Buying a book.
Feb. 9th, 2005 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs"Bae Yong Jun ga totemo kawaii desu ne?"
The woman operating the cash register paused in her habitual repetition of the credit card dance. The thoughts turning in her head were visible in that pause: who is this guy? His Japanese is serviceable enough for commercial transactions, probably a second-year student, but what he had sought out was obscure. Westerners browsing the Japanese novels section was rare but not unheard. Westerners who watched Winter Sonata, on the other hand, were simply not to be found. For one thing, the show isn't even in Japanese; it's made in Korea, and available in Japan only in subtitled editions.
The pause enters its second phase as she took in the picture. Groomed and business casual, wedding ring, iPod, PG-rated shoujo-ai kanji novel, Korean soap opera, "the male lead is very cute, no?" It was simply not adding up.
Instinct took over and she finished the ritual with a pallid flourish of the receipt. I took the book and opened it to page one: "Gokigenyo."
I love messing with folks' heads sometimes.
The woman operating the cash register paused in her habitual repetition of the credit card dance. The thoughts turning in her head were visible in that pause: who is this guy? His Japanese is serviceable enough for commercial transactions, probably a second-year student, but what he had sought out was obscure. Westerners browsing the Japanese novels section was rare but not unheard. Westerners who watched Winter Sonata, on the other hand, were simply not to be found. For one thing, the show isn't even in Japanese; it's made in Korea, and available in Japan only in subtitled editions.
The pause enters its second phase as she took in the picture. Groomed and business casual, wedding ring, iPod, PG-rated shoujo-ai kanji novel, Korean soap opera, "the male lead is very cute, no?" It was simply not adding up.
Instinct took over and she finished the ritual with a pallid flourish of the receipt. I took the book and opened it to page one: "Gokigenyo."
I love messing with folks' heads sometimes.
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Date: 2005-02-09 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 08:55 pm (UTC)(Be even funnier if I could translate the Japanese, but still pretty funny... you could just see the "WTF??" as she tried to figure this gai-jin out... and failed miserably... :)
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Date: 2005-02-09 09:20 pm (UTC)I should probably add that her co-worker had just put up a small poster behind me advertising that Winter Sonata was going to "be available soon" in the states, with a picture of he and his co-star on it.
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Date: 2005-02-09 08:58 pm (UTC)Arabic has more or less two versions. What we think of as Arabic, being the male version, and a women's version, apparently radically different. Went to a Shoney's with
a certifiable psycho bitchmy then-gf, and we ended up with an Arab waiter. He filled our glasses, and as he walked away, she told him thank you. In men's Arabic. He *skidded* to a stop, turned around, and we had a couple very interesting minutes of conversation...no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-10 03:09 am (UTC)And this is a problem because?
:-)
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Date: 2005-02-09 10:51 pm (UTC)Being an old fart, I often get to freak kids by discussing shit that's current. It's coz my 17 & 19 year old sons have very similar interests to me, so they keep me current, dinner time conversation is often "scope this fresh cut from the White Stripes", or "I just DLd the latest fan sub, wanna watch tonight?". You'll have that to look forward to as yours grow up!
Kudos on doing it in Japanese though!
I can just about sing and understand the themes to a couple of series, and know the basic common phrases and words that everyone knows, but that's it.
A friend of mine,
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Date: 2005-02-10 03:11 am (UTC)Got a *lot* of odd looks. :-)