Dan's Mistakes in Japan

Since I haven’t done much sightseeing or traveling this week (midterms have made life a bit crazy, though relatively speaking it isn’t even that bad) I figured I’d dedicate an entry to describing a few funny experiences I’ve had in the first half of my semester in Tokyo (hard to believe it’s half over already!) These are real stories. I'm not making this stuff up. Laugh all you want at my expense, it's quite alright. Enjoy!

The Money Story

On Monday I wore this pair of jeans that I have that has a small hole in the pocket. Not being any good at sewing (I barely passed Home and Careers in 8^th grade), I’ve kinda just let it hang there and haven’t really worried about it. I got off the train at the usual stop near my dorm and was walking toward the vegetable market nearby to pick up some salad stuff for dinner that night. As I was walking, all of a sudden a 10 Yen coin rolled out of the bottom of my pants leg. A nice Japanese woman caught it before I did and gave it back to me. I continued walking. A few seconds later, another coin rolled out. I ran over, embarrassed, and picked it up. A few seconds later, another. Then another. Then, for a period of about, I’d say, twenty seconds straight, coins were literally POURING out of my left pants leg, as if, to be crude, I was peeing money. This, of course, sent the overly friendly Japanese into a frenzy. It seemed like the whole town was running around try to pick up all the coins while I was there discharging Yen like a slot machine. It was a real team effort. Finally, the stream of coins stopped and I was stuck standing there extremely embarrassed. It was quite a scene though, seeing a bunch of Japanese people chase the coins that had run down my pants leg. Perhaps I’ll get to sewing that hole up sometime soon. A little old Japanese woman came over to me and said, quite seriously in Japanese, “I think you have a hole in your pocket.” Thanks, Grandma.

The Train-Catching Story

People run all the time here to catch trains. It’s just part of life. If they hear the “Doors are closing” song (yes, they have songs to tell people when the doors are closing), people will spare nothing to get on that train. It’s madness. I’ve also started doing the same thing. On the way home from school last week, I was going down the escalator at the station to catch the Yamanote Line (the main line in Tokyo) to my connecting station to head home. I was halfway down the escalator when I heard the menacing “Doors are closing” song. Uh oh. Then, I heard “Mamonaku doa ga shimarimasu, Go chui kudasai.” (The doors are closing momentarily, please be careful.”) I really wanted to get on this train. I sprinted as fast as I could down the escalator (on the right side, as opposed to the left in the U.S.) and raced down the platform. I was going to make it! The doors were still open! I was really out of breath at this point but kept running. Maybe it was the adrenaline? Or my stupidity, perhaps. Whatever it was, I reached the train door and lunged inside. I made it. I stood there for a second and looked around with a sort of “Haha! I’m awesome” look on my face. But the doors weren’t closing. People all over the train were staring at me and laughing. I was panting trying to catch my breath. I thought I had just made it. It turns out, that the train on the next track over was leaving and the one I was on wasn’t leaving for another minute. I realized this and, of course, put on my best “I meant to do that” face and sat down sheepishly. At least I got some exercise.

The Foreigner Attempts to Use Japanese Story (or stories, rather)

The first Japanese mishap I had on this trip was a doozy. I was in a small, ramen restaurant during the first week, eating with a few friends. We were excited, because this place was a real, authentic hole in the wall where no one spoke English. Of course, everyone designated me as the translator/orderer since I was the only one that knew some Japanese. The menu was really hard to read, but eventually we all got served some sort of ramen, which happened to be quite good Anyways, it was time to ask for the check. I sifted through my brain’s English-Japanese dictionary in search of the word for “check”. What was it? I was having a really hard time remembering it. Some works can be “Japanized” and will work, like “restoran” (restaurant), etc. But check really couldn’t. I also couldn’t use my famous “we want the check” hand signal – they probably wouldn’t understand it here. Ah! I finally found it. I called the waiter over and said “Suisenjo, kudasai”. He looked at me, completely puzzled. I repeated it again, “Suisenjo, kudasai”. No response. Okay, I’ll try another word, maybe this one was right. “Ano… (Um…) suiso, kudasai.” Now he was laughing. My friends were all staring at me. Finally I gave up and just made a hand motion. He understood and ran off. What had happened? I thought that was right! A Japanese woman sitting at the next table was also laughing. She walked over to me and asked in broken English, as she gasped for air since she was laughing so hard, “Do you know what you just asked for?”. “No…” I replied, worried. “You first asked the waiter for an academic recommendation. And then you asked for some hydrogen.” Great.

The second Japanese mishap I had was even worse. There are a lot of words in Japanese that sound very similar, but have one or two syllables switched. Since there are only 26 or so sounds that the alphabet makes, this is bound to happen often. For example, one I always mess up is keisatsu (police), kisetsu (season), seikatsu (lifestyle), and keiretsu (a large, Japanese business). See what I mean? Though switching those words in a conversation might just confuse the listener, there are a few dangerous word pairs that would be a lot worse to mix up. Case in point, my experience a few weeks ago. I was on the train and was kind of in a weird mood. I was a bit upset that I hadn’t been using Japanese as much as I wanted, so I was trying to ask people directions and stupid stuff like that just to get some practice. I was on the train home with my friend and this woman boarded with a little baby girl. She was adorable! She had on a little pink hat and pink shoes and was clinging to her mom’s leg as she boarded the train. The little girl looked at me as she got on. I smiled and decided to walk over and say hi. I walked over and said to the mother, in my cutest voice, “Kowai desu ne!!” or what I thought was “Awww…isn’t she cute!” People say this all the time! Everyone does! But something was wrong. The mother shot me the dirtiest look I had seen on this entire trip. What did I say!?! I was trying to be nice! I said it again, adding emphasis “Sugoku (extremely) kowai desu ne!” She got up and pulled her daughter away from me and stormed in the next car. The other people sitting nearby also shot me knife-laden glances. I turned to my friend, who spoke as much Japanese as I did and asked what I did wrong. She was in tears laughing. “It’s ‘kawaii’, Dan, ‘kawaii”.” Oh…no. I realized my mistake. This was bad. Kawaii is the word for cute. And it sounds awful like kowai. This mistake wasn’t as harmless as the one I described before. I had just walked over, me, a tall, American stranger, to an assuming Japanese woman with her little child, who must have been not over the age of three, and said , “Boy, she’s ugly." To make it worse, the second time I had reemphasized my feelings about her daughter's appearance, saying "Boy, she's extremely ugly".

I hope you enjoyed those few anecdotes. I’m sure there will be a bunch more in the second half of the semester, and as they come along I’ll be sure to forward them over. As for this weekend, I have a field trip for my Japanese Culture class to Zozoji Shrine, which I already visited a month ago. I did want to go again, though, so it won’t be too bad. Sunday we’re planning a hike up (or down, depending on how ambitious we feel) Mt. Takao. It’s supposed to be really cool, so we’ll see.

Jaa mata ne!