Still trudging through these days at the Kencho. But yesterday something fun and lively happened. Allow me to tell you of the adventures of a man who does not speak Japanese.

You might remember that I don't speak Japanese, right? In fact, if I remember correctly some of you that were in St. Kitts may have asked me something like, "Have you learned Japanese yet?" And I answered something along the lines of, "No." Well, apparently a few people here at the Kencho are unaware of this fact; this, despite the point that I only speak to them in English and give them strange looks when they speak to me in their native tongue.
It all started at about 11:40am when I was at the computer desk (like I have been every day here) and was writing an email to my beloved Amy. Well, that's redundant; did you know that Amy means "beloved"? There's a little trivia for ya. Anyway, Amy is in Oklahoma and I miss her so. She's been gone so long and I write to her every chance I get. Long letters filled with emotion and longing. Ok, enough of that.
Anyway, I was writing and up walks Goto-san. He's the guy that took Watanabe's place when Watanabe took my supervisor's, Yamaki's, place. With me? So he says something to me in Japanese. And I don't mean slow, broken, "you're not from the parts" Japanese. I mean straight up, normal, conversational, slightly-slower-than-an-auctioneer's Japanese. At this I looked up and at him with that same look your cat gives you when you tell him to "sit" forgetting that he's a cat and not a dog. So he tried again and received the same results.
Then he showed me the paper he was holding and told me something again, only this time with two English words thrown in. I think they were "boss" and "read" and the paper he was holding was the short report I'd had to write about our recontracting conference in Tokyo a couple months ago. So I looked around for a little help cause although they don't like to admit it there are others in this office who can speak some English. But no help was forthcoming. Then, through a series of gestures, a few words, and the few papers he flipped through I was pretty sure I was understanding what he was trying tell me. It went something like this, "Marcus, o' great and noble teacher of the quite confusing language from across the wide sea, our most excellent boss and leader of this section of the governmental center of the great prefecture of Yamanashi would like to read what you have written about the gathering of the people from lands afar and the assemblage they held in our great city of Tokyo, but unfortunately he had not the opportunity to study, much less master, the English language in his younger days and is therefore unable to read what you so graciously wrote, so would you please take on the task and magnanimous duty of translating this to our mother tongue for us, your most humble employers?"
To which I said, "Huh?" and looked around for help, only to find my office neighbors looking at us and quietly laughing to themselves. I was pretty much at a loss about what to do. Although the boss seems like a very nice man and has more than once poured me a glass of beer at our various parties, I was not willing to spend the 3+ years it would take me to translate this report for him. In Spanish you can pretty much translate word for word and get the gist of what is being said; not so with Japanese, not to mention the fact that the writing system is just a tad different.
So we looked at each other for a while, me thinking, "Hmmm. Wonder what's going to happen now?" And him thinking, "Enter Japanese for 'Hmmm. Wonder what's going to happen now?'."
So we stood like that for a while trying to think of a way to solve this linguistic problem when he pointed to the computer and said, "translate". "Hmmm," I thought, "not a bad idea," except that then I remembered that Ono-san used to translate going the other way, from Japanese to English, and things always came out, shall we say, less than perfect. Words and phrases would come out in an English that even high schoolers in the States don't speak. Document give day after day's tomorrow in other country and electric apartment begin presently are two examples of what one might get in English after putting Japanese into one of these so-called translators. They tend to do literal translations and you and I know that terms like "killing two birds with one stone" probably shouldn't be translated literally. And I'm not just speaking about slang when I say these translators really don't work well. It could be proper English and the thing will come out in a mangled Japanese, or visa versa.
But, what was I to do? A literal translation would be far better, not to mention would be finished far more quickly, than I could do on my own. So he explained to me with the help of the two ladies sitting nearby, who had by now stopped laughing and really wanted to help (up to a point), that since I had written the report by hand in order for the computer to be able to translate I would need to type it out and then paste it into the translater. "Yes," I thought, "I'm pretty sure I could have figured that out." Then he told me I had one week to get this done to which I said, "No. I'll do it today." Perhaps they think I'm busy here at the Kencho. I don't know.
But first, instead of me going through all the trouble of needlessly typing the whole report out, in case it wouldn't work, all of us agreed that I should write a couple sentences, put those into the translator, and see how things would turn out. So I did. And they didn't. If you want to know why, back up a paragraph. So they read what the computer had written and laughed a bit and told me, "It's ok. I can understand. But not right." This they said while looking quizzically at the paper and me, in that manner that says, "I'm not sure this is going to work." But the girls then told me that they'd look at it all after I was finished and that they'd fix any part in need.
So feeling that I had no other choice I wrote the entire thing out during which time the two girls watched my typing and told me how good I was. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Oh, very fast, very fast," they answered, which I laughed at because if you must know, I am not a fast typer. But they seemed impressed and I typed on with my small audience.
Soon I was done and then proceeded to copy sections, paste them onto the translator, copy the Japense translation, and then paste that into a seperate word document. Eventually I was done and copied it out. The entire process took me no more than half an hour.
When I handed the girls the copies they looked at me as if I had just unveiled a replica of Michelangelo's David (full-scale, of course) that I'd been sculpting in the other room in my free time. "Oh, very fast, very fast." I held my eyes from rolling.
So at this point I went back to the computer and resumed my extensive research of football, formula one, and jazz in Tokyo. Every so often I'd hear the Japanese equivalent of "Ha ha, look at this" or "What the hell does that mean?!" At these points I'd look over at them and think about trying to help and then think better of it. But what I did do was to print out an English copy for them thinking that they might be able to better make it out. They do know some English, afterall.
Well, eventually half the office was looking over their shoulders (some called over but most not) trying to make out the strange Japanese that me and the computer had managed to put together. I imagine some really difficult areas were found when they got to the translations of "food for thought," "super-genki (which means "happy, healthy and up-beat" and as I had written it just like that, the computer could find no translation for it--haha), and, when reporting on a speech given by a pretty good speaker I said that hope his speech did not "fall on deaf ears." See, from what I understand, the Japanese language doesn't have nearly the amount of slang that we have in English. Think about the slang you use in everyday life. I bet you do it without even noticing it. Well, all that stuff....not translatable. At least not by a non-thinking entity.
So after the group formed and exchanged gasps and moans of confusion, they eventually dispersed and went back to their seats leaving the two girls alone with my and the computer's words. They then talked a little to each other, turned to me, and said, "The boss. He is very smart man. This Japanese....not right. But he is smart so maybe he can understand." And that was that. The man is going to have to read it as I and my not-so-trusty computer translator did it. And all I can say to him is ganbatte (Japanese for "good luck" and "try hard").