An Interlude

Hong Kong was overcast most days, which means I have a lot of pictures with an overexposed sky and a dark foreground. That in turn means I have a lot of color correcting to do on photoshop before I blog about my trip. But something interesting happened to me today so I thought I would mention it.

I decided to work off those kilograms I gained in HK by walking home from Ueno and getting lost. After I was done getting lost I went to an Indian restaurant I'd been meaning to try.

A guy who looked to be in his thirties greeted me at the door in Japanese. He looked like he might have been at least part Japanese, but not just Japanese. He took a look at me and then greeted me again in English. I sat down in front of a big TV screen, which was playing nothing but selections of Bollywood dance scenes... all starring this guy.

When I was done looking at the menu, I asked him in Japanese if he could recommend anything. He answered me in Indian-accented English, which he did even though I repeated the question in Japanese twice. I gave up and switched back to English, feeling like I must have insulted him or something.

I spoke in Japanese for the following reasons: 1. I was in Japan. 2. English was obviously not his first language and 3. His Japanese was better than his English.

It is often very difficult for foreigners in Japan to figure out which language to use, with the Japanese and with each other. With Japanese people, the general rule is to speak in the language of the person with the poorer second language skills. This just makes the conversation go smoother, even though with that arrangement the person who really needs the practice never gets it.

Between foreigners is another matter entirely, and the choice of language seems to depend mainly on how resentful the non-native English speaker is of the fact that they are expected to speak English.

Let me explain. At Doshisha, the gaijin community became quickly divided into two factions: the Americans, Europeans, and Australians on one side and the Koreans and Chinese on the other. The Koreans and Chinese generally spoke to each other in Japanese while the Americans etc of course used English. This rule was broken only by a french girl whose Japanese happened to be better than her English. I remember one time when we were talking, she kept trying to speak Japanese to me, while I kept answering back in English. We were having a language disconnect, the same as I had with the waiter in the Indian restaurant.

In another instance that happens to involve Indians, I was walking through ikebukuro and there was some kind of festival that was shutting down. There was indian music, curry, and indian people as far as the eye could see. I was shocked. I had never seen such a dense concentration of Gaijin in all my time in Japan. I was surprised Japan even allowed such a thing to go on. As I was leaving, somebody responded to my confusion with an accented "tanoshikatta desuka?" I took out my headphones and proceeded to have a Japanese conversation with two indian guys, during the course of which, one of them said. "Nihongo ojouzu desune."

This almost made me laugh, and if you've spent any time in Japan and can manage to blurt out "konnichiwa", you know why. Complimenting the Japanese of a foreigner is the #1 obnoxious thing the Japanese just can't stop doing.  It basically stems from the fact that the Japanese are so thoroughly convinced that only they have the ability to speak their very difficult language, they are quite genuinely surprised when any part of it, no matter how twisted and broken, happens to fall out of the mouth of a gaijin. If you're about to tell me I should learn how to take a compliment, please try and imagine a situation in America where some white guy keeps complimenting the English of every brown person he meets. That guy would eventually, probably get his teeth punched out. And you know what? He'd deserve it.

Anyway, the indian guy sort of smirked when he dropped the "ojouzu" bomb on me, because he was partially saying it facetiously. And for good reason, too. It is very strange, after all, to compliment the language skills of another non-native speaker, especially when your abilities are very evenly matched. On another level though, he must have felt he had the right to compliment me, as though it should be taken for granted that he speaks Japanese, while it should not be taken for granted that I could.

His compliment has been nagging at me since he said it more than a month ago, and I think I finally figured it out: the missing variable to the language equation that I have been continuously working on. This variable rapes and overrides all my other carefully crafted notions of location, relative ability, context, who speaks first, age, status, etc. This variable is the supremacy of English, the stereotypical American who expects everyone to speak it wherever they go, and the people who consistently assume that every American is the stereotypical American who expects everyone to speak English wherever they go.

