excess verbiage

One day, we were walking around the streets of Yokohama and one of our hosts bought some street food. We asked what it was and he said the english word is "marron". My friend and I looked at each other and were like, "Huh? What's a marron? Never heard of it." And then our other hosts all piped in and asked how we couldn't know what it was, because marron is definitely the english word. They even looked up the translation on their cell phones (their cell phones are huge bc they need larger screens for all the info they look up - watch, we'll catch up to that in about 4 years maybe. heh).

So we looked more carefully and then tasted it. Immediately we both knew what it was - a chestnut! We said we didn't know what a marron is, but that is definitely a chestnut. And we had to convince them that no one in the english speaking world would know what a marron is. It's "chestnuts roasting on an open fire", not "marrons roasting on an open fire." And then we kept seeing it all over town at different stores and many of them did have the word "marron" on their signs.

Even McDonald's was selling a "Gateau Marron McFlurry". My friend tried one and said it was good. It was a chestnut cake McFlurry. Forgot to take a photo of it, but here's the picture from the McDonald's site. See below. I just think it's so funny that an entire nation is convinced that the english word for chestnut is marron. I really have no idea where that word came from at all.