IRC-Galleria

You have been too long in Japan when you...


[ ] you notice you've forgotten how to tie shoelaces.
[1] you rush onto an escalator, and just stand there.
[2] you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.
[3] you don't hesitate to put a $10 note into a vending machine.
[4] you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"
[5] when you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.
[6] when the first option you buy for your car is a TV set.
[7] you don't think it unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
[8] people stop complementing you on your Japanese, and start asking you where you had your nose and eyes done.
[ ] you think Masako is beautiful and Hillary is cute.
[ ] you pore over the jikokuhyo looking for ways to avoid riding the Shinkansen.
[ ] you appear for your first skiing lesson with brand new Rossignol high performance racing skis and an aerodynamic racing suit with color matched goggles. And then snowplow down.
[9] you buy a potato-and-strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing.
[10] when you squat waiting for a bus to come.
[11] you phone an English-speaking gaijin friend and somehow can't bring yourself to get to the point for the first 3 minutes of the conversation.
[12 >.<] you stop enjoying telling newcomers to Japan 'all about Japan'.
[ ] you automatically remember all of your important year dates in Showa numbers.
[13] you think "white pills, blue pills, and pink powder" is an adequate answer to the question "What are you giving me, doctor?".
[14] you have discovered the sexual attraction of high school navy uniforms.
[ ] you are not worried about speeding in the rain, because you know the cops are only out there in good weather.
[15] you are not surprised to wake up in the morning and find that the woman who stayed over last night has completely cleaned your apartment, even though you'll probably never ever meet her again.
[ ] you say "shou ga nai.." and really believe it.
[ ] you develop a liking for green tea flavored ice cream.
[ ] you think birds cry.
[ ] you think "English literature major" is a polite way to say peanut brained bimbo.
[ ] matter of fact, you've never even been skiing, but the rack looks great on the car...
[16] when you find nothing unusual in a television commercial for candy in which a model dressed in a high school girl's uniform comes up behind another model dressed in a high school girl's uniform, grabs her left breast, gives a devilish grin, and skips away.
[17] you have run out of snappy comebacks to compliments about your chopstick skills.
[18] when in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply
[ ] you start thinking can coffee tastes good.
[19] "natsukashii" comes out of your mouth instead of "what you're saying makes me so nostalgic that I must look like one of those wide- eyed manga characters with a tear rolling out of my eye."
20] a new Gaijin moves to your neighborhood and you know immediately you will get his mail for a while.
[21] you ask a gaijin colleague who wears short sleeves in October, "Aren't you cold?"
[22] you think NHK is "the Japanese BBC".
[23] you think curry rice is food.
[24 XD] it takes fifteen seconds of deep thought to recall the first name of the President of the United States.
[25] the TV commercials make sense to you.
[26] a non-Japanese sits down next to you on the train and you get up and move. You're not prejudiced, but who knows what they might do?
[27] and when you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says 'thank you' after you buy a coke.
[28] you stand before a sign on a bridge and ponder the possible meanings of "Bridge Freezes Before Road."
[29] you think 4 layers of wrapping is reasonable for a simple piece of merchandise.
[30 XD] when your arguing with someone about the color of the traffic light being blue or green... and you think it's blue.
[31] you think that, in a crowd of Japanese, the presence of another foreigner breaks the "wa," although for some reason your presence doesn't.
[32] you can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the peace sign.
[33] when you think one kind of rice tastes better than another kind.
[ ] when you rush home from work to catch the last few minutes of sumo.
[34] you get a "Nihongo ga joozu" and feel really insulted.
[35] you start to recognize BGM as a meaningful genre of music.
[36] you put eleven 10 yen coins in the vending machine before you notice it's sold out.
[37] you buy a Christmas cake on Christmas eve.
[ ] you walk to the local seven eleven in your wife's shoes.
[38] you run for the Yamanote line pushing people left and right, jump on the train holding the doors open to let your bag follow you on. Because you know there will not be another one for at least a minute.
[39] you no longer pay any attention to what anyone does when you sit down beside them on a train.
[40] you find yourself apologizing at least three times per conversation.
[41] when you let your car idle for half an hour while you go shopping.
[42] you find your self asking all your foreign acquaintances what their blood types are.
[43] you buy an individually wrapped potato in the supermarket.
[44] you think that "Lets SPORTS yOUNG gAY CluB" is a perfectly normal T shirt logo for a middle aged lady.
[45] you are speaking in English but all references to money come out in Japanese.
[46] you go to a book shop with the full intention to read all the interesting magazines and put them back on the shelf.
46/60


[47] tan tekeminen kesti ihan helvetin kauan ja jouduit kayttaan monesti sanakirjaa etta ymmarsit ton enkun -_____________-