And therein lies a fun little chicken and egg question for you. I donft have to learn Japanese because everyone ought to learn English. And I canft learn Japanese because, as there is no way to hide my American-ness, people speak to me in English everywhere I go. (Except in Tokyo; thank you, Tokyo) No one in Japan feels any pressure to learn Hindi, so Indians need to either learn Japanese or get real good at pointing and grunting. It is therefore quite proper then, in a sense, that an Indian who was as good at Japanese as I am complimented me, while I felt no compulsion to reciprocate.

This Indian guy called out to me in Japanese, even though it was the primary language of neither of us, and English is an official language in both our countries. In doing so, he rejected the supremacy of English. In the Indian restaurant, the waiter refused to NOT speak English to me, even though I was making it clear that I could converse in Japanese and the conversation would have been easier on him. He seemed very determined to prove that he could speak English. In being so determined, he was accepting the supremacy of English.

So thatfs my new theory. Ifm a bit torn about how I feel about it. On one hand, it doesnft seem fair that some people have an easier time than others learning what is already THE ginternational languageh On the other, therefs no denying that we need an international language, especially with the dawn of the internet. And everybody saw what happened to Esperanto. Even if it were possible to create a TRULY neutral language, who the hell would use it? How can a language grow if everyone who speaks it is a non-native speaker? Who would want to write a poem in Esperanto, or chat on AIM in Esperanto, or listen to pop music in Esperanto? And whatfs the fun of learning a language that wonft enable you to understand more art, chat with more people, and experience a new culture? What Ifm trying to say is that Someone has to speak the international language natively for the international language to be good for anything. So it might as well be English, even though how it came to BE English is by and large horrible and fucked up.

 Wow, I am so glad I stayed up until 1:30 writing all that.

(...which coincidentally is what I've left behind)

It's very humid and I miss speaking Japanese already.

Today we went to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, which was impressive despite the rolling fog.

Reading Chinese makes me fall in love with Kanji all over again; Carol
is the best at indulging me in all my "what's that part mean?"
obnoxiousness.

Hong Kong has that smell of humidity. That soft, usually sweet sense in
the air that catches all other smells and makes them linger. This can
be good or bad. Hong Kong is tall, both the buildings and the busses.
Hong Kong is no escape from Japan, or America.

Being foreign here feels absolutely nothing like beign foreign in
Tokyo. Foriegners here blend in the crowd, resident and tourist, they
act like they belong here. In Japan, it always feel like you're
fighting to belong. And the only people you really have a chance of
convincing are yourself and the small circle of people you see every
day. Japan has no notion of a cosmopolitan city, for all the lip
service they pay to the idea of "internationalization".

Still; leaving Japan on vacation somehow makes me feel like I belong to
it all the more; something to do with standing in the "Japanese
Citizens and Residents" line in Immigration, probably. When I was
filling out my disembarcation card on the way to HK I got my name and
passport number down with little trouble, but I left the "home address"
line empty for the entire flight. My parents' address in America, or my
apartment in Tokyo? I wrestled with the decision for the whole of the
inflight movie, and then scribbled down my Tokyo address almost just by
instinct.

Its very weird to make your home in a place where you will always be soto "outside"; its almost masochistic.

Lastest and Greatest Engrish Favorites:

-on a shopping bag-

Fresh
Handmade
Cosmetics

-on the insert that came with a clear plastic report cover-

Looper File
Recently we feel faint nostalgia in the period people and things used to be lively. Why don't you go through the time travel to get the stir in the good old days?

http://dynamism.com/sushidisk/pricing.shtml

I want these like you wouldn't believe.

Ueno Sakura

There are sometimes when I feel I have the whole world to say but don't know where to start. A feeling of...infinity takes over my body and leads me to the keyboard, and then once I find words instead of the universe I get disappointed and quit.

When I have one feeling, words help me. I can turn any feeling into beauty with words. I have a gift for purifying sadness, making over loneliness, and deifying boredom.

But sometimes all I have are a bunch of little feelings that each come to nothing, and if I try and assign them words, even in my own head they become nothing, they become clichés, instead of the profound things I think they are.

Like my fear of death, my loneliness, my self loathing, my pride, being in Japan, my love of words.

Even writing them here, they seem wrong, like a bad translation of a great work.

Chiba