Here’s a skit that takes place in a restaurant in Japan. According to the comments at YouTube, this kind of thing happens all the time. And if you flip the languages, I’m sure it happens all over. The video was produced by Ken Tanaka and friends, who brought us What Kind of Asian Are You? -Thanks, Ken!
Comments (9)
I always had fun whenever I went out with my Italian friend when we both lived in Japan. He didn't speak a lick of English, and the only Italian I know is restricted to naming types of pasta. So the only way for us to communicate was always in Japanese. No biggie. We both spoke it well enough. But the weird looks we'd get in public... And on occasion, whenever we had a larger group of us, we would ALL speak Japanese because that was the one language we ALL understood. But the locals wouldn't ever get that. They would think that a table full of foreigners, without a single Asian face among them, yet ALL speaking Japanese was just the strangest thing in the world. And on occasion, a braver soul would even come up and ask... "Uhhh.... Aren't all you guys foreigners? Why are you speaking Japanese amongst yourselves?" And we'd have to explain that we were from different countries and not all of us spoke English, whereas Japanese was lingua franca for us. But even after explaining it, sometimes I got the impression they never really did quite get it.
Typically the waitstaff, and everyone else for that matter, were very helpful and accomodating even when we didn't have our Japanese speaking friends with us. After all, it's not too difficult to point at what you what you want politely, nod and say "hi" with a smile.
Like all of the wackos who thought 9/11 was predicted after the fact.
No offense, just sayin...
Thanks a lot, China.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/19/comics-about-china-e.html
Oh Good Lord! Cursed mascots! I remember seeing this on Boing Boing and the rest of the comics about the Earthquake were sad.
Nice one. You should check out Blogadilla's C'thulu post from last year: http://www.blogadilla.com/2007/07/21/what-is-it-of-the-week-cthulhu/
- generalized air and water pollution
- no human rights whatsoever
- lack of politicall freedom
- rampant corruption
- other countries starting to complain about generalized corporate spying and economical dumping?
May you live in interesting times...
Since the ability to allow pro athletes sullies the games itself.
And
China needs to have more natural disasters and hopefully the next will be a major shift in the continent. as in, like atlantis, it just slips entirely under the sea.
Like daddy always said, "only good red is a dead red."