Hickory dickory dock versus bikkuri donkey!!

Two days back my brother send by electronic mail a few audio clips of his daughter reciting English nursery rhymes. My niece is a sweet 2.5 years old American kid and recited them beautifully. Here is a video we made of one of the audio clips.

Niece reciting Hickory dickory dock

Since I am living in Japan for the past eleven years and my hubby is Japanese, we usually converse in 'Janglish' (Japanese+English) and as a result we often have difficulty in grasping the English pronunciation of words with an American accent. Initially we did not notice the title of the above rhyme in the audio file. So however hard we tried, we were unable to get the lyrics of the rhyme! Finally my hubby remembered a funny and famous Japanese Television program Tamori Club having a segment 'Soramimi hour', and jokingly concluded that she is reciting something about 'Bikkuri Donkey!' 'Soramimi kashi' (misheard lyrics) is a word used in Japanese to describe lyrics of a song that sound like the original, but are actually made up. Later we saw the title of the rhyme in the e-mail and realized that the words 'Bikkuri Donkey' indeed sounded a bit like some of the words in the rhyme, and we both had a nice laugh about it and also at ourselves!

Today hubby and me had our lunch at the family restaurant 'Bikkuri Donkey', thanks to my niece reminding us about it. Bikkuri (meaning surprise) Donkey is a restaurant franchise with an extensive menu of minced meat steaks and other dishes. The exclamation marks in the name of the restaurant, the imitated wooden dark brown walls, and out of place wild west look easily catches our attention. We had not been to this restaurant for a long time and therefore relished the lunch.

Banner of 'Bikkuri Donkey' restaurant