In Japan:
– Do you wear shoes inside your home in America?
> (…my mom would have a cow.)
– Would you like to try a slice of Salmon Cream Pizza?
> (…get that nasty shit away from me. squid, seaweed, and most other stuff from the sea have no fucking business on a pizza. fucking heathens.)
– Do you want to come to karaoke?
> (…i think i’ll have to miss out on this round of Drunken Asshole Vanity)
– Do you want to play sex?
> (…no, i’m waiting till i get married. plus, i don’t know how to say “double bagger” in japanese.)
– How do you do?
> (…oops, of course i meant, “fine, thank you. and you?”)
In America:
– Why do people take their shoes off before entering a house in Japan?
> (…tatami doesn’t quite clean the dog shit off your shoes like carpet does.)
– Have you tried our New Caribbean MexiChili Teriyaki Sushi-eggroll Low-carb Wrap?
> (…Let me repeat: oh, fuck no.)
– Can you spare a dollar?
> (…you may think my response severe, but the last bum i actually had a conversation with punched me in the throat. he ruined it for all you assholes.)
– Can we search your car?
> (…oops mr. officer, that just slipped out, what i meant to say was, “sure!”)
– Do you want to come to karaoke?
> (…)
///
to be continued…
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Did you find a baby elephant to be in your parade?
Just wondering if you’ve worked out the important details in the wedding festivities….
Oh, fuck no?
uh, but seriously, no. that’s why nam is going back next month. i need to figure out what to do during the evening reception at the hotel. i have no clue when it comes to stuff like this.
As for panhandlers, a lot more than one guy ruined it for the rest on my account. I don’t know about any other city, but in San Francisco, any attempt to give a standing panhandler any money at all is just begging to have said panhandler follow you around aggressively for the next ten minutes trying to get every last cent off of you. The sitting ones usually don’t get up and follow you, though.
Before I had learned this, I tried to give a panhandler a quarter. He persisted and followed me until I was willing to give a dollar–really idiotic on my part. He then claimed to have seen higher denominations in my wallet, and I could clearly afford to help him, after all he was hungry and there was a place just down the street that could feed him a nice dinner for just five bucks. That was when I decided not to give him a damned thing, but he persisted still–about five minutes later, as I was trying to shake him off, he was trying to sell me on loaning him twenty bucks or more and giving him my home address so he could “mail me the money back”–this after having just given me a sob story about how he has gotten out of prison less than a week before and needed money for food. Yeah, that’s what I need–give all my money to a fresh ex-con and then tell him how to get to my place to clean me out entirely.
He was perhaps the most outrageous, but far from the only persistent panhandler I’ve encountered. Thank goodness I’m now in Japan, where panhandlers hit you maybe once every decade….