The Drunken Argument

 Even after 10 years of living in Japan I would say that most people still find it surprising that I speak Japanese fluently. Some people are of course only feigning polite surprise, but many people genuinely do not realise that I am fluent. This of course does lead to some quite awkward situations.

The most recent such awkward situation happened when I was on the train home from spending time with my closest friend here. A couple, who had clearly had a bit too much to drink, were engaged in quite a private conversation. The girl was sitting next to me and the man was standing in front of her. Except for myself, all other passengers were Japanese people who had earphones in or had quite clearly fallen asleep. This must have given them some kind of assurance that nobody would be listening in to their argument.

The conversation was getting increasingly heated and increasingly private in nature as I sat awkwardly pondering the smoothest way to make my escape. Perhaps due to the fact that they were obviously quite tipsy, they clearly couldn’t keep head nor tails of the topic they were arguing about and the conversation was getting messier and messier. As we arrived at one of the major stations where many people get off, the girl told her boyfriend to sit down. He responded that he would only do so if he could sit next to her, which I took as my cue to get up and shuffle down a few seats. This is when it suddenly dawned on them that I had clearly understood their entire conversation. I could see the realisation hit them as they both gave me a surprised look, their faces growing increasingly pink, resulting in the girl grabbing her boyfriends arm and making a quick escape to the other end of the train carriage.

In summary, as frustrating as it can be that people assume I don’t speak Japanese, sometimes it can also be really, truly funny.