"Butterflies in my stomach" sounds like horror to Japanese. What Japanese idioms sound creepy toyou?
I recently realized a fascinating cultural and linguistic gap. In English, the phrase "I have butterflies in my stomach" is a common idiom for feeling nervous or excited. However, to a Japanese speaker, picturing actual insects fluttering or squirming inside the belly sounds completely horrifying—very much like a scene out of a Kazuo Umezu horror manga!
This made me wonder about the reverse situation. In Japanese, there are many body-related idioms or onomatopoeias that sound perfectly normal to native speakers, but might sound incredibly creepy, bizarre, or grotesque when interpreted literally by English speakers.