Day 3: Akihabara

[unbibium]

After doing some laundry and enjoying a ramen breakfast, I decided to finally buy a Japanese dictionary and a monocular.

I bought the monocular from Big Camera. After struggling in Japanese for five minutes, the clerk revealed that he spoke perfect English, and so the transaction went smoothly from there. I got a 10% discount by signing up for their Big Camera membership card. I have them my address and phone number. I wonder if I'll be getting Japanese telemarketers calling my cell phone now.

I had trouble meeting Hajime because I was waiting at a different Excelsior Caffe than he was looking for, though it was on the same corner. Excelsior rips off Starbucks' logo and its geographic saturation, but its sizes make more sense. Short, Medium, Large. They make a great Seafood Gratin Panini.

So we took the train to Akihabara and found a bunch of specialty stores, looked at manga and action-figure model kits, and video games. At one store, I rifled through a bin of old Famicom games and picked two random ones to bring home; I can use them with that pirate Famicom I bought from QVC.

We also found a specialty store that had these, uhh... I think they were comedy CD's. There were three of them, each of them had a screenshot from a Famicom game (Mario, Zelda, or Dragon Warrior), with a picture of an androgynous-looking Japanese person dressed up as the main character/ Hajime bought the Mario one, I bought the Zelda one.

After much browsing, we went back to Ikebukuro, my 'hood, and he showed me a great udon place. A great bowl of curry udon and a beer.

I have a lot of white-man guilt about two things: first, lots of signs bear English words in katakana. That's convenient for me, but it saddens me that American culture has had such a part in diluting Japanese culture. I suppose the same thing happened with Latin for a long time. I also am disappointed in myself that I'm not at least trying to speak more Japanese around Hajime. Granted, he went to high school and college in Utah, so he's practically a native speaker of English, but still, I can't help but think I'm either being rude, or missing an opportunity to practice. Of course, since my IQ drops in half when I speak Japanese, I'd probably be less fun to hang around if I made him wait for me to carefully piece together Japanese sentences.

I'm headed to my room to recharge and think of some way to spend tonight.

Comments

[teyunde.livejournal.com]

lots of signs bear English words in katakana. That's convenient for me, but it saddens me that American culture has had such a part in diluting Japanese culture

I really, really wouldn't worry about that if I were you. Look at the way anime and manga art-styles have caught on in the last few years. Look at all the TV protagonists carrying katanas. Heck, look at all the people wearing t-shirts with Japanese characters on them - without any knowledge of what the words actually mean.

Basically, Americans like to play with Eastern culture because it's exotic to us - therefore, it must be cool. The same principle applies to the Japanese, who like to play with Western culture for similar reasons.

I once encountered a kid who had the character for "cow" tatooed on his shoulder. I spent the next twenty minutes in a closet, laughing.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I find that if you speak a little bit of another language, it really helps when approaching native speakers of that language, even if they speak much better English and are going to switch over after one or two sentences anyway. It is incredibly embarrassing, but that's part of why it helps: you've effectively voluntarily taken the discomfort of the conversation upon yourself and avoided seeming to presume.

Of course, the only other language I speak is French, so my experience may have something to do with specifics of francophone culture. French people get as irritated as Americans do (and much more so than most Europeans) when you approach them speaking a foreign language a mile a minute. It helps to start in French in Québec, too, but less so, because the people there are used to anglophone Canadians speaking crappy French if any, and their English is better. (Official language-pride aside, English instruction in Québecois schools seems to be a lot better than French instruction in Ontarian ones.)

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

While Let's Learn Japanese didn't prepare me very well for Japan, French in Action prepared me very well for French. If I weren't so busy checking up, I could probably eavesdrop on the French tourists in this room right now.

[maureenans.livejournal.com]

I can understand spoken Japanese and can speak it if I can remember my verbs (hah!) but I'm terrible at reading and writing it. I also can't read a map to save my life (but I can follow verbal or written directions), so when I was in Japan I made a point to stop and ask random people for directions all the time - and I loved it. No matter how awful my intonation or anything, I could tell in the 8 days I was there, I had improved. And no one ever laughed because I made an attempt :) As long as you make an attempt, you are welcome because it shows that you care.

[jecook]

What everyone else said.

It shows that you are making the attempt, which is more then most normal tourists do.