we went to the american embassy in tokyo two days ago. Got back yesterday.
we were waiting in line, a long line form 2 to 230 or so. there were a lot of brazillians infront of us and since the entire embassy takes lunch at the same time were were waiting behind everyone that got there before us. did you know government workers working in another country like japan get both american and japanese holidays off! i wonder if there paid for those days?
we were told several times to head to the front and skip the brazillians because we were americans. and that sounds pretty bad but the tour leader who was a brazilian himself told us to.
the gaurd at the gate told us not to.
we waited behind the brazillians after the third time the gaurd told us to go back to the ever growing line.
the brazillian boss man came back and seid when the doors open he`ll take us up there himself.
right about there another man of olive skin came and made a joke "take me too," we gave him the courtesy laugh and welcomed him to our complaining about the line.
i, being the jerk i am, assumed he was brazillian too. now when you meet a fellow forigner here in japan you have a funny puzzle to figure out, what language am i going to speak to him/her in? i heard him speaking japanese so i just deicided to do the same.
the man proved me to be the fool and started talking english too!
Americans are lazy in the language department; this guy knows, as far as i could tell, 3 languages.
he askes me where im from and all that talk and i would repeat his questions to him to get to know him just a little, except for the one about where are you from. he later pointed it that i didn't ask that particular question, but that was because i knew where he was from, Brazil.
my face was red, he was from iran. he had married a japanese lady, had two kids, busted a lot of jokes, and had been to war for 2 years! Friendly, seemed honest and only a little boastful when he talked about his harly that cost the price of a Benz and has an engine larger than his car. He insisted that he had worked hard enough for it(sono bun hataraita).
he wont teach his kids irani... im not sure what language they speak in iran but he wont teach it to them. he excuse was that he had worked and learned other laguages the'll have to to if they want to learn. but what caught me is that he mentioned that they wont ever need it. a place that is always at war no one needs to return to that after they have left.
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