you dare refuse my strawberries?
The world according to Jamie Kass.
The days are numbered and counting. I have been counting them ever since i realized there were only eleven left. Now there are but eight. What days, you may ask. Working days, my friends, days of toil in the cramped classrooms of NOVA corporation. After these eight days, no more shall i slave away in the coal mine that is the 3rd floor office of the SOGO corporation department store. My lungs are full of soot and my breathing has been heavy lately. Must be too much spoken English... it wears a man down. He must guzzle bottled green tea to keep his throat moist or else the cracked flesh inside will ruin his voice, his most important tool and the only thing that earns him his living wage. The mind helps too, but most of his day is spent reading from a text and speaking as if to a child.
Most days i go to the local grocery store and buy a green apple for 88 yen or a red one for 128. Usually i go for green. There is a man who works in the store cutting and folding boxes and arranging fruits and vegetables: he often sees me and sets aside his work to come over to me and act as awkwardly as he can manage. He always stretches out his hand first, prompting me to shake it, but grips me and holds on as if he thinks this is the proper way gaijin greet each other. He doesn't let go until we are done speaking. He rarely looks me in the eyes, but often swings his head up close to me as he speaks so i can smell his breath, stinking of unbrushed teeth. He will talk about the weather, or my commute to work, or various other mundanities in broken and confusing English, with entirely bizarre intonation, so that i often have no idea what he is trying to say. But the past two days he has given me gifts of fruit, which is quite nice, and i suppose all my patience and friendliness has paid off, for i have received a bag of mikan (small clementine-looking fruits) and a package of strawberries. I don't like getting gifts simply for speaking a few English words to someone, but it was nice of him. People are literally desparate for English here; it is no lie.
When i go to work, i found Jeff, the 40-something Arizona-born man who has a Japanese wife 10 years younger than him, Alex, the 40-something Toronto-born man who has a Japanese boyfriend his age, and Denise, the 20-something Canadian who just began work here and already has begun to get on my nerves. The reason is this: when she arrived, she replied to almost everything i said to her in a brisk and uninterested tone. I kept trying to joke with her or say something meaningful, but i never could crack open her shell. This bugged me, and so today when i offered these three people strawberries and she refused, it set me off. I then said the remark that i was afterwards scolded for by Alex as "not called for". I asked her the following rhetorical question: "Denise, don't you ever take any chances?" Personally, i don't think this comment is so offensive, but Alex did, and he toldme outright. Afterwards, while we were having lunch together in the Indian restaurant, we discussed this comment and the repurcutions of my attitude towards people that i meet, and what kinds of impressions i may give them. Overall, we decided that i come off too strong and passionate with new people, and that i overwhelm them from the start. I also consciously test them to see if i can get them to be open with me, and if they don't open up, i will viciously torment them, as a crow does with a clam that just refuses to break upon the sharp rocks that shoulder the waves. But this very day, i found myself being quite warm with Denise after this lunchtime conversation, and we communicated quite smoothly. Perhaps i learned a lesson!
I plan to go to Hiroshima in a couple of days. Tomorrow is my last working day in March. I am ecstatic.
The days are numbered and counting. I have been counting them ever since i realized there were only eleven left. Now there are but eight. What days, you may ask. Working days, my friends, days of toil in the cramped classrooms of NOVA corporation. After these eight days, no more shall i slave away in the coal mine that is the 3rd floor office of the SOGO corporation department store. My lungs are full of soot and my breathing has been heavy lately. Must be too much spoken English... it wears a man down. He must guzzle bottled green tea to keep his throat moist or else the cracked flesh inside will ruin his voice, his most important tool and the only thing that earns him his living wage. The mind helps too, but most of his day is spent reading from a text and speaking as if to a child.
Most days i go to the local grocery store and buy a green apple for 88 yen or a red one for 128. Usually i go for green. There is a man who works in the store cutting and folding boxes and arranging fruits and vegetables: he often sees me and sets aside his work to come over to me and act as awkwardly as he can manage. He always stretches out his hand first, prompting me to shake it, but grips me and holds on as if he thinks this is the proper way gaijin greet each other. He doesn't let go until we are done speaking. He rarely looks me in the eyes, but often swings his head up close to me as he speaks so i can smell his breath, stinking of unbrushed teeth. He will talk about the weather, or my commute to work, or various other mundanities in broken and confusing English, with entirely bizarre intonation, so that i often have no idea what he is trying to say. But the past two days he has given me gifts of fruit, which is quite nice, and i suppose all my patience and friendliness has paid off, for i have received a bag of mikan (small clementine-looking fruits) and a package of strawberries. I don't like getting gifts simply for speaking a few English words to someone, but it was nice of him. People are literally desparate for English here; it is no lie.
When i go to work, i found Jeff, the 40-something Arizona-born man who has a Japanese wife 10 years younger than him, Alex, the 40-something Toronto-born man who has a Japanese boyfriend his age, and Denise, the 20-something Canadian who just began work here and already has begun to get on my nerves. The reason is this: when she arrived, she replied to almost everything i said to her in a brisk and uninterested tone. I kept trying to joke with her or say something meaningful, but i never could crack open her shell. This bugged me, and so today when i offered these three people strawberries and she refused, it set me off. I then said the remark that i was afterwards scolded for by Alex as "not called for". I asked her the following rhetorical question: "Denise, don't you ever take any chances?" Personally, i don't think this comment is so offensive, but Alex did, and he toldme outright. Afterwards, while we were having lunch together in the Indian restaurant, we discussed this comment and the repurcutions of my attitude towards people that i meet, and what kinds of impressions i may give them. Overall, we decided that i come off too strong and passionate with new people, and that i overwhelm them from the start. I also consciously test them to see if i can get them to be open with me, and if they don't open up, i will viciously torment them, as a crow does with a clam that just refuses to break upon the sharp rocks that shoulder the waves. But this very day, i found myself being quite warm with Denise after this lunchtime conversation, and we communicated quite smoothly. Perhaps i learned a lesson!
I plan to go to Hiroshima in a couple of days. Tomorrow is my last working day in March. I am ecstatic.
posted by mdove at 1:36 AM
2 Comments:
i really dont think what you said was inappropriate or offensive in any way. i dont get it. it was just an affectionate tease, the way i see it. anyway, as always, i love your descriptive analogies, this time with the clam. moochka
Perhaps strawberry offerings are a sign of threat and disrespect to a canadian. Or perhaps this Alex is just a pansy who wants people to act how he wants them to act. Either way, what you said was in no way "wrong" in my opinion. Now, if you offered her blueberries.. you should be hanged, then shot, then thrown in the deepest hot spring in all of Japan.
-Sukoto, Supporter of Strawberries, Punisher of Blueberries
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