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Today more examples of loan words that may or may not make any sense to a native speaker of English.

Once in the San Francisco Airport, I saw a group of women trying to order three cups of coffee.

スリーホット！スリーホット！repeated the flustered Japanese woman. The young Mexican-American at the counter stared back blankly.

What the customer wanted was "su-ri hotto," or three coffees.

Another example is アメリカン（American）. This is a slightly weaker cup of coffee.

Moving to the workplace, there are of course the サラリーマン（salaryman）and オーエル（OL, office lady）.

Then there are the dreaded リストラ（resutora, restructuring）and ブランク（blank）. The former means layoffs, the latter a period on your resume that is empty or blank.

Another term with negative connotations is フリーター（furi-ta-）, which is someone who works "freely." What it means in practice is someone who works part-time at several jobs instead of having one full-time job.

The last word for today is マイペース（mai pace）. In general, it means someone who works at their own pace, even if others are rushing.

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