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2004-02-23 - 9:14 p.m. Like a Monet...? Once, a long time ago (two summers ago), while I was storming home after a long day of being lost and feeling major culture shock, a Japanese man walked up to me, looked at my face, and said, 'Oh wait, you're not Japanese,are you?' Bear with me, this is my favorite story of that summer. After I confirmed his statement gruffly, since I was having a rather bad day, he walked away to his taller, thinner, and maybe even cuter friend (too 'grr' to say that day) who was standing by the vending machines. I bought my ticket for the train home, shot them a look, and saw they were looking at me too, talking to themselves over something. Didn't care. Until the next time, two weeks later, at the same station (different exit), when the same overweight Japanese man stopped me, looked at my face, and said, 'Oh wait. You're not Japanese are you?' Turns out his friend wanted a girl, but anyway... A similar thing happened to me yesterday. It was the afternoon, and just as I was walking into a Wendy's for breakfast/lunch/dinner (the whole non-eating thing again), a guy walks up to me, saying, 'Excuse me, excuse me.' I stop, he stops, but after getting a good look at my face, he apologiez and disappears. From a distance, did he think I was Japanese too? Admittedly, there a whole lot of people here that look a whole lot like some of my relatives (and I mean the Japanese, not the foreigners, God bless their hearts). Prima Carmen, the one who lives in Yokosuka, says that every once in a while people walk up to her and start spouting Japanese. Admittedly, they sometimes do that to me too. But I have yet to have a Japanese boy try to talk to me from out of the blue... on this trip. I try to rationalize though. Maybe he thought I was someone else, some foreigner girl he knew. I look like a whole lot of people too... supposedly. Or maybe he really did think I was Japanese from some distance, got that one good look, and realized that I, at least, wasn't. Not to say that he thought I was American (I'm certainly not white enough)... just not Japanese. Which, of course, got me to thinking: What exactly is it about me that doesn't look Japanese up close, but damn near it some distance away? Damn it, it's all that mountain Indian blood in me. But, man, if I do end up with a Japanese guy, those kids may very well not look mixed at all... or, at the very least, Asian if not Japanese... Like Cuz said, I could have blond-haired, blue-eyed kids if I really wanna. We've got the genes in us somewhere. The Past - Guestbook - The Future, Too |