TURNING JAPANESE

Rahel, she who loves my kitties from afar, asked where I learned Japanese.

Fact is, I know just enough to get me in trouble, and it has been hard-earned knowledge picked up through years of interaction with Japanese colleagues. One such interaction was described in the penultimate paragraph of this post from last September.

It’s handy to know that a lot of modern Japanese is borrowed from English and other languages. This was helpful to me one dark night over the Pacific twenty-five years ago as I was returning from a three-week tour of Asia.

My Japan Air Lines flight left Tokyo Narita in the late afternoon and headed out over the Pacific, with night falling quickly. After dinner and the first of two movies, almost every Man-Jack on board had fallen sound asleep in the darkened cabin...except, of course, for Yours Truly.

After a while, I found myself longing for a drink thanks to the extreme dryness of the air, a normal effect of the 42,000 foot altitude. All I wanted was a club soda. Sparkling water. Seltzer. Two cents plain.

And there wasn’t a flight attendant in sight.

I soon realized that all of the flight attendants were huddled in a curtained-off booth, giggling in those lovely, birdlike high-pitched female Japanese voices. So I got out of my seat, poked my head in the booth, and quietly asked for a club soda: “I’d like a club soda, please.”

Confusion and much twittering followed. The English skills amongst the Japan-based crew were minimal, and they did not understand. So it was time to switch over to my finest Nihongo-Eigo Burendo:

“KURABU SODA, O KUDASAI!”

“Hai!” “Hai!” “Hai!” “Hai!”

I had my club soda in three seconds. With “aisu,” too.