Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries by Tim Anderson Read Free Book Online

meant to answer such a charge to her satisfaction. I have no idea how the word bangs came into being. Maybe it has something to do with Americans’ love of guns and the noises they make?
    All I can think to say to this is, “Why do you say cunt instead of can’t ?” but I don’t say it, because it would bring the conversation down to a level that no one is likely comfortable stooping to just yet. So I keep my comments to myself, look her in the eye, shrug my shoulders, and speak the only Japanese I have learned so far: “Wakarimasen.” (“I don’t know.”)
     
     
    MOBA is the most popular language school in a country that has as many language schools as the U.S. has places to buy coffee milkshakes, and the students have many reasons for wanting to study English. Some are businessmen and women who do a lot of traveling abroad and need English so they can move up that ladder a little faster or chat people up in hotel bars more easily. Many are housewives with kids in school (or no kids at all) and money and time to kill. There are also a lot of high school and college-aged kids who want to travel, want to be able to speak to the foreigners they see, think “English is cool,” or simply want to know what Kanye West is going on and on and on about.
    There are also a few people learning English because they’re movie buffs and want to be able to watch American movies without reading the subtitles. By far the best justification I’ve heard for studying English, though, was given by an extremely low-level fifty-something woman named Keiko, who says she is learning English because she wants to teach her son. This I regard as a triumph of convoluted logic. I don’t know how old her son is, but surely he’s at least a teenager by now. Why doesn’t she send him to the school? Really, at the rate she’s going, she’s going to be on her deathbed and her son is still going to be saying things like “This is a pen” and “I enjoy to surfing.”
    I ask around about Japanese lessons, and everyone says I should talk to Joy, an excitable Latina from New York who seems to have an insatiable appetite for new hobbies.
    “Well, I tried at this one school near Yokohama Station that’s got a really convenient schedule and everyone seems really nice and you can get private lessons,” she said.
    “And how did it go?”
    “Oh, I didn’t go with them because they were too expensive.”
    “Oh.”
    “But I heard the community center across the street has really cheap lessons.”
    “Oh, cheap would be nice.”
    “Yeah, but all the classes take place in the same room at the same time. It’s really loud and hard to hear the teachers.”
    “Uh-huh. So…”
    “So anyway,” she continues, “I’m thinking I just won’t take lessons right now because I kind of want to join a gym, and I’ve got my life drawing classes, and I want to study that flower arranging stuff. And learn how to kabuki.”
    Thankfully, soon after this spirited but useless exchange, I meet Yoko Ojima, an intermediate-level student who takes private lessons. She’s about fifty years old and has wispy gold and purple streaks in her short hair. Her face is always immaculately made up, her lips a dramatic dark crimson, her eye shadow echoing the purple in her hair, her skin painted powder white. An active and busy woman, she runs a medical clinic that she co-owns with a male physician, whom she hates. Understandably, she is always at least five minutes late for her lessons, rushing in breathlessly with a few shopping bags, a leather bag overflowing with folders overflowing with papers, and a sheepish smile overflowing with many apologies.
    Teaching Yoko is always a nice break from the shy, low-level pupils who make up the bulk of our student population at Kamiooka MOBA. Since she’s not a beginner, she can thankfully talk about her life beyond what her hobbies are, how many people there are in her family, what she ate for breakfast, and what her favorite