Sometimes I Wonder

Sometimes I wonder, is it a little bit racist or at least a bit rude that Japanese people are BLOWN away by my Japanese after I say one word?


A police man asked me where I'm from once and I said, "Chicago, in America." His response was, "WHOA! YOUR JAPANESE IS SO GOOD!!!!" Most of my sentence was phonetic english words... here's the sentence in Japanese "A-ME-RI-KA NO SHI-KA-GO DESU" ... Sometimes Japanese people will say "Wow, your Japanese is so good!" Even just go a "Thank you." or "Good Morning."

If I reacted this way when a foreigner in America spoke to me, I feel like people would say "that's horrible." If anyone with a foreign accent ordered a sandwich at a deli and the guy behind the counter was like "WOW! You're SOOOOO good at English!" Even I'd be a little weirded out.


It bugs me when I go into a restaurant and am awkwardly delivered an English version of the menu. It's not that I don't appreciate them trying to offer some help... but, I don't like that they assume I know no Japanese. (The real kicker is the chopsticks. People have gasped or said "WOW!!!" when they've seen me use chopsticks before. Sometimes people have to ask before serving me food, "Can you use chopsticks??" Americans may not grow up using chopsticks but I'm fairly certain that if one takes the trouble to go to Japan that they can get food from the table to their mouth. They may struggle, let them struggle. If the person wants a fork, give them a fork. Just don't right out hand them a fork. It's embarrassing... I'm getting side tracked, back to the English/Japanese thing)

At the same time, most foreigners who do come here don't know Japanese. Even of the ones that do, they probably can't read Japanese well enough to read all of a menu, I know I always come across some strange kanji in menus. It's not like the restaurant people are being completely ignorant here...


A lot of Japanese people have told me they are discouraged by the lack of help that American people at restaurants or people who work at stores give when they, the Japanese person, gets confused. A common situation is that when you go to a fast food place they say "for here or to go?" A few of my Japanese friends have mentioned that this is really confusing. The terms "for here" and "to go" aren't really used outside of this situation so it's not likely they've heard them before. So instead of explaining it in a simpler way "Will you eat this now? Will you take it and leave?" with some gestures, the employees just repeat it louder and slower. "FOR HERE OR TO GO??" If you don't get it the second time they go "ugh..." and get mad, like you're wasting their time. While this isn't the case every time you go to a fast food place, I'm sure we can all agree that there are definitely people with this attitude. Most people at the DMV. (In fact, if someone isn't unpleasant at a DMV we can sometimes find it necessary to share this experience"I went to the DMV today the guy was so nice to me!")


So many people, no only Japanese, say that Americans often have bad attitudes and think that everyone should learn English if they are in America. In some respects they're correct, there is a lot of attitude and sass, especially compared to Japan. In Japan, it's rare to find someone with a bad attitude at any place that offers services to the public. You'll usually find a lot of politeness, even if it's completely artificial.

However, I don't think it's always a bad thing to expect people to know English if they are in America. Just like it shouldn't be a bad thing to expect people to know French if they're in France. That doesn't mean that everyone MUST know English or MUST know French in those situations. I think the expectation should be there. People will probably learn something that way. I can guarantee that those Japanese friends of mine left McDonalds or Burger King or whatever, asked a friend what "For here or to go?" means, and were definitely prepared for the next time they wanted a triple quarter pounder with cheese. It's kind of the "tough love" of learning a language in a foreign country. In any country the hardest stuff is when you are conversing somewhere in public with a stranger. A bank, a restaurant, a post office, doctors office, ordering food over the phone... you get the idea.

I just think it'd be nice to walk into a restaurant and not have people gasp when I say "hello, two please." In Japanese.

One other thing is that every now and then some excited youngsters, usually in a group, will approach me in public and say "HI!" and then giggle to themselves and scurry away. If I say "Hi!" back they laugh even more. They take the fact that I'm a foreigner to mean that I speak English. I always wondered if this really bothered other foreigners. For instance, if someone is from some other non-English speaking country, does it bother them when some Japanese people offer them English menus or try to speak English to them without asking where they are from? I guess when I was in Senegal and people would speak French to me it didn't really bother me, but ya never know...