Oh, Korea.
There is something very unsettling about leaving one Asian country where you can read the signs, follow the conversations, interpret the menus, and count out change with obnoxious precision, and heading to a country where the people look the same, but everything else is totally alien.
And no, I'm not racist, I'm realistic. They think we all look alike, too.
Last night, I was an articulate and intelligent, if slightly hammered, citizen of the world, chatting and kanpai-ing with my local sushi chef, comparing sake from Osaka to sake from Kochi, and making bad puns involving ginger and supermarket cashiers. ("Shouga? Shou ga nai!" It doesn't translate.)
Today, I'm running up to the poster at the front of the restaurant, pointing at a faded depiction of rice, eggs, and bamboo shoots, and smiling like a big white fool while the old lady running the joint is complaining to herself about my lack of comprehension, and the waitress is saying, "Ooh! Look! She wants bi-bim-bap! How cute!"
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
It's not enough that I tried to get on the wrong bus outside the airport and was saved only by a kind man who spoke enough English to ask to see my ticket, and gently point out that I really wanted to go to that other departure gate. The cashier at the coffee shop had to patiently help me find the correct change for my lunch, because apparently my math skills are closely linked to my language skills. Not only have I become deaf and mute, suddenly I can no longer add.
People may very well roll their eyes and get put out over my inability to tell a good joke in Korean, or for that matter say "thank you" correctly (I've tried - it's not working out for me), but it doesn't mean I care. For some reason, this trip at least - less than a day into it - I don't take it personally. It's all part of the game. You can't get anywhere if you don't go somewhere new and take a chance.
With a stomach gurgling over with kimchi and bean sprouts, a backpack spilling over with snacks that were purchased at an earlier time for that very probable moment when I'm starving and stuck at home, and my mind brimming over with humor at myself and my awkwardness (I'm not usually clumsy, but today I've knocked over everything I've touched - I almost include the plane in that; if it weren't for the gusty Osaka bay winds, I swear, it would've crumpled when I boarded), I wandered over to the taxi stop.
There was a long line of cars and a short line of people. I watched this one cabbie drive up, on his phone the whole time, and I figured he was going to pull right out of there when he saw a luggage-laden foreigner with her finger on the translate button of Google-talk, wobbling slightly on her trusty, but rather dilapidated after an inadvertant mountain trek, sky-highs.
Instead, he bobbed his head at me and opened the trunk.
Somehow I managed to pronounce the name of my destination correctly. He nodded again, and took off, like I was just another passenger.
That's right. Nailed it.
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