Sony Style

This whole Japanese concept of shame, and of subsequent saving face-- I don't think I'll ever understand it. And we'll never really know exactly how much shame we caused, because when presented with bumbling gaijin, most Japanese (thankfully) choose to ignore it. Either that or they talk about it to each other in Japanese, which is equally transparent to me.

Anyway, this is a story about the Sony Store in Tokyo and how I stole the monkey mask. You may have already heard it.

Now about the mask-- I didn't mean to steal it, but this is what happened. We were in the Sony Store, and there were all these kids running around with plastic monkey masks on. The masks clearly came from somewhere in the store, but I didn't know where. And I wanted one. After five levels of robot dogs, spy cameras, PS2 golf, and the new Bemani drumming game, I saw a nice looking family... and my chance. I took out looked up how to say "where" in the Japanese phrasebook, and approached.

"Excuse me," I said to the mom holding the mask. (This I knew I could say; I'd had a lot of practice). "Where...?"

And then it all broke down. She didn't understand me, so she said something in Japanese. I didn't understand her, so I said something in English. Empassioned pointing ensued, until she took the mask off her arm and gave it to me.

"Thank you!" I said, delighted with my success, until I turned around and saw her
daughter staring at me, pouting and about to cry.

I tried to hand the mask back. She wouldn' take it. More pointing. More Japanese that I coudn't understand. More furious looks from the five-year-old. I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything. I just said thank you again and left, and didn't look back. I don't even want to think about the shame.

Posted by lauren at August 27, 2003 08:33 AM | TrackBack