Pocky Central

Long version:

My friend, C, is fluent in Japanese. He makes me look like completely stupid in comparison. He is also a great guy, and he never lorded it over me.

One time, we were on the train from his place to Shinjuku, and decided to do a little social/language experiment. In other words, we were going to mess with people.

For the record, C is as white as white can be. Not to say he’s pale or anything, but he is definitely caucasian.

With this in mind, we decided to see how people would react to me, who is obviously Japanese, speaking nothing but English, and him speaking nothing but Japanese.

We made up our minds by the time we hit the train station, and for the next thirty (maybe forty, I forget) minutes, we held our conversations entirely in the ‘opposite’ language.

We mostly got stares and weird looks. A few people whispered to the person next to them and pointed at us. Keep in mind, we weren’t being loud or obnoxious, but JUST loud enough to not be drowned out by the train.

At one point, though, a little girl walked up and asked me, in Japanese, “Hey, mister, are you Japanese?” I feigned confusion and turned to Chris, who responded, completely deadpan,

“No. He’s American. I’M Japanese.”

The little girl’s eyes went wide, and a moment later, she scurried back to her mom, a confused look on her face.

Sometimes, it’s the little things in life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Personal, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.