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But I was just some stupid boy on a bus
Coming back from Belmont this afternoon, I was re-reading Kim (1901) in preparation for the Kipling panel at Readercon on Friday when I became aware of a catechism going on at the back of the bus. At first I thought there were two voices, although it later became apparent there was a third involved, just not in English. Of the English-speaking, one belonged to a Japanese student whose reasons for being in Boston were some combination of graduate school and sightseeing. The other was the property of a very loud and insensibly curious American whose entire perception of modern Japan seemed to have been formed by bad World War II-era movies. At first I thought he was baiting the student and his companion, but he kept going with a kind of self-absorbed unstoppability long past the point where I would have expected any intentional racist to move into active slurs—honestly, it didn't cramp his style. If the Americans were going to apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shouldn't Japan have apologized for Pearl Harbor? Wasn't it true that foreigners weren't allowed to naturalize and Japanese girls were forbidden from marrying foreigners? Was the student married? Would he let his daughter marry a foreigner? Didn't Japanese men choose their daughters' husbands for them? How did they feel about Emperor Hirohito getting married? (Yes, I know.) Commoners weren't allowed to marry into the Japanese royal family, were they? And what about geisha girls? Didn't Japanese men visit geisha girls? What about Okinawa?
Despite politely correcting the man's assumption that he was Buddhist, the student was evidently possessed of the patience of about a zillion bodhisattvas, because he kept answering the man's questions: mostly with things like "No," "Not really," "Never," and the occasional "Why would that matter to me?" I couldn't tell if he was laughing from nervousness or because the conversation was so evidently from Planet Mongo. And I couldn't even offer to interrupt without shouting back across at least five rows of seats, which I did not think would help the situation. Eventually the student and the girl who had only spoken in Japanese got off in Arlington Center and the man yelled, "Sayonara!" after them several times. He himself left a few stops later and the ambient noise dropped by a shocking number of decibels. The rest of the bus was very quiet.
I hadn't realized until this afternoon that I need to know the formal Japanese for I apologize for my countryman who is being a fuckwit.
. . . I mean, I also sat across from an older man who spotted my Mission of Burma T-shirt and asked if I knew any of the band, because he was good friends with David Kleiler's father, after which we had a very nice conversation about the Alloy Orchestra and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which he had helped save in the 1980's, but for God's sake.
Despite politely correcting the man's assumption that he was Buddhist, the student was evidently possessed of the patience of about a zillion bodhisattvas, because he kept answering the man's questions: mostly with things like "No," "Not really," "Never," and the occasional "Why would that matter to me?" I couldn't tell if he was laughing from nervousness or because the conversation was so evidently from Planet Mongo. And I couldn't even offer to interrupt without shouting back across at least five rows of seats, which I did not think would help the situation. Eventually the student and the girl who had only spoken in Japanese got off in Arlington Center and the man yelled, "Sayonara!" after them several times. He himself left a few stops later and the ambient noise dropped by a shocking number of decibels. The rest of the bus was very quiet.
I hadn't realized until this afternoon that I need to know the formal Japanese for I apologize for my countryman who is being a fuckwit.
. . . I mean, I also sat across from an older man who spotted my Mission of Burma T-shirt and asked if I knew any of the band, because he was good friends with David Kleiler's father, after which we had a very nice conversation about the Alloy Orchestra and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which he had helped save in the 1980's, but for God's sake.
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"Hey, can you teach me the syrtaki?"
"Must be lots of pizza parlors in Athens."
Etc., until you start thinking of baseball bats -- or spears.
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It was like the spoken bit at the end of "The Mountie Song," except it wasn't satire . . .
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I want cards that say this in two dozen languages.
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Because I just watched 1776 (1972):
"Ben! I want you to see some cards I've gone and had printed up. Ought to save everybody here a lot of time and effort, considering the epidemic of bad disposition that's been going on around here lately. 'Dear sir: You are without any doubt a rogue, a rascal, a villain, a thief, scoundrel, and a mean, dirty, stinking, sniveling, sneaking, pimping, pocket-picking, thrice double-damned no-good son of a bitch'—and you sign your name. What do you think?"
"I'll take a dozen right now."
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For God's sake John, sit down!
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And a large supply of them.
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("I am very sorry that you ended up entangled in conversation with that empty-headed, universally despised type of American")
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Nine
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I wound up referring to him in conversation with
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You are awesome.
