A long and rambling story with no real point
(so don’t say I didn’t warn you)
As I’ve mentioned to some of you, every Thursday I drive down to Oita city to study Japanese with the aid of Japanese people who volunteer their time to tutor foreigners. It’s a really cool organization called “The Earth Men”, and its goal is to promote internationalization. In theory it is open to anyone. In practice, the Japanese volunteers tend to be almost exclusively women in their 20s. Which, I’ll admit, is probably one of the main reasons I make the drive every week. Okay, so you found me out.
I guess I’ve made a bit of an impression on these women, because for about a year now they have been referring to me by the Japanese word “fushigi”. I didn’t know what it meant at first, but the dictionary translated it as “mysterious.” I was quite pleased with this until an Australian friend, who is fluent in Japanese, told me a more accurate translation would be “weird” or as he put it, “a weird-ass”.
Anyway, I really enjoy these Thursday night tutoring sessions, but the entrance is always awkward. I always walk into the room a little bit sheepishly, unsure of whether I’m supposed to ask someone to tutor me or wait for the head instructor to pair me up with someone. And if the same girl who tutored me the previous week is there, then I’m always unsure if I should ask her to tutor me again, or if she expects to tutor me again, or if I should choose someone else. It’s a bit like a high school dance, only it’s a tutoring session.
This past Thursday, I walked into find a few pairs already diligently studying, and then a group of Japanese women just in the corner talking among themselves. The head instructor was busy, so I was left to fend for myself. I approached the girls in the corner, and tried to integrate myself into their conversation, but they were talking quickly to each other in Japanese, and I couldn’t understand what was going on, and felt pretty awkward, as if I didn’t belong there.
And then salvation arrived. My friend Greg walked in the door and found himself in the same position as me. So I immediately latched onto him and started talking to him. At this point the head instructor came over. She’s a really nice lady, but is significantly older than the rest of us. She has kids our age, so we all treat her like a mother, and it is her job to make sure studying actually gets done at these tutoring sessions, and she was not pleased at how we had segregated ourselves. “There’s plenty of teachers here,” she said to me and Greg, “Go find someone to tutor you.”
So Greg went off to another corner with someone to study. I, like a scolded child, returned to the Japanese women and their conversation about who knows what. I just sat at the bench next to them and smiled while they talked to each other. Eventually they became sympathetic to my predicament, and offered to bring the conversation down to my level. “What do you want to talk about?” one of them asked me.
I really hate those kind of questions. It was so broad I didn’t know how to answer it. So I just threw out the first thing that came into my head. “What’s your favorite Ice-cream flavor?” I asked. Inside my head I could hear a voice chiding me (ala Homer Simpson style) “Oh, that was brilliant”.
Everyone humored me by answering, and then when the question had gone around the group and returned to me, I answered “Grape”. Ajimu, where I live, is actually famous for its grapes, and has grape flavored ice-cream. But besides town loyalty, I really do like grape flavored Ice-cream. After 3 years in Ajimu, I’m sick to death of actual grapes, but grape flavoring I still enjoy.
I mention all this because I was at a party on Tuesday night, and somehow the subject of ice cream came up, and everyone agreed that the most disgusting flavor of ice cream was Grape Ice cream. At which point Greg yelled at me across the room, “Hey, Joel, I heard you like Grape ice-cream.” And I’m not just saying that as a figure of speech, he really did yell it across the room. That, plus the accusing town in his voice, made the rest of the room silent and everyone focused on me.
I froze, mortified that my preference in ice-cream flavors had been exposed. I tried to think how Greg had found out about this. You’ll recall he had left the group and gone off to study with another girl before the subject of Ice-cream flavors had been brought up.
And then I remembered that Greg’s girlfriend, Yuka, had been in the group. “I suppose I did mention that to Yuka,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t really expect at the time that it would later be yelled at me across the room. Inside my head I was thinking, “Well, thank goodness I didn’t tell Yuka anything really personal.”
Greg explained, “yeah, that’s how boring my conversations with Yuka are. We talk about your favorite Ice-cream flavors.” The “your” in this sentence was emphasized, and again, somewhat accusatory. As if it was my fault the conversations had descended to that level.
But, having previously dated Japanese women myself, I am well aware of how hard it is to keep a conversation across the language barrier. The conversation doesn’t always flow naturally, and sometimes you become desperate for anything to talk about. Actually if my friends (Greg included) only knew how often the mundane details of their lives had been used as fodder to keep my conversations going…
Greg then explained that Yuka had actually been talking about me later that night, and saying, “Joel is still very mysterious. He asked everyone about there favorite ice-cream flavors, and then he answered grape. He’s very mysterious.” Or, again, I suppose the word she was using can also be translated as weird. But I prefer mysterious.