The japanese culture is WONDERFUL! - Free Chat : The Forum Lounge Chat

Ryosuke91t

07-31-2005, 05:59 AM

You know you've been in Japan too long when...

...you notice you've forgotten how to tie shoelaces.
...you rush onto an escalator, and just stand there.
...you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.
...you think US$17 isn't such a bad price for a new paperback.
...you don't hesitate to put a $10 note into a vending machine.
...when you are talking on the telephone to your parents and your father says, "Why are you interrupting my explanation with grunts?"
...you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"
...you start thinking can coffee tastes good.
...you have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like 'building'.
...when you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.
...when the first option you buy for your car is a TV set.
...you don't think it unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
...you really enjoy corn soup with your Big Mac.
...you think the opposite of red is white.
...you leave your expensive bottle of Royal Salute with a sleazy barkeeper and don't worry.
...you can listen to the ads in FEN without falling around the floor laughing.
...you pore over the jikokuhyo looking for ways to avoid riding the Shinkansen.
...you appear for your first skiing lesson with brand new Rossignol high performance racing skis and an aerodynamic racing suit with color matched goggles. And then snowplow down.
...you buy a potato-and-strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing.
...when you squat waiting for a bus to come.
...you phone an English-speaking gaijin friend and somehow can't bring yourself to get to the point for the first 3 minutes of the conversation.
...you stop enjoying telling newcomers to Japan 'all about Japan'.
...you remember non-wanman buses in the Tokyo area.
...you think 360 yen per dollar is a reasonable exchange rate.
...you automatically remember all of your important year dates in Showa numbers.
...you think every foreign movie title contains the word 'love.'
...people stop complementing you on your Japanese, and start asking you where you had your nose and eyes done.
...you still remember your first drive in your brand new Toyopet.
...you wonder why Prince Akihito is already getting gray hair, and why you don't see much of the Emperor these days.
...you think Masako is beautiful and Hillary is cute.
...you spend all your time trying to think of reasons why you've been Too Long in Japan.
...you noticed 7-11 changed its onigiri wrapping houshiki for the 3rd time.
...you find a beautiful way to eat natto.
...you are not worried about speeding in the rain, because you know the cops are only out there in good weather.
...you think birds cry.
...you think "English literature major" is a polite way to say peanut brained bimbo.
...you are not surprised to wake up in the morning and find that the woman who stayed over last night has completely cleaned your apartment, even though you'll probably never ever meet her again.
...you get blasted by a political speaker truck and think "sho ganai..."
...you think its cool to stand in the "Japanese only" queue at Narita Immigration.
...you go to New Zealand and consider traveling around by train.
...you develop a liking for green tea flavored ice cream.
...your talking to your mother on the phone, and she asks you what "genki" means.
...you think the best part of TV are the commercials.
...you think wet umbrellas need condoms.
.. your mother talks about "you foreigners."
...your children call you Otosan/Okasan.
...matter of fact, you've never even been skiing, but the rack looks great on the car...

You know you've been in Japan too long when...

...you have mastered the art of simultaneous bowing and hand-shaking.
...when you think it's alright to stick your head into a stranger's apartment to see if anybody's home.
...your top is thinning and you consider it "bar code style".
...when you find nothing unusual in a television commercial for candy in which a model dressed in a high school girl's uniform comes up behind another model dressed in a high school girl's uniform, grabs her left breast, gives a devilish grin, and skips away.
...you think the natural location for a beer garden is on a roof.
...you think that you can impress foreigners by drinking Budweiser.
...you ride a Honda Cub with a sidecar.
...you think nothing about seeing 20 ads for women's' sanitary napkins during one movie.
...you have run out of snappy comebacks to compliments about your chopstick skills.
...you think "white pills, blue pills, and pink powder" is an adequate answer to the question "What are you giving me, doctor?".
...you remember when Yamamoto Linda came on at the very end of the show (NHK's Yume de Aimashou) and kept her mouth shut.
...you have discovered the sexual attraction of high school navy uniforms.
...when you no longer find anything unusual in the concept of "Vermont curry".
...you think 4 layers of wrapping is reasonable for a simple piece of merchandise.
...you don't find anything strange about a city that puts a life sized, red-and-white painted Eiffel tower imitation in its centre, as well as a scale model of the Versailles Palace for its Crown Prince.
...you are only slightly puzzled by "Melty Kiss."
...a new gaijin moves to your neighborhood and you know immediately you will get his mail for a while.
...you think the meaning of a red traffic light is: "Hurry up! 10 cars now in quick succession, and then we'll think about slowing down."
...when you get on a train with a number of gaijin on it and you feel uneasy because the harmony is broken.
...you ask fellow foreigners the all-important question "How long have you been here?" in order to be able to properly categorize them.
...when looking out the window of your office, you think "Wow, so many trees!" instead of "Wow, so much concrete!"
...when you find yourself thinking "great it's almost time for Paul Harvey, have to turn on the radio."
...you think NHK is "the Japanese BBC".
...you think curry rice is food.
...the Yakult lady knows you by name.
...you think it is quite OK to play volleyball with 12 people per team.
...when in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply...
...and when you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says 'thank you' after you buy a coke.
...you stand before a sign on a bridge and ponder the possible meanings of "Bridge Freezes Before Road."
...it takes fifteen seconds of deep thought to recall the first name of the President of the United States.
...you have a favorite bush to pee behind.
...the TV commercials make sense to you.
...a non-Japanese sits down next to you on the train and you get up and move. You're not prejudiced, but who knows what they might do?
...you are outwardly appalled to see someone pour miso shiru over rice, but do it in private yourself (neko meshi).
...when having gaijin around you is a source of stress.
...you only have 73 transparent, plastic umbrellas in your entrance because you have donated 27 to the JR and various taxi companies in the past few months.
...you have over 100 small, transparent plastic umbrellas in your entrance even *after* donating 27 of them to taxis and JR recently.
...you realize it's perfectly reasonable for the Post Office to designate you as the local redistribution agent for all letters addressed in yokomoji.
...when you absolutely do not possess the ability to mispronounce Japanese words "like a non-Japanese would."