South of the border!
Hola! Mekishiko Kisu des!
Or should I say Hello from Mexico Keith!
What am I talking about? Well we recently had a school festival here at Udai and the students decided to sell Tako Raisu. Shortly after I arrived the weekend of the festival I was recruited as the official Mexican salesman. So for two days I wore a cowboy hat and an alpaca and I stood shouting at people in my broken Japanese to encourage them to buy some delicious Okinawa taco rice.
Many Japanese people have no idea what taco rice is. In fact in Japanese tako actually means octopus. So people were easily confused on what we were actually selling.
So I would walk along side these innocent Japanese people shouting "Tako raisu ikaga desuka? Okinawa tako risu totemo oishii. Nihhon ryouri to mekishiko ryouri Mikussu. TOTEMO OISHII!!"
Of course I often got these lines wrong and got a good laugh from the people. (Actually they laughed even when I got it right? Wonder why??) Other times I seemed to convince people that I could actually speak Japanese so then they would try to ask me questions about what we were selling. Of course I understood like nothing that they said so I would stare in confusion and a student would rush to my aid!
All weekend as I would get breaks from working and be able to explore the festival myself people would be shouting Tako Raisu and smile and laugh as I walked by. It was a great time!
It was so funny to compare our tent to the others at the festival. Japanese people are a bit reserved when it come to things in public like this. What I mean is they try not to be rude or get in your way as you pass by. Most people stayed by their tent and spoke to people as they passed by.
But not the BEST Club. There I am shouting and following people, taking some people by the shoulder and directing them to our tent. And even when I was calm (well calmer) There was a gauntlet of students behind me. You often had to weave through 6 students to get past our tent without buying something. I am a firm believer that at events like this people are looking to be entertained as well as eat food so they all seemed to enjoy this "Tent of Bizarreness" known officially on the map as Tent 7: BEST Club; Taco Rice.
The students all had a great time and some of the students that had disappeared from BEST Club even resurfaced and we were able to reconnect with them. It was really a great weekend!
Now life is back to normal. We are preparing for the annual Christmas party and this week we are spending extended time praying for some of our dear friends here. Hopefully you got my e mail about join us in prayer this week!
posted by Keith @ 4:44 PM
4 Comments:
So there's this oddly dressed tall white American screaming at people and daring to touch them and invade their personal space? He must be pretty awesome to do all that! It's too bad you won't be in town next Saturday for my graduation. I could use somebody with a good set of lungs who isn't scared of screaming to cheer me on as I cross the stage.
Booch
You make me laugh :) I have to tell you how excited I was when I read the background katakana and figured out that it said "ta-ko ra-i-su" before I read your blog! One semester of Japanese is paying off I guess.
I'm really proud of you and what you're doing for the Gospel. Stay strong in the Lord and in His Word. Thanks for all the encouragement for us back here.
Dude, that was hilarious. You need to remember all these little moments so that you can write a book on all your moments in Japan. then when future mid-termers say, "It was SO embarassing I had to wear this hat..." You can show them your book (NY's #1 Best Seller) and say, "Naw, I did that back in '06 and it was nothing."
Speaking of midtermers... are you coming to the midterm Christmas/Whatever Party? Cause you totally have to be there. The trio isn't the trio without you (and that's actually very true physically as well as mathematically... which was my way to include Mary. I hope she's impressed with that.) ANYWAY!!! Are you coming?
LOL! I thought you were going to be so calm and collected over there. Instead you're assaulting people and wearing a ridiculous hat! What will the family think?
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