If my memory serves me, only one in five thousand of the salmon caught in the waters of Hokkaido every Autumn are unisex salmon.
Did you see what the Chairman did there? No?
Christmas. If my memory serves me, Christmas is an important holiday in the West.
Still no? I'll give you a clue. In East Asian cultures, the idea of Face is important. To be wrong would be to lose face, no small thing.
If my memory serves me, the sea urchin is closely related to the star fish
The Chairman, portrayed by noted stage actor Kaga Takeshi—Look for him in the Les Miserable anniversary videos as Tokyo Valjean—prefaces all of his statements with a disclaimer, because he Could be wrong, even though he's an actor reading a script off a teleprompter that's meticulously researched.
"So what?" you say. What does a peculiar East Asian verbal habit have to do with me?
I don't know everything. I like to say that I know next to nothing about almost everything. This is by no means Jeopardy-grade trivia—I have friends who were winners on Jeopardy and their trivia knowledge is frankly scary. But it's enough to at least confidently call myself broadly ignorant.
On the other hand I know rather a lot about some few things, and there are a couple of topics where people have said, "You really should talk to..." and to my shock and amazement they fill in the blank with my name. Wow I'm an expert on frame drums. Who knew?
Then I break out my Layne Redmond (RIP), Glen Velez or Mickey Stewart videos and hear what a real drummer sounds like. Yeah, I gotta practice more.
Think you know music? Couple of days ago I learned that the founder of the Venetian School was Adrian Willaert, not Giovanni Gabrieli. I'd believed that for something like thirty years. Now I know better. Next week I hope to learn more things.
Cariadoc of the Bow mentioned on Facebook a passing remark in Al Warriq about how, if your yeast is slow or just not working, you can add a bit of "Boraqs" to your dough and it will rise. A bit of back and forth we figured out that "Boraqs" probably referred to Natron, a common mineral yielding varying amounts of baking soda and washing soda, and OMG I convinced FREAKIN' CARIADOC!!!! that chemical leavening existed in Period.
So even if you invented large parts of the SCA, and are on the receiving side of all manner of hero worship, you can Still learn new things, even in areas where you're a "recognized expert." That keeps bringing me back to..
One of the characteristics the people who inspire me all share is an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn new things. They don't know everything and are quick to point out the limits of their knowledge. The strongest negative they're comfortable giving is, "I've not heard of that, do you have documentation?" Their strongest assertion is, "Well, this is what I've seen so far, but next week we could find something in a bog or a shipwreck that changes everything."
Because the more you study something, with the possible exception of geometric optics, the more you come to understand just how little you know about it.
I can't wait to see what I learn next.
Unless of course I'm mistaken