I was feeling a little curious, so I looked up the origin of the word “viking” (as in the Japanese word for buffet “baikingu” or バイキング)…
Apparently it was started when the Teikoku Hotel offered up its first buffet… They put out a call for suggestions within the company, and a few people wrote in saying that such a buffet reminded them of the feast scene in the Kirk Douglas movie “The Vikings“… Such an association was apparently common among Japanese people at the time, so the feasts were a huge hit and the name stuck.
(Source: Some random website)
What a boring explanation! I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I hoped it would be better than the name of some movie…
That’s not right. What happened is, one of the first hotels to set up a smorgasbord got lots of questions and complaints about the possibility that food left out in the open would attract bacteria, or baikin.
While the hotel staff tried to assure guests that the food was safe, the name stuck, and soon acquired a trendy “-ing” ending from hip young Japanese desperate to make anything sound Western. Hence, the name baikingu.
Obviously, this was bad for business, so hotels began to say that the name baikingu actually referred to Vikings. This explanation gradually took hold, and today no Japanese person thinks twice about eating a pile of food originally named after the bacteria that’s supposedly breeding in it.
Actually, I just made all that up.
Don’t confuse me!!!!!
I just ate at one of the breakfast buffets around here and now I’m all creeped out — thanks a lot!!!!