Does not Compute

For some reason this has happened a couple of times lately...

Basically, I'm sitting somewhere (Starbucks, Kansai Airport (again)) minding my own business, reading something in Japanese (Usually Death-Note. On time it was A PLANETARY SCIENCE TEXTBOOK. Which said EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCE in really big kanji on the front cover.), when the Japanese people next to me start talking about me...

Usually it's just stuff like "Wow... he knows Japanese. I wonder what country he's from...", but still, do they honestly think there is even the slightest possibility that I learned to read a language to that level but not understand considerably simpler stuff when it's spoken 50cm in front of me? Dear dear...

I have occasionally called people up on this... I particularly bizarre one happened when the two 40-something women who were doing this started saying stuff like "Hmm, that's odd... your pronounciation is a bit foreigner-ish...".

I put this down to the (somewhat justified) belief most Japanese people have about foreigners not possibly being able to speak Japanese...Even in spite of the blatantly obvious they still sometimes can't get over it...

I did have a thought about a slightly odd double standard. It's sort of expected for Japanese (and pretty much every other non-native-English speaking person) to learn English if they are in the UK/US etc and no-one bats a eyelid when they do, but when we learn Japanese/whatever it's kind of "wow!"... not terribly fair...

Mayuko was saying that compared to 10 years ago there are many more Japanese-speaking foreigners, and maybe in another 10 years it will be considered perfectly normal... is there a fast-forward button on life?

Speaking of fast-forward... JLPT tomorrow afternoon. Back to work....

Oh, and incidentally, Prince Charles can now join David Beckham, Nick from the Backstreet boys, President Obama and Wentz Eiji in that most exclusive/infamous club...