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Gaijin SMASH
Kawakami Kenshin is BACK woohooooo. And Tatsunami got his first hit of the season! And naturally I was at work for the whole evening and just get to see this stuff on the news highlights. Also 18-year-old Yokohama rookie Ryoma Satoh hit four batters in four innings tonight and catapulted himself into the CL lead in hit batters. AND they're doing the web gems of the week now on Megaspo and I swear I was actually there for like half of these. SO awesome!
Today I thought I would have like 4 hours free in the afternoon between classes so I decided to bring my laptop to GEOS and try to get other things done during the day, except like a moron, I forgot that I'd need a 2-prong-to-3-prong adapter there. And as it turned out I also kinda needed to head home for another reason mid-day, so I ended up coming back to my apartment for about 30 minutes in the middle of the day, which was actually pretty nice, though I ended up dropping my laptop off here again then, and didn't get anything done after all. Sadly tomorrow my nice big expanse of free afternoon time just got chopped in half by having 3 classes added to my schedule tomorrow. Whee.
On my way back to GEOS, I was hit by one of my huge pet peeves -- people who make a big deal about Talking To The White Person In English. I mean, I understand that sometimes these people are just really proud that OMG they know a few words in English, and maybe they think it's Great Customer Service to do so, but really, there are a few main reasons this practice bugs me:
1) I don't WANT you to talk to me in English unless I specifically ask for it. Plus, in general, I can understand your Japanese much better than I can understand your poor English. If I talk to you in Japanese, just reply to me in Japanese rather than short-circuiting your little brain. It'll save us both a lot of trouble.
2) It's EMBARRASSING. The entire country assuming that You Have White Skin, Therefore You Can't Understand Japanese, is REALLY grating after a while.
3) Foreigners speak languages other than English, you know. White Skin does not mean Native English Speaker. I have half a mind to just bitch out the next person who treats me this way, tell them I can't understand English in Japanese, and start swearing at them in Spanish or something. Then at least they'll be embarrassed too.
So anyway, I went to get a katsu sandwich for dinner from Wako in Akabane Station, and I had to wait in line for like 5 minutes due to a fairly slow cashier guy. So finally I get up there and I say in Japanese, お持ち帰りで、ひれかつサンドを一つ下さい ("I'd like one hirekatsu sandwich, to go, please,") and he says in very thick Engrish, "Please wait one minute", gets out the sandwich... then tells me the price (399 yen) in the same slow stupid Engrish. I REPEAT the price in Japanese and put down a 500-yen coin, trying to signal "Stop talking to me in English, you retard", but it doesn't work, as he hands me 110 yen and says "Sankyuu berry machi."
Those of you who can do math will notice that the change should be 101 yen, not 110 yen. And actually normally I totally would go back and correct people for doing that sort of thing (I have done so several times in the past), but since the guy refused to admit that I can speak Japanese, I refused to admit that I can also do math.
Today I thought I would have like 4 hours free in the afternoon between classes so I decided to bring my laptop to GEOS and try to get other things done during the day, except like a moron, I forgot that I'd need a 2-prong-to-3-prong adapter there. And as it turned out I also kinda needed to head home for another reason mid-day, so I ended up coming back to my apartment for about 30 minutes in the middle of the day, which was actually pretty nice, though I ended up dropping my laptop off here again then, and didn't get anything done after all. Sadly tomorrow my nice big expanse of free afternoon time just got chopped in half by having 3 classes added to my schedule tomorrow. Whee.
On my way back to GEOS, I was hit by one of my huge pet peeves -- people who make a big deal about Talking To The White Person In English. I mean, I understand that sometimes these people are just really proud that OMG they know a few words in English, and maybe they think it's Great Customer Service to do so, but really, there are a few main reasons this practice bugs me:
1) I don't WANT you to talk to me in English unless I specifically ask for it. Plus, in general, I can understand your Japanese much better than I can understand your poor English. If I talk to you in Japanese, just reply to me in Japanese rather than short-circuiting your little brain. It'll save us both a lot of trouble.
2) It's EMBARRASSING. The entire country assuming that You Have White Skin, Therefore You Can't Understand Japanese, is REALLY grating after a while.
3) Foreigners speak languages other than English, you know. White Skin does not mean Native English Speaker. I have half a mind to just bitch out the next person who treats me this way, tell them I can't understand English in Japanese, and start swearing at them in Spanish or something. Then at least they'll be embarrassed too.
So anyway, I went to get a katsu sandwich for dinner from Wako in Akabane Station, and I had to wait in line for like 5 minutes due to a fairly slow cashier guy. So finally I get up there and I say in Japanese, お持ち帰りで、ひれかつサンドを一つ下さい ("I'd like one hirekatsu sandwich, to go, please,") and he says in very thick Engrish, "Please wait one minute", gets out the sandwich... then tells me the price (399 yen) in the same slow stupid Engrish. I REPEAT the price in Japanese and put down a 500-yen coin, trying to signal "Stop talking to me in English, you retard", but it doesn't work, as he hands me 110 yen and says "Sankyuu berry machi."
Those of you who can do math will notice that the change should be 101 yen, not 110 yen. And actually normally I totally would go back and correct people for doing that sort of thing (I have done so several times in the past), but since the guy refused to admit that I can speak Japanese, I refused to admit that I can also do math.
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