With the training complete in the afternoon on Friday I had the first of my slack time in Tokyo in the afternoon. I decided to wander a bit. I explored the areas around Otemachi and Kudanshita and did my usual circuit through Mitsukoshi.
During part of my ambling I stopped for a coffee at a Starbucks-clone shop next to the Iidabashi subway station and I was accosted on my way out the shop by an energetic, sweaty-toothed old guy in a floppy hat carrying a bag of sundries. Now, it's much more noticeable in Hiroshima than in Tokyo, but I've grown accustomed to the furtive glances and attention I get as a goateed white guy walking around alone in Japan. It's normal and expected that as I explore or ride the subway that people will curiously watch and try to figure out what I'm doing. I never feel uncomfortable when being watched, it's just a mildly unusal experience. I'd noticed this guy doing eyeing me closely as I entered the coffeeshop and again as I walked out, but I was still startled a bit when he waved his arms to get my attention and began speaking in rapid-fire Japanese that I couldn't even begin to parse.
I shot him the standard head tilt and dumbfounded shrug look, grinning apologetically, and explained that I spoke no Japanese. He paused a second, then asked what country I was from. "The United States", I replied, and he broke into a huge grin. Out came a copy of Newsweek from the depths of his bag, already folded open to an article on Bremmer's transitional administration in post-war Iraq. I got nervous, anticipating a tirade on imperialistic America or something, but he zoomed in on an passage underlined in pencil: "already the occupational forces in Baghdad number 1,800, which is more than half of Iraq's national police force."
"How many are the forces?" he asked, "Why is this 'more than half'? What number?"
So I tried my best to explain how the ratio played out, that Iraq has somewhere under 3,600 police. After a lot of gesticulating and trying different ways of expressing the concept, he got it. "But why," he continued, "do you say it this way in English?"
Yow. So I explained in about a dozen ways how it was a technique to convince the reader. To make something sound bad or good, not just saying the number plain. To make it more exciting to read.
I think he got it.
Next we moved on to other similarly-underlined passages, each time muddling through the broken communications available to us. I was part mime, part teacher, part charades-player. I explained what "tenure" meant. I pantomimed why "many have raised eyebrows at..." meant that people were skeptical. A variety of strange english phrasings that I read and take for granted which made this article inscrutable to my animated Japanese friend.
At last we made it to the end of the article, he was grinning ear to ear at his good fortune for running into a random American guy on the street who was able to explain these passages to him. We bowed at one another and I headed on down the street into the rest of my day.
I don't understand the people who travel and take pre-fab bus tours. Landmarks and museums have their place, I guess, but it's moments like this that etch themselves into my memory and give me a feel for a place. It's random, chance, and trivial encounters like this that I enjoy so much from my travel. I'll take one charismatic Japanese man with a magazine over a dozen visits to Tokyo Tower, the Imperial Palace, or a garden of cherry blossoms.
