What language barrier?

Our class is finally over. This means we are once again bored in real life instead of just bored in class. While being bored together in Heather's apartment, we decided to go exploring and out to dinner.

As the site of our expedition we chose the Daiei Shopping Center, that's the big mall just outside of base. We had both been there several times before but somehow we felt like there was still so much to explore. And we were right.

After an hour and a half we had found several stores both of us swore we had never seen before. I think it's the layout that makes this possible. There are no orderly walkways with stores on either side. You can't walk up the left side of Daiei and down the right. Well you could, but you'd miss the higgldy-piggldy in the middle. So we wandered.

Eventually we reached the "restaurant patio" where all the restaurants are laid out in a somewhat orderly fashion. It's different from the food court because on the patio all the restaurants are enclosed, sit-down establishments.

The best part of a Japanese restaurant is the front window. Each one is filled with plastic models of the food sold inside, complete with prices. You can know, just by standing outside the window, what kind of food it sells, how much the food costs and if it looks appetizing. So far the plastic food has been pretty accurate. It looks a lot like the real thing.

So Heather and I trolled around for a while, stopping outside this window or that window looking for something tasty and within our budget. Eventually we came to a bakery and restaurant called Ducky Duck. You had to love the name. Looking in the window we saw, in addition to decadent deserts, several kinds of pizza. Our Japanese Culture instructor had explained that Japanese pizza is different from pizza in the states. We had to try it.

Inside, the host asked "smoking or non-smoking" in an understandable accent and lead us to our table. We were seated near the window, overlooking a French pastry shop which blocked most of the bay.

The menu had a number of pictures but was written entirely in Japanese. We found the pizza easily enough but couldn't tell what was on it. Heather picked the one we had seen in the window, which was a variety our instructor had described to us. I attempted to discover what was on the other pizza's. The waitress explained - sort of. She pointed to the first item on the list. "Chezu and Peperoni", I nodded. She pointed at the second one. "Baziru". Then she stopped. She seemed unable or unwilling to describe the last two pizza's. I pointed at the Basil. "That one."

As she walked away Heather looked at me. "Well, that was awkward." I shrugged. A-yup.

The pizza, when it came, was wonderful. Japanese pizza tends to have thin, soft crust with very little sauce and lots of cheese. Just the way I like it. Mine had a line of pesto sauce drawing a circle around the center of the pizza. It was very tasty, like the gourmet pizza's you can order in cafes in the states.

Heather's was a whole new kind of different. It was like an American pizza in that it had cheese and, well, that's about the end of the similarity. It also had tuna, and corn - oh, and drizzlings of mayonnaise. Eating it was like eating a tuna casserole with pizza dough instead of pasta. Very strange, but good.

They had brought us our check at the beginning of the meal, and when we finished, we waited to see if they would take it or if we had to bring it up to the front counter. We could have asked, but we didn't have the words and both of us were tired from getting up early and sitting in class for six hours. It just didn't seem like the time for a lost in translation clip. While we surreptitiously watched our neighbors I caught the eye of a little Japanese boy sitting diagonal to us. He was all of 2 years old, maybe, and he was all over the place. A couple of times his mother had to pull him down from the little ledge on the back of the booth where he was trying to stand.

His squiggling concluded with the discovery of gaijin, foreigners, seated near him. He smiled at me. I smiled back. His whole face turned into one little sunbeam. I smiled wider. He started playing hide and seek with me, using the back of the booth as a barrier to hide behind. Then he would peek out, see me looking, laugh silently, and hide again. This went on for a while until we noticed that the group of American's near us was getting up with their check in hand. I followed them and discovered that we were, in fact, supposed to pay up front.

Heather brought our money up to pay the bill. She had a moment of confusion when the clerk tried to explain to her that she could pick a coupon out of a small box on the counter. It was a luck of the draw sort of thing, some kind of promotion Ducky Duck was doing. Finally, they figured it out and the check was paid.

While this was going on I was sitting on a bench trying to stay out of the crush of people. Our little friend approached with his Ani, older brother, who was probably eight or ten. He kept his hands on the younger boy's shoulders while the little one smiled and played with me. A couple times the older boy tried to push him forward but my friend resisted, staying a few feet away. When we were ready to leave. I waved at him and said bye-bye. The older brother waved the little one's hand in response.

When I looked back from the door way he was waving all by himself. I had to smile as we walked away. Language barrier, I thought, what language barrier?

I leave you today with a gem from the great Dr. Seuss. "If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good!"