Let them eat cake
Several weeks ago while I was walking home suffering under the combined burdens of my irrepressible allergies and a heavy load of shopping I was ambushed by a young woman called Saeko, who rushed up behind me on her dodgy bicycle saying "Excuse me!" until I stopped. There followed a brief conversation in which she told me that she had seen me around the university a few times and had been too scared to approach me, but really wanted to make friends with me. Could she have my phone number?
I can sense my gentle readers snorting through their coffee at this, but wait! Spare me your antipodean cynicism. We are in Japan now and everything is different, including the innocent way in which people approach other people. It was by this exact same method that I met Mr. Hiroki, who just walked up to me and offered to be friends. At the time various people made some rather unfair observations about Mr. Hiroki, all of which proved completely unfounded, but because of my fresh-faced, optimistic and naive view of people I was willing to trust him, so that now I have a very fine friend. I decided to extend the same optimism to Miss Saeko, and by the middle of the following week I was able to make an arrangement to meet at a mysterious event called a "Pafekon." I had, of course, assured Miss Saeko immediately upon making contact with her that I was in no wise single, and yet I suspect this was not necessary - I really think she just wanted to make contact in order to practise her English. She has also previously been to Australia, and is interested in foreigners - but who isn't in this country?
So the following Friday I met her at the university and we went to the mysterious Pafekon. Saeko speaks much better English than I do Japanese (hardly surprising!) and wishes to study abroad. She also has an enormous number of friends, many of whom are in a mysterious university club which organises events. The pafekon was such an event, and was built around the simple activity of tasting Parfait. In Japan Parfait means various flavours of icecream stacked on top of each other with cunning additions, so maybe is a bit like a knickerbocker glory. We had to sample 8 of these monstrosities as part of a table of 6 people. There were 8 tables of 6 people, two MCs, and an army of chefs. It was kind of like a trivia night where you have to rate the beer, and the beer is made of ice cream. In between each round of ice cream we had a little quiz, run by the MCs, but all the quizzes were word games. Some involved guessing new words based on tricky things to do with Hiragana which I did not understand, and others involved guessing Kanji from their constituent parts. It is quite an amazing sight when someone presents you with a collection of straight lines, crosses and boxes and with one look one of your team writes down a crazy kanji. Impressive!
All of this was conducted with typical Japanese rowdiness, the MCs being loud and crazy and jumping around a bit and talking really really fast, the crowd all yelling and cheering, and everyone chattering on to me in hugely fast Japanese that I could not understand. Occasionally they produced broken sentences in English, although one girl at my table had lived in New York as a child and her English was quite good (but she was, of course, too shy to use it).
The ice creams I had to taste were, to say the least, interesting. Some had a wierd Japanese traditional 'sweet' sauce on them, green tea ice cream or sponge cake, and sometimes rice balls (mochi). Quite bizarre combinations, really. I only liked one, so I rated it number one. The one I liked came last, and the wierd Mickey Mouse one came first. Yay.
Finally, after all the Kanji had been guessed and all the Ice Cream eaten, the game was over and everyone got up to leave. At this point Saeko said "goodbye", waved to me, and almost sprinted out. Not sure what happened there. Maybe she doesn't like me... I have not mailed her since, having been busy now that I am beginning to recover from my near death experience with pollen, but she has not mailed me either. What is the mysterious thing one has to do to offend a 19 year old Japanese girl? Essential information, I'm sure we can all agree ...
I can sense my gentle readers snorting through their coffee at this, but wait! Spare me your antipodean cynicism. We are in Japan now and everything is different, including the innocent way in which people approach other people. It was by this exact same method that I met Mr. Hiroki, who just walked up to me and offered to be friends. At the time various people made some rather unfair observations about Mr. Hiroki, all of which proved completely unfounded, but because of my fresh-faced, optimistic and naive view of people I was willing to trust him, so that now I have a very fine friend. I decided to extend the same optimism to Miss Saeko, and by the middle of the following week I was able to make an arrangement to meet at a mysterious event called a "Pafekon." I had, of course, assured Miss Saeko immediately upon making contact with her that I was in no wise single, and yet I suspect this was not necessary - I really think she just wanted to make contact in order to practise her English. She has also previously been to Australia, and is interested in foreigners - but who isn't in this country?
So the following Friday I met her at the university and we went to the mysterious Pafekon. Saeko speaks much better English than I do Japanese (hardly surprising!) and wishes to study abroad. She also has an enormous number of friends, many of whom are in a mysterious university club which organises events. The pafekon was such an event, and was built around the simple activity of tasting Parfait. In Japan Parfait means various flavours of icecream stacked on top of each other with cunning additions, so maybe is a bit like a knickerbocker glory. We had to sample 8 of these monstrosities as part of a table of 6 people. There were 8 tables of 6 people, two MCs, and an army of chefs. It was kind of like a trivia night where you have to rate the beer, and the beer is made of ice cream. In between each round of ice cream we had a little quiz, run by the MCs, but all the quizzes were word games. Some involved guessing new words based on tricky things to do with Hiragana which I did not understand, and others involved guessing Kanji from their constituent parts. It is quite an amazing sight when someone presents you with a collection of straight lines, crosses and boxes and with one look one of your team writes down a crazy kanji. Impressive!
All of this was conducted with typical Japanese rowdiness, the MCs being loud and crazy and jumping around a bit and talking really really fast, the crowd all yelling and cheering, and everyone chattering on to me in hugely fast Japanese that I could not understand. Occasionally they produced broken sentences in English, although one girl at my table had lived in New York as a child and her English was quite good (but she was, of course, too shy to use it).
The ice creams I had to taste were, to say the least, interesting. Some had a wierd Japanese traditional 'sweet' sauce on them, green tea ice cream or sponge cake, and sometimes rice balls (mochi). Quite bizarre combinations, really. I only liked one, so I rated it number one. The one I liked came last, and the wierd Mickey Mouse one came first. Yay.
Finally, after all the Kanji had been guessed and all the Ice Cream eaten, the game was over and everyone got up to leave. At this point Saeko said "goodbye", waved to me, and almost sprinted out. Not sure what happened there. Maybe she doesn't like me... I have not mailed her since, having been busy now that I am beginning to recover from my near death experience with pollen, but she has not mailed me either. What is the mysterious thing one has to do to offend a 19 year old Japanese girl? Essential information, I'm sure we can all agree ...
posted by Sir S at 11:06 AM
2 Comments:
Nottlesby and myself were talking similarly on the subject (not on confectionaries, but of friends) and the difficulties of making friends in Ye Ole Sydney(e) Towne so I envy your ability to make friends with everyone, even if they do run away at the last moment.
Maybe you shouldn`t have flashed her your old battle scars - you know I`ve told you how that amusing image of the Queen they make when you flex isn`t really for distinguished company...
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