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Word of the Day: Ambiance
For such a small word, ambiance can have a significant effect on people.
It’s the mood of a place, the feeling you get when you are in a place or the atmosphere or mood you experience when you are around a person.
It’s common for Japanese people to use the English loanwords ‘atmosphere’ or ‘aura’ to refer to the same thing.
My wife and I had a lovely experience yesterday, and I want to use it as an example of how to use the word ambiance.
For the first time, we went to Komeda Coffee.
For some reason, neither of us had ever been to one before.
I suppose one reason is that there isn’t one near our home.
Coffee shops tend to need a lot of customer traffic to make money, and my small countryside village doesn’t have many people.
Anyways, a few weeks ago, we were watching マツコの知らない世界 (The World of Things Matsuko Knows Nothing About), and a guest was talking about coffee shops.
They said the モーニング (small breakfast set) you could get there was pretty good, and the restaurant had a nice ambiance.
We had some things to do in Gobo, Wakayama, so we decided to add visiting Komeda’s Coffee to the list.
I can’t explain why, but we expected it to have the ambiance of an old Showa-era cafe – tranquil and old-fashioned.
It was not what we expected.
The ambiance was great.
Yes, there were many older people in there, but they were laughing, talking, reading the newspaper, eating, drinking coffee, and generally having a great time.
It was Starbucks for people who didn’t want to pay ￥800 for a nice cup of coffee and a place to relax.
It was the “Ultimate Relaxing Space,” just like their website says.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 74.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.