Rot those damned customs labels though. I must train myself not to read them, now they have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in detail. No more 'gift' or 'personal use material' or 'toy' (on a vibrator, not that you wanted to know that.)
On a totally different note, interview with the maker of The Triplets of Belleville (in the Japan Times of all places, hmm.) Hadn't realized the triplets' cuisine was a nose-thumb at what the French eat, but OK. I did have a translator's twitch at rendering joie de vivre as 'the joy of life'-- I mean it is but it isn't, you know, any more than genki is 'healthy.' Joie de vivre is joie de vivre and doesn't translate into a language/ culture that doesn't *have* joie de vivre in the ordinary way of things. (No really, Anglo cultures don't. Consider the dominant ethos (ethoi?) of England, America, Canada, and Kiwi-land: puritan, the lot of them. The cheerful Ozzies may have their own version; I won't say they don't. But not us, outside Quebec.)