Wednesday, September 17--Say What?

It is not my personal philosophy, but if I were on a debate team, I could make the argument that knowing a little bit of a foreign language is worse than knowing none at all. Let me give you an example.

Today, I was out in the front “yard” pulling weeds. I heard footsteps, then some scrabbling out in the street and looked through the reed fence to see a man in a white hardhat and blue coverall setting up a barricade around the telephone pole on our property. He then shuffled off to the gate and rang the doorbell, so I made my way around the house to see what he wanted. When he saw me approaching, he said, “Konnichiwa,” which I know—it is the middle-of-the-day greeting. I replied, “Konnichiwa,” and I cannot even describe the look of immediate relief that passed over his face. It was like a thousand-pound weight had been lifted from him. This gaijin speaks Japanese! So he immediately launched into what I assume was an explanation for his being there. He looked toward the pole, and I think I heard the word “telephone,” so I gathered he was doing something with the phone. Given that he was in work clothes and I had seen him setting up the barricade around the pole, I didn’t think he was in trouble and wanted to use my telephone. But that was about all I could rule out. He could have been telling me that he was going to work on the telephone, so it would be out of order for a while, or he could have been saying please don’t use your telephone while I am working because you’ll electrocute me. Heck, for all I know he was warning me that he was going to be climbing the telephone pole, so I shouldn’t run around naked upstairs because he’d be able to see in the windows. Obviously, I need to work on my “I don’t understand a word you’re saying” look, because he seemed perfectly satisfied that I knew why he was there and what he was doing and took off to the next house.

Luckily, this was not an emergency situation, where it was critical that I understood what was being said. But what about next time? This small encounter just drove home the point that I need to get serious about studying Japanese. Three years is a long time to live somewhere and not be able to communicate. It’s a very isolating feeling to know that you don’t understand the language and cannot be understood in return. In a country with 125 million people it would be unlikely to find yourself completely alone, but the language issue could make it very easy to be lonely.