Ohh Japan.

I keep saying that I have all these funny stories but I haven’t written any of them down for this blog… so here are a couple of them officially.

Two Amusing Short Ones.

1.   This past weekend my friend Malcolm took my neighbor Linda and I to a bar that he visits regularly. The place was fairly empty just us three foreigners, two Japanese people, and two bar tenders. My Japanese, being the worst among the three of us, proved pretty much useless. Luckily, Malcolm’s Japanese is very good and we enjoyed a very nice time with the Japanese folk there. We listened to some of Linda’s original raps, learned to DJ, and Malcolm taught us what he knew of hip hop dance. And this is where it starts to get weird. The bartender, who is 37 years old, started giving me compliments through broken Japanese/English conversation. Eventually he arrived at this comment, “You have beautiful skin. Crystal clear. Can I touch it, only one time?” Perfect English! Linda and Malcolm just stared at me smiling, waiting to see what I would say. They were zero help at getting me out of this awkward situation. …and since I found this whole situation hysterical, I might have let him touch my face (a decision I regret. What was I thinking?). My friend's birthday party in two weeks is at this same bar and I’m a little frightened to go back to be honest.

Asked a Japanese friend about this story and she said it isn’t a cultural difference, just a really strange pick-up line. lucky me.

2.  I am working really hard to learn Japanese but it isn’t always easy. To break the ice with my students and to give myself practice I throw Japanese words into my teaching whenever I know a relevant word or phrase. The students giggle at my pronunciation and I often make mistakes. I like making mistakes in front of students because it encourages them to try English and make mistakes. My JTEs always say that mistakes are how we learn a foreign language! Usually my mistakes are silly and not a big deal. However, sometimes they are really, really, embarrassing. While teaching class 1-1, I was trying to stay stomach in Japanese, which is "onaka". But I said "okama" resulting in enormous laughter from my students and teachers. The teacher just kept going and corrected me, “its onaka!” Later I cornered the teacher to ask what I said to all the students. He told me that I pointed to my stomach and accidentally said, “gay man.” Awkward.