Hey, wait a minute!

A few days ago I was sitting in the park enjoying some spring sunshine when a man with a clipboard approached me.

"I'm conducting a survey," he told me. "Do you have time to answer a few questions?"

"I'm very sorry," I replied. "But I don't understand Japanese."

"Oh, I see," he said. "Where are you from?"

"New Zealand," I said.

"I hear it's very beautiful," he said.

"Thank you," I said. "Yes, it is."

"Oh, well. Excuse me." He wandered off to accost someone else.

Today the phone rang, and it was some woman selling something. I responded in much the same way.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't understand Japanese."

"You're a gaijin?" she said, surprised.

"Yes," I said."

"Oh. Sorry. I can't speak English."

"That's too bad," I said.

She excused herself and hung up.

Both of these conversations were held entirely in Japanese. I have had similar conversations so many times that I have stopped expecting the penny to drop. Perhaps, when someone tells you politely that they can't understand while at the same time demonstrating that they understand perfectly adequately, it's just too much to handle. Perhaps it causes a brain freeze. I imagine a little spinning wheel in their heads, like the one on my computer when it gets hung up on something and everything stops working.

But I sometimes wonder if the little ball ever stops spinning. I wonder if any of them ever wake up in the night and say,

"Hey!"