I remember my first time ordering Pizza over the phone in Japan. I’d studied four years of the language at SDSU and figured this was a linguistic challenge I was up to, but to my surprise I couldn’t make myself understood to the person on the other end of the phone line. Could it be that a pizza delivery company employee didn’t understand the word “pepperoni,” that most universal of all pizza-related concepts? It turns out I needed to be asking for “pepperoni sausage” instead, and that subtle difference, no doubt coupled with my gaijin-accented Japanese, caused the breakdown. The varieties of pizza that are sold in Japan are always, ah, interesting from a foreigner’s perspective. Among the toppings I spied on a recent trip to Pizza Hut (which everyone thinks is Pizza Hat, but I digress) were Gorgeous Salmon, Sea Urchin Glory, and Queen of Crab & Shrimp. Thankfully, more conventional pizza toppings are readily available, too (like the much more reasonable tuna, mayonnaise and corn pizza).
There are some interesting concepts at work in social relationships in Japan. One is enryo, a word which means restraint or as a verb, to refrain from doing something. My Japanese teacher at SDSU explained it to us like this: a Japanese person comes for a visit to your home. You offer them a drink, and they say no thanks, they’re fine. You offer again a few minutes later, and again they decline your offer. Finally you make your offer a third time, and they gladly accept. It may sound odd, but enryo is a kind of politeness that’s important for getting along in a country with so many people crammed into a small space. It seems to be related to Japanese humility (kenson) — if you tell a Japanese woman how pretty she is or compliment her English, she’ll probably disagree with you strongly, a way in which Japanese avoid being boastful. There are many phrases in Japanese that illustrate this tendency to show humility in front of others. For example, when you give someone a gift, you usually say “Here’s something that’s not interesting” (tsumaranai mono desu kedo…) or if you bake someone a cake, you say, “I’m not sure if it tastes good or not…” (Oishii ka dou ka wakaranai kedo).
When you use another language you learn a lot about how your own brain works. I’ve noticed someting interesting — no matter how much Japanese I’ve studied, my eyes will naturally lock onto English on a sign full of Japanese, no matter what the content. When traveling throughout Japan it’s rather useful to know the place names in kanji, since it’s easier to memorize and visualize. Yokohama takes just two memory “units” to memorize if you know kanji (yoko meaning horizontal, and hama meaning beach), whereas the name in English takes eight letters. And yet, if I see a sign with both kanji and English on it, my eyes will go for the English, even if it’s written in small characters. The brain is just too used to dealing with the familiar to do anything else.
We’ve got some good news for fans of bishoujo games, the fascinating interactive dating-sim games for Windows PCs. The long-awaited Doushin – Same Heart is finally in stock and shipping now! This is really a special item from Crowd, a game in which you play the interactive story through the eyes of the three Suruga sisters, Ryoko, Maki and Miho. The three sisters have a special power: when one feels a sensation such as pain, the feeling is broadcast to the other two sisters immediately. And if one of them should start to get turned on…well, let’s just say that amazing things will happen. The most deep and complex game released by Crowd yet — and it’s finally shipping!
