Jon Ken Po!
Start pumping your fist with a serious expression creased on your brow and Japanese kid’s hands will shoot from their pockets like they’re in an old western draw. So . . . about Sayuri and the second panel. Does she really make me do Rock, Paper, Scissors to kiss her sometimes? Psh! No. That panel is made up. The other two are true. Shut up.
After my fill of Japanese dates that seemed to be going nowhere but cute and flirtatious, I went to a party held in the back alley of a school. There was a girl there, face half-obscured by silky black hair, wandering through the party as if she were lost in a cave of demons.
In awkward foreigner fashion, I struck up a conversation with the most basic (heydoyouspeakenglishwhere areyoufromhaveyoueverbeentoamericadoyoulike japan) nonsense that all English speaking foreigners are slaves to.
She didn’t respond.
Instead she plucked up a small stack of yellow containers with multi-colored caps, and said, “Tabemono o tsukurimashou.”
And so we set ourselves to creating tiny Play-Doh iterations of pizzas, ice-cream cones, and other food universals, all the while reveling in their mouth-watering perfection and knowing if we succumbed to their specious ocular flavors, our succulent illusion would disintegrate into a salty, melted muck in our mouths. We rolled pin sized cherries between our fingers, adorned them on our culinary clay, and tried to bring into focus the other person’s background through a series of one-word sentences, gestures, and every so often, phone a friend.
There we were on the rainbow play-mat of the classroom floor, an inedible king’s feast before us, her electronic dictionary whirring, the music box in my heart skipping a beat.
After our first date I texted: “Hey. That was fun.”
She replied: “I was fun too.”
And that was that.
There’s only a certain realm of English that you can correct. Sayuri’s falls too far into adorability.
CHRISTIAN: “Hey, a cemetery!”
SAYURI: “Seven-thirty?”
CHRISTIAN: “Oh, that sucks.”
SAYURI: “Red socks?”
CHRISTIAN: “Are you ticklish?”
SAYURI: “Decoration?”
Instead of the usual frustration akin to eating corn chowder with a fork, what lights up inside me is wonder for the strange little creatures we create by not being able to understand each other.
Perhaps I should be funneling more experience points into my Japanese skill, but I think that would take something away. The lack of tongue conversations opens the door to dusty rooms of subtler, sometimes more honest ways to express ourselves. (Sure, Rock, Paper, Scissors is one.)
Yes this is often accompanied with the feeling of being lost, and misunderstanding the other’s intent.
But are other relationships any different?
-Christian
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