I was under the impression that the girls would go crazy for me over here. But I'm learning that 95% of the girls my age seem to be deathly afraid of me. When a girl sees me she acts like I'm going to steal her purse and then grind her bones ot make my bread. I met one girl that seemed excited to meet me, but it turned out that she just wanted free English lessons. My Jr. high students are a differnt story though. I get weekly marrage proposals from them.
In a similar vein, most old men look disgusted when i smile to them on the street. Old women smile back or just pretend I'm not there.
I expected the hospitality to be unbelievable. And it is about 50% of the time. Then 45% of the time the person I'm dealing with seems totally indifferent. The last 5% is outwardly rude. But every time somebody is rude I just assume they have to poop really badly.
I heard that some foreigners over here don't like to see other foreigners. I guess they want to pretend that they're the only westerners in Japan. But every foreigner I've met or seen has been really friendly or at least given me a very genuine smile/head nod. It's probably because we both know what it's like to feel like an extra-terrestrial. I've also heard that some foreigners band together in groups and only hang out with each other in an English speaking bubble. I think I have observed that, but I don't blame them because it can be hard as shit to make Japanese friends over here for some of the above-mentioned reasons.
I was going to write how nobody sits by me on the train... kinda like the smelly homeless guys on the busses back home. But during one particularly long travel day, two different women sat next to me to practice English. The first one spent the whole trip looking away from me, but then said "Have a good trip". The other was much more chatty and tried to convert me to Christianity.
Everybody told me there would be a ton of vending machines here, so I expected the streets to be lined with them... which is not the case. I thought to myself, "There aren't THAT many vending machines". Now I'm starting to realize that whenever I get the urge to waste 150 yen on a sugary, caffeinated drink, I only need to look around and there will be a vending machine in sight. It happens way too often. There are a ton of vending machines in Japan.
The "sake principal" has me totally confused. After the lesson in Japanese mind reading, most people over here told me he just wanted to relate to me and didn't know how to use the proper tone, since he's a student of the English language. But I didn't buy it because during our talk he was not smiling, he didn't need to take me into his office to have a friendly conversation about sake, and his body language was authoritative in general. Furthermore, he was not chummy after the talk like he had been for my first two weeks at the school. He totally ignored me. For some reason, today he came up to me and started talking about my car in the friendliest way imaginable. He has not acted like that since before the sake talk. I can only guess that I was well behaved during the unspoken 1-month probation period and I was let back into the club. Or maybe he just had to poop really bad that month.
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I really missed Thanksgiving dinner and the family gathering, but I had a pretty good time over here. I met up with Franchesca and Kelsey for Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. I'm glad they agreed to meet me because they didn't even know it was Thanksgiving (she's English and he's Canadian). They don't sell turkey over here, but I had a hamburger steak, corn, potatoes and cesar salad :-)
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Hi Russ, I'm 100% sure that the lady who said "Have a good trip!" in the bus was debating if she should talk to you or not and if she does, what to say for the whole time she was sitting next to you. Most Japanese learn English in school for six years (3 in Jr HS and 3 in HS) but these years rarely help to communicate because they put too much emphasis on learning "correct and full sentences" and never teach how the conversation flow.
Beside the textbook English, it'll be fun to learn English like "Hey, how you doing?", "I'm good, what's up?" instead of "how ARE you doing?", "I'm fine thank you, and you?" You might want to teach situational English like "How to talk to foreigners sitting in the bus" or "What do to when foreigners smile at you". Oh, don't laugh. I think most people feel they have to tell their life story in perfect and complete English. But if some of your students want to come here in the future, they have to know the "power of broken English". Ha ha!!
Oh, Russ, what kind of questions you get from the prospective brides? When I substituted in Jr HS long time ago in Japan, they asked me from "what I like to watch on TV" to "what positions I like". Don't ask what they were talking about. I almost fainted!!!
Haha, thanks Mie! My Jr. high classes are very organized and set, but I always get a chance to practice conversational English with the students during lunch and recess.
The girls don't ask me too much, but quite often I'll walk by a group of girls in class or in recess and they'll all start laughing a blushing. Then one of them will grab another by the arm and start dragging her to me and say "She loves you!". Then they all start screaming and a few of them fall down... it's a big mess.
I'm sure I get similar questions as you did, but I can't understand most of them ;-) My Japanese is not that good!
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