Sunday nights at our house is time for Chibi Maruko-chan (Little Maruko), one of the most popular anime shows in Japan despite it not being terribly well known internationally. It’s the story of Maruko, a cute but lazy third grader who lives in the magical time of the 1970s, a simpler age when there was no Internet and even the idea of a wireless remote control for your TV was a dream. It’s a great show because of the many cultural references it makes to the late Showa Period, allowing kids to see the (sometimes silly) stuff that was popular when their parents were young. In last night’s episode, Maruko’s wealthy classmate Hanawa-san invited Maruko and her friends over to meet a mysterious “blue-eyed person” who was staying at his house, which turned out to be a girl named Pearle, visiting from overseas. Immediately there was mass chaos as all the characters tried to come up with some English to say to the girl, but no one knew any, so they sat there shyly. Maruko went home and asked her family to teach her some English, but all she got was useless phrases like “this is a pen” and “hello! thank you! goodbye!” When Maruko finally was able to figure out how to say “nice to meet you” to the foreign visitor, she was met with puzzlement. It turned out that Pearle was from France and didn’t speak any English, which caused even more confusion. It was an extremely funny episode — I’ve observed the Japanese tendency to assume that any Western-looking foreigner walking down the street must be a native English speaker very often.
