Dammit, be patient!
13 Dec 2011 1 Comment
I am very quick to get annoyed, lose patience or lose my temper. Yes, I know. It is getting worse as I get older, and I hate it. Yes, I even get annoyed with myself and my inability to not get annoyed!!! So stupid.
John mentioned to me that it is perhaps time I leave Japan, because I am focusing that annoyance on some random encounters I have in Japan, and I shouldn’t. He is 100% right, but at the same time, when certain things happen I feel like my blood is starting to boil. My face gets flushed, and my Japanese becomes much better…
I am talking about the standard “point at and talk about the foreigner as if she is retarded and can’t understand you, then when it becomes apparent she can, speak to her in rapid fire, difficult Japanese to make her feel inferior”. It drives me mental. Imagine, my “western” friends, sitting in a cafe, and talking VERY LOUDLY about the obvious “minority” in the room, assuming because they don`t look like you, they don`t speak your language. Can you imagine? No, you can`t, because that behaviour is beaten out of us at the age of… oh… 4. That one time when you are old enough to notice differences and you point at someone different and say to your mom `what is wrong with that guy` and they tell you to not be rude. Done. My mom tells this story to everyone about how tiny I was, and so people thought I was a baby even when I was old enough to talk… well, in my town we had a lot of people who wore turbans and by paternal grandmother was a bit… racist. She called them ragtops. Sorry, that is horrific, I know. Anyway, I was little, I picked up on it, and I repeated it in a store, and everyone thought my mom said it. I was, after all, a baby.
Anyway, hearing that story, and realizing that it was rude – means I don`t do that as an adult. I would never think that someone who looks different has any difficulty understanding English (or whatever language I am speaking at the time). I was on a bus once in Italy and the American dude next to me was graphically relating his sexual encounter the night before to his friend, because after all, we were in a foreign country and how could he expect anyone else spoke American (he actually said that to me when I asked him if he would mind not talking SO disgustingly in my ear).
So, to be sitting in a cafe, minding my own business, and hearing everyone talking about me, speculating about me – makes me insane. I can’t help it. However, I did decide to live in Japan, a country that has a population of foreigners that make up something like 1.9% of its entire 130 million inhabitants.
Anyway, where am I going with this? This morning, as I usually do on a Tuesday, I took the train to work and went to the cafe near my school to have breakfast. I ordered (in Japanese) and the table of people next to me were pointing out to everyone else that I ordered the coffee of the day (Brazilian roast) so I must be brazilian and how shocking i could order since I was a foreigner and obviously couldnt speak japanese – my ordering must have been a fluke. I could feel myself get a bit hot under the collar (as usual) and decided to take a different approach. I said good morning, told the lady I lived in town and did indeed speak Japanese, so if she had any questions…
She almost fell off her chair. HA! Her husband laughed at her and said she shouldnt be so presumptuous. She asked me some more questions (was i indeed from brazil, did i work at the school next door, did i live with my family, did i drive here, etc), I politely answered and then went about my breakfast.
She went on to continue about how astounding it was i was there, and that I could speak Japanese (perhaps that I was the only foreigner that could) and that it was surprising I wasn:t a prostitute (!!) but a teacher and that she thought only old people lived in Neo.
Anyway, the point is this…foreign friends living in Japan… don:t be rude. But, if you are going to have to deal with that rudeness, don’t rise to the occasion, calm down, be patient and answer with a smile. Thanks, husband. You were right.
Dec 22, 2011 @ 12:09:16
I definitely agree. Though I felt exactly the same way when I lived in Japan, it’s always more effective to be polite or if you can’t muster the energy to do that, to just be ridiculous and make up stories ie. about how you’re Bolivian and speak Spanish, English and Japanese. That you used to give tours of war criminals houses in Bolivia to tourists, but then you got tired of that, so decided to move to Japan to teach English. The food is better in Japan because you don’t have to eat guinea pig every day LOL