(Would you be willing to break this down for me in terms of grammar and register, etc.? I am always curious; and in case I ever have to use it, it might be nice to know where the stresses are supposed to go.)
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The verb comes at the end. In this case, you use a humble way of saying "to speak," which is môsu, and it comes in the set phrase "môshi wake arimasen," which means, literally, "there is no reason for my speaking" or "there is no excuse for my speaking," and is used to mean "I am very sorry." So that's the "I am very sorry" part. (subject "I" is understood)
Then, the rest are attributes of the verb, so to speak (I'm not sure that's the correct technical term)
"urusai kaiwai ni makikomarete shimatte":<--nb, should have been SHIMATTE, not SHIMATE
"makikomu" means "to pull into, to entangle," and "makikomaru" is the passive "to be pulled into, to become entangled in" and "shimau" is a verb of finality and intensity. (When you add "shimau," it adds the sense of "and then this went and happened." It's the difference between "The car broke down [koshô shita]" and "The car went and broke down" [koshô shite shimatta]) So "makikomarete shimatte" intensifies and expresses a feeling of regret about the "become entangled in" "urusai kaiwa" means "unpleasant, loud conversation"
So, "urusai kaiwa ni makikomarete shimatte" means "become intangled in unpleasant conversation." The verbs are in a continuative form because they're joining up with your apology at the end. The apology has the main verb.
The rest of it is adjectives describing this type of American.
America-jin = American.
"sekai ni iyagarete iru yô na American-jin" means "the type of American who is despised/disliked by the world" (sekai = world) (iyagaru= to be despised/disliked) (yô na= type of, kind of, pattern of)
"Atama no karappo na" is an adjectival phrase, slightly slang-ish, meaning "empty-headed"
"karappo" is slang-ish for empty. It has a connotation of a husk
"atama"=head
so you run "Atama no karappo na" together with "sekai ni iyagarete iru yô na America-jin"
and you get "empty headed, despised-by-the-world type of American," which I'm translating as "empty-headed, universally despised type of American."
And then "ano" at the very front means "That."
あの頭のからっぽな、世界にいやがれているようかアメリカ人のうるさい会話に巻き込まれてしまって、本当に申しわけありません。
I'll try to run it by someone Japanese on Facebook and get corrections.
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You are still awesome.
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The part in between the dashes is the changed part. It says, "A jerk like that is despised alike throughout the world and in the United States."
He corrected my "sekai" to "sekaiju" (from "world" to "worldwide")--ten years ago I wouldn't have made that mistake--ughh, rusty language skills! More importantly, though, by saying "anna yatsu" ("a jerk like that"), he makes it clear we're condemning just that guy and not all Americans.
あの頭のからっぽな、アメリカ人 -- あんな奴はアメリカでも世間中でいやがれていますが --
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あの頭のからっぽな、アメリカ人 -- あんな奴はアメリカでも世間中でいやがれていますが --あの奴のうるさい会話に巻き込まれてしまって、本当に申しわけありません
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Please thank him for me!
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I **think** it's right, but I want to be sure.
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I'll run it by someone Japanese to see what else needs fixing.
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In the past twelve months I have had one Canadian and one American offer me their sympathy for the apparently vicious anti-semitism UK Jews apparently live with on a daily basis.
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Yes, I remember your last week's post about the auto-da-fé.
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For whatever reasons, I would find that more understandable than being neurotypical and just that obnoxious.
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Glad about the good conversation, though!
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It was unexpected! The only band T-shirt people usually comment on is the fictional one!
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They may be available at any moment . . .
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I wonder what's the received standard idiom for "escalator-clogging douchenozzle."
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I hadn't realized until this afternoon that I need to know the formal Japanese for I apologize for my countryman who is being a fuckwit.
Word.
. . . I mean, I also sat across from an older man who spotted my Mission of Burma T-shirt...
I'm glad there was at least good in the day and trip as well.
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No! He looked to be in his thirties—that was possibly the weirdest part!
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Maybe not as useful or as concise as learning "I am sorry you became entangled in conversation with that empty-headed, despised in America as well as throughout the world, type of American" in 47 languages, but I'm coming to accept that whatever facility with languages I had in high school, I no longer have.
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I'm not sure this particular instance was mentally ill as opposed to a jerk, but I'm glad in your case it both worked and was entertaining.