Nampa-san in action (my friend is in the red)Sometimes I learn Japanese words “the hard way”—that is, I hear them first not in class, but in the midst of experiencing what the word refers to. I usually prefer to learn Japanese words this way because then they move more quickly from my mental bank of known words to the “checking account” of words I am comfortable using in everyday conversations. The most recent word I have learned this way is “nampa,” which is translated as "flirt" but really is rather more insistent. In the passive form: shiranai hito ni nampa sareta! “I was hit on by a stranger!” I heard this sentence from a friend of mine, who is a bit of a partier and who went on to warn me about how bold Japanese men can be. I dismissed the advice at first, thinking that a sensible person who didn’t wander tipsily around Sanjo at 10pm on a Friday was probably quite safe. Well, I was a little wrong about that.
Yesterday another friend of mine, Stacey from Britian, and I went to a cosplay convention at the Kyoto Manga Museum. It was a lot of fun; I’m not really into manga or anime, but so many of my Japanese classmates are, I find myself going along to these kinds of things (for the curious in the know, I went as Sakata Gintoki from Gintama, and Stacey was Grell from Kuroshitsuji)! Anyway, we ended up being the only foreigners cosplaying at this con, and as such found ourselves rather popular, especially with a group of young people all playing characters from Stacey’s anime. The nampa started with one of them, whom Stacey and I refer to as Nampa-san. First of all he told me that Stacey was so cute and just his type, and by the end of the day he was stroking her hair (well, wig), inviting her to an Osaka maid café, and going on about how he would wait so eagerly for the first email from her. Confused, we alternated between giggling and conferring in whispered English, and Stacey decided not to email him. Poor Nampa-san’s heart will be broken. But then I realized while he was very interested in our names and ages he had not given his own, and that was creepy. I bet the bugger was thirty years old! I was surprised at that incident. In my experience young Japanese men are quite shy around foreign girls. Notice I said “young.” Yes, my nampa experience—well, not really nampa because it’s not related to matters of the heart—has been with old men. Why me??
Uchiyama-san is an older gentleman at the Japanese church I have been attending for the past month. He insists on sitting down with me during the lunch after the service, and trails on and on in broken English which I have to answer in Japanese because he doesn’t understand my English replies. He invited me to a festival last Friday, and even though I said I had class that day he bought me a special ticket, so I couldn’t find the heart to refuse then and skipped class to go. It was the most awkward thing ever. Uchiyama-san had invited three other ancient, English-hungry men just like him and we sat in these special seats where I was the only foreigner and the only one under 70 years old. Nothing I’ve learned or experienced in America prepared me for this kind of attention. At my church I get along great with the old folks. They ask about how school is going and oh isn’t your hair pretty today. But they never try to “hang out” with me or invite me somewhere so aggressively. There is a generation gap. But Uchiyama-san’s purpose in life is to learn English at all costs, and every other consideration falls by the wayside in its wake. I can’t understand him at all. He is 80 years old, retired, not fit to travel—he has no need of English. I have never met anyone who was so desperate—desperate to the point of rude insanity—about learning a language.
Today things came to a head. Unable to refuse his badgering I was about to give in to going to Nara with him next weekend, when some other members of the church noticed and came to my rescue, first the girl sitting with us, a very sweet graduate student named Naomi. She started to make some observation about the expense and time it would take, and he told her very curtly to shut up and not interrupt her elders. After that some of the older ladies and the men started to gather around our table. The ladies said an old man shouldn’t invite such a young girl, the men insisted a student’s life is busy and tight on cash, all said smilingly and tempered with “we know you like foreigners, but…” “you’re always so kind to young people, but…” Actually, as awkward as it was, it was a great example of Japanese conflict resolution. But when I left the church, Uchiyama-san followed me out of the building, still going on about Nara. One of the men of the church ran out after him and told me to hurry while bodily restraining Uchiyama-san, who was outright angry by now. Once far enough away I was in tears. I am just starting to love that church; the members are genuine and sweet and I don’t want to leave them, but if they are always having to restrain Uchiyama-san I will become a bother. And if he is like that all the time I won’t enjoy being there either. I just don’t know what to do or how to react. My heart is so heavy and confused. I was given tickets for a concert there next week, but maybe I should skip a week and that will let Uchiyama-san see he is frightening me.
So that was the not-so-nice part of my weekend…in some ways I am so avoided by Japanese people it hurts: on the train they scootch away from me, at school I am completely ignored (at least apparently) by the Japanese students. Other times they are excited about foreigners and want to get uncomfortably close—Nampa-san and Uchiyama-san. I came home to the dorm today and spilled the whole story to my friend Carina. All we could do was throw our hands in the air and say “Japanese people!” –there is simply no understanding them!
0 comments:
Post a Comment