Nihongo yoku wakarimasen

I spent Monday being a tour guide for a bunch of Japanese engineers who work in our field and wanted to visit the University's research facilities. I was covering for my advisor, who was unavailable; also, the Japanese organizers looked at our group web page and said, "It's a Japanese student! He can guide us around!" My advisor warned them that I do not speak Japanese (more on this later), and that am basically culturally American (well, that one's questionable--many people would say Blue Stater = UnAmerican [smirk]. But my culture wouldn't be classified as Japanese. Perhaps more Canadian than anything else.)

The tour went reasonably well; I showed them a few of our labs, and we took a trip to the architecture school. But the stereotypical behavior was hilarous: they arrived on a tour bus, and were taking pictures of everything we displayed.



Also, the whole tour group went on a trip to Home Depot!



Granted, it makes sense that a bunch of people in the construction industry would love to see Home Depot, if they come from a country that doesn't have box stores. But still, it was awesome to have a dozen Japanese guys walking through the aisles taking pictures ("Ah, sugoi desu ne?" / "Impressive, isn't it?"), as my advisor expounded on insulation options.

Incidentally, I think that Japan probably lacks box stores due to the real estate layout: the country does not have huge swaths of land to allocate for warehouse stores, and--more importantly--the sea of parking that is required to sustain a store of a given size. Home Depot is starting to create multilevel stores in areas with limited real estate (Manhattan, Vancouver). However, I have read that the U.S. is an anomaly in terms of the strong do-it-yourself homeowner ethos; this would reduce the market for Big Orange Box Stores.

Anyway, communication was somewhat difficult: there were a handful of English speakers, and one that acted as a translator for the rest of the group (I talk. He translates. I talk. He translates. Question. He translates. I talk. He translates.) Also, some of them ribbed me about not having learned to speak Japanese. Yes, my parents are Japanese citizens (born and raised there); they speak it around the house normally (although it was used as the way to keep the kids unaware of what their Christmas presents were). But I managed to resist the push to learn the language. I think that if my parents sent me to "Japanese Camp," it would have resulted in painful experiences with commensurately entertaining stories, much like Paramecium Woman's stories of Ukrainian camp.

My mom, in a masterful stroke of guilt, pointed out that we would be unable to communicate when she is in nursing home and loses her command of English in favor of Japanese (Yes, Bats is a Bad Son).

My relationship with the Japanese language is a bit odd. As the visitor was translating, I could definitely pick up a few words and part of the gist of his explanation. I know a few words and phrases, but I definitely could not put together a sentence myself. I believe that like most people who have heard a language through their childhood (without developing proficiency) my pronunciation is probably pretty accurate ("Duh. That's how you say that word.") Which must make it very odd for Japanese speakers when I say, mostly without an accent, "Nihongo yoku wakarimasen" ("I don't understand Japanese well.")

There is a discussion to be had here about how Asians in particular seem to move (or be pushed) towards assimilation. Eric Liu's book The Accidental Asian addressed this issue--I have a copy if somebody wants to borrow it. But that's a discussion for another time.

So yeah, maybe I should learn Japanese. But there are lots of things that are higher on my priority list. For instance, learning Spanish--it would be great to walk onto jobsites in California or Arizona, and talk to all the people who are actually swinging the hammers. Or getting some self defense skills, such as judo or knife fighting (useful if I crack wise to an Ecuadoran electrician about his sister, and he takes offense). Or mastering evasive/competitive driving techniques (bootlegger turns, four wheel drifts, etc). So Japanese is probably down there above learning ballroom dancing on my list.