Friday, May 18, 2012

Gaijin Hunted

This is a very unexpected blog entry. Today I just needed to go to the bookstore for my textbook and the Hanshin Tigers shop and then pick up my last manga and come home. Nice day requiring no shenanigans?

Oh nonono. Today was....different to put it lightly. Let me explain. One of my classmates coined the term 'gaijin hunting,' where Japanese people come and talk to us because were foreign. They want to practice their English 99% of the time, so who better right?

(PS on the train today, there were a million primary school kids, and not only was I foreign, I had my One Piece shirt on, so I got extra stares lol. Adorable. That's fine)

Anyway, so this has happened to me before. On the train to HTB I was photographed and gave essentially an autograph, I walked through the bamboo with the nice man in Arashiyama, and I didn't think those two could be topped, but today takes the cake. I don't want this one to be beaten, haha.

Today when I was in the bookstore, a man I'd guess to be about graduate school age came up and started to talk to me with the usual starting line of 'Where are you from?' because it's quite obviously not here. In America, you don't do this. But in Japan, it's okay, because that's just what people do. There's no harm, they're not rapists, and hey, I get to practice Japanese too, so why the hell not. So today, I was talking to this guy in the bookstore, he was very nice, he has studied in France and England and Poland of all places, so his English was of course very good.

And we were talking on the way out of the bookstore, and he asked me if I wanted to go to a cafe to talk and I figured hell, I had nothing to do, why not? So we went and I got to speak mostly Japanese which was good (I was trying to explain an anime plot in Japanese which was ridiculously difficult) and we got to talking about music. Then he was like, let's go to karaoke! And I was like now?

....Why not. So we went to karaoke for an hour, and that was interesting. I'm glad I know some Japanese music, because I felt bad picking really fast English songs. But we found a few in common, so it was fun!

Then he walked with me to the Hanshin store, and walked with me to the train station where we got off at different stops.

So by American standards? I just got gaijin hunted onto a date. By cultural standards, I got to practice a lot of Japanese and he English! Yay! By Japanese standards? I told Riyo what happened and she replied with, 'you got picked up for a date.' Sweet Jesus.

And it was fun! But weird. But fun! And weird.

I don't know okay? :p

~Rosie

1 comment:

  1. lol. that was totally a date dude. how cute and fun!

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