This is about the nth time I get mistaken for being Japanese or being able to speak Japanese, n being any number within the range from 100 to 1 million. Some old lady at the front of the bus where the seniors sit looked as though she were heading off the bus, but instead she wavered through the crowd and stopped right in front of me as I was listening to 80s music on my iPod. She kept talking to me, expecting me to able to hear her through my music, so I finally just gave up and took off one of my ear buds. What was the saying to me? "English?"
Who the hell can understand meaning that you're trying to convey with one word?! What- English ancestry, English language, English tea parties, English muffins? So I decided to go rationally with the best guess and assume she were asking me if I could speak English. I told her yes, then she proceeded to point at a map. I first assumed that she was Chinese, looking at the title on the book cover, but on the map itself tiny characters sprawled that resembled Japanese. My suspicions were confirmed when she started talking to me in Japanese, with the intermittent "Where?" "Where?" If I backtranslated that back to Chinese, I could misinterpret that as "Thank you," but what did I do in the last few minutes that would be deserving of thanks? Oh, yes, it would have been me not backhanding her for poorly conveying meaning from one individual to the next.
I finally ended up just pointing to where we were on the map, which is pretty difficult if we're constantly moving on the bus, so my finger had to keep trailing down the page as she tried to understand why I was touching her book. She then left me to my daily musings.
What SHOULD be on my mind right now is pertinent and useful information that will help me ace my neuropharmacology test, but instead of that, whenever I try to read any information relating to that subject, my mind wanders off to thoughts/ideas of what I could put on a birthday card for Drab. God I'm so pissed off right now. What an asshole. That, and I had another dream about him this morning.
On a brighter note, for those of you who intend to construct a savory Banh Mi with head cheese, be sure to warm it up before you arrange it side by side with other meat slices in the sandwich. Cold cut head cheese ends up being too crunchy- the cartilage from the pork ears, and the hard skin won't leave much for the palate to relish.
Is man cleavage a good or bad thing?
2 comments:
Thoughts:
1. You look Japanese.
2. If you are still spiking your hair, you will seem even more Japanese to old Japanese people.
3. The existence of Chinese and Korean peoples do not fit inside the worldview of old Japanese women.
4. Japanese people communicate a range of intentions with one word all the time. They don't know that it's rude in English.
5. Japanese people freak out about even the prospect of cultural miscommunication. She was probably going out of her mind with worry.
6. Since you are young, you exist to help old people. There is no possibility that you have something better to do.
<3, J
3.*does.
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