a. Results in leather.
re = re, zā = zā. Results in razor. In Japanese, the pronunciation is the same.
2 レーザ rēza: Results in Laser. Here, the e is long and the a is short.
3 レスラー resurā: re = re, su = s, rā = rā. Results in wrestler.
4 リーダー rīdā: rī = rī, dā = dā. Results in reader.
Or rī = lī, dā = dā. Results in leader.