Noncompositional

Before leaving on a two-week trip through the main island of Japan with my girlfriend Lindsay, she predicted that there would be many cases of a Japanese person expecting her to be able to speak Japanese (looking East Asian as she does), and me not able to, and confusion arising when these expectations are defeated. I suppose I thought that it would happen from time to time, but not all that often. In particular, I imagined that I would be initiating a majority of the conversations with the locals, and so there would be no confusion regarding who of us is doing the speaking. There were two things I should have realized, though: first, we are obviously a couple, and so effectively a single person, and so to some degree either of us could be addressed regardless who was previously established as speaker, and second, (surprise!) sometimes we would start on the addressee side of the conversation. Then there was the thing that I perhaps couldn’t have expected: some people are very persistent in assuming that the East Asian-looking person should be speaking the Japanese, while the non-native person remains silent.

I could probably count on my fingers the number of (extended) conversations during which I spoke while Lindsay was spoken to, but some of those cases are quite memorable. One of the most amusing times was when we went to a buffet-style pizza joint called Shakey’s, with decor roughly reminiscent of Round Table. Upon entering, we were led to a table, and the waitress spoke not to me but to Lindsay, telling her the procedure for doing the buffet (you pay for it, and receive plates, and then go back to your table). Unfortunately, she spoke in a way that I couldn’t hear the information, and so we had to wait behind for another group to go through the procedure so we could copy them. Otherwise, there were a few times at banks or railway stations where despite me being the one talking, Lindsay was the one who was replied to. But in general it didn’t disrupt communication too much. There were of course many times where initially my girlfriend was spoken to, but after one line from me (and silence or a smile from her) I ended up being the one addressed.

A less amusing experience was when we went to a place in Hiroshima called お好み村 okonomi-mura, a building with a couple dozen small mini-restaurants selling a special of the Hiroshima area, okonomiyaki with noodles mixed in (sometimes called モダン焼き modan-yaki, at least in the Osaka area). We ended up going with a location worked by two ladies and attended by several off-work men (and another elderly lady who was downing a pint of beer). We got the friendly いらっしゃいませ、どうぞ (’welcome, please sit down’), but after ordering only one item for the both of us (which was plenty), one of the ladies started giving truly angry looks at Lindsay. It really didn’t make sense. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with language, like the fact that I was seemingly deciding unilaterally that we only needed one item, when in fact we had quietly discussed the matter in English before ordering.

I have to wonder what it must have been like from the other side: to see someone who you expect to speak with remain silent, while being forced to deal with someone with a less-than-perfect grasp of the language. Maybe I seemed like a bizzare sort of interpreter, who does a sort of reverse-babelfish on the entire conversation. Or maybe I was being given a chance by my girlfriend to practice my Japanese. Maybe it’s related to the fact that some people are trained (I assume) to respond in English (or their addressee’s native language?) even if said addressee shows ability in a second language (for instance, the workers at Narita airport who always responded in English even when I asked a question in Japanese).