MFWI

There’s Little Asia near my university in Japan.

And you say, “What the hell. Little Asia in Asia?”

This so-called Little Asia might be a self-proclaim title, but it’s nonetheless appropriate. The tiny street near Kotoen Station is a hidden gem, where you can find diverse selections of Burmese food, Thai food, Indian food, Indonesian food. And if you’re in the mood for something more common in Japan, there’s Chinese food and Korean BBQ too.

Choosing a restaurant in Japan, I look at two things: First, it has vegetarian dishes. Second, it’s supposedly spicy.

In the U.S., you call and ask a restaurant. In Thailand, you wing it; whatever you get will probably be spicy. But considering the price of food in Japan, it would be wiser to call and ask. Except I don’t really speak Japanese. Just the thought of calling a Japanese person gives me goosebumps.

I remember comprehending nothing on the phone when I first came to the U.S. It was like listening to Harman Cain reiterating his contradictory abortion talking points; you can only politely nod while tuning off the whole speech. Same goes to the message this lady was leaving my host mom. While I was yea-ing and nodding, all I wrote down was, “Call XXX back; she has a lot to say.”

Everybody knows talking on the phone isn’t the best way to communicate when you’re learning a relatively new language. If you can’t understand someone talking in person, you will not understand that person at all on the phone. That muffled voice and that spotty connection make everything sound like Darth Vader. Add in the accents, and you’ve got a Texan Darth Vader, an Indian Darth Vader and a Japanese Darth Vader.

With that said, I had every right to be frightened.

But I was illogical. So I called an Indian restaurant named Lalu, curious as to who would pick up the phone. My bet was on an Indian lady.

And I was right. Here’s how it unfolded: A couple rings. A woman picked up. She greeted. I cringed. On one hand, awesome; native Indian people are cooking up Korma and Masala in the kitchen. On the other hand, oh crap. Accent. It’s the accent. My dangerous curiosity was met with a terrifying surprise.

I am by no means blaming her. Her Japanese was clearly much better than mine, though much more difficult to understand comparing to native Japanese. I was familiarized with the Japanese enunciated by Japanese people and not by other ethnic groups. So when I heard her, it was hard to distinguish words that were being said. Syllables strung together like an entangled mess hidden behind your home theater.

So picture this: a Thai-accented Japanese-speaking student battles an Indian-accented Japanese-speaking lady. It’s like War of the World. Mars Attack. Each side yell out war whoops unintelligible to the other. No wonder they couldn’t foster any diplomatic relations.

Well, in this case, it was nothing more than a relations between you and your Tamagochi: conversations without comprehension. Despite telling myself to focus on the first thing the Indian lady said after picking up the phone, I was completely distracted by her accent I missed the greeting. Her speech rambled on for a couple seconds, then a pause. I instinctively realized it was my turn to say something.

“Hello. What time does the restaurant open until on weekends?” I asked.
And this is what I supposed she said: “For dinner, it’s opened from 5pm to 10pm.”

Then she went on and on—about something. I caught time-related phrases here and there.

Staring blankly at my hands, “Oh, I see,” I said. “So, do you guys serve vegetarian dishes?”
“Yes we do,” she answered. “We have vegetarian curry…” Blah. Blah. Blah.

“That’s great!” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “Thank you so much.”

As I hung up the phone, I realized there was no substance to our conversation—nothing that I could pick up. I pretended to understand what she said, perhaps because I didn’t want to sound stupid to a stranger with an incomprehensible accent. But the most ignorant part was to not expecting this situation. I dialed the number anticipating a Japanese person to answer the phone and fire keigo at me.

For those not familiar with Japanese grammar, keigo is an extensive system of honorifics. It reflects respect in the speech and is used mandatorily in some social situations, generally, when people with a higher social status talks to a lower-status person. Determining who is higher and who is lower, however, is the most tricky part of keigo usage. In business practices, Japanese businesses take “customer is god” almost literally that you can expect to be treated like royalty once you enter a shop or a restaurant. You will be spoken to in keigo. Sentences in keigo sometimes bear no similarities to their normal counterpart, so you might wonder exactly what was being said. Even Japanese people have to learn keigo. Every new grad who enters a Japanese company needs to go through intensive training for proper usage of keigo and other business practices.

Initial failure did not deter me, however. I decided to try another restaurant: Chinese. Chinese accent might be a little easier than Indian to understand, I figured.

Surprisingly, the restaurant wasn’t run by Chinese people; a person who picked up the phone was Japanese. And as expected, she employed keigo in her greeting: Odenwa wo arigatou gozaimasu. (Thank you for calling.)

The most important thing to know isn’t the essence of our conversation, but how it unfolded. I, of course, could not use keigo properly but still attempted to add politeness into the conversation by sprinkling desu and masu here and there.

Another important aspect of Japanese formal conversation is the pitch of store workers’ voices: they are extraordinarily high. If you have had a chance to visit Japan, I am sure you have noticed the store clerks or restaurant workers greeting you with a super high-pitched voice. It does annoy me at times—the only irritating aspect of shopping in Japan. But you can’t tell them to stop; it’s so ingrained in their nature and culture that you can hear their voices automatically drop a key or two when they’re talking casually.

I found it funny at first that raising a voice that high equates to an elevated degree of politeness. Later, working in a restaurant, I was aware of my own raised voice—albeit not to an obviously exaggerated level. Is it universal that us women raise our voices a little when we would like to be more polite, or is it just a Japanese—even an Asian thing? I’ve only heard of the Bogart-Bacall syndrome, an ailment characterized by hoarseness, a sore larynx and vocal fatigue common among men and women who lower their voices to sound more authoritative.

I asked my Japanese friend about this phenomenon. He said if he were greeted with a low voice, he would feel offended. That means I will continue to hear the ear-ringing “irashaimase” every time I walk into a Japanese store.