Ichi, ne, san, shi, go!

Friday night, I went out to a local bar with Rachel and Brett where we met up with some of their friends and played a half dozen rounds of Yatzee. It was an ideal game for me because I'd just learned to count to five (ichi, ne, san, shi, go!) and could show off/practice. Everyone was very good humored, and the game descended into hilarity a few times as people struggled to master the differences between our names. (The shortened forms of our names wind up being much more similar in Japanese...Ray-chan, Bray-chan, Bree-chan. My name actually winds up being more like Badee-chan. I enjoy the way my name is reinvented in different languages. The Mudasiganas call me Bliss and in the UAE, people thought my name was Berry. It makes me wonder what I do to other people's names.)

I was talking to this man who had to be at least fifty. He asked me if I had friends in Japan, and I pointed to Bray-chan and Ray-chan and tried to indicate I had another friend named Saori somewhere. He then asked Rachel something I didn't understand and she answered, then he asked me a question and pointed to his nose. I really wasn't sure what to do, but I'd worn the phrase 'I'm sorry, I don't understand' out for the evening, so I figured I might as well also point to my nose.

Everyone burst out laughing. Apparently, in Japan, you point to yourself by touching the tip of your nose. He'd asked Rachel if I was single, and then asked me if I wanted to date him. I'd responded by looking bewildered and pointing to myself, diffusing a potentially awkward situation. There are perks to being too oblivious to be awkward!

One dynamic I'm struggling with a little bit here is how common and acceptable it is for older men to go after young women and girls. In the United States, we certainly idolize youth and it isn't uncommon for women to marry men ten or fifteen years older than them, but men in their thirties and forties don't date girls in high school and college. As a result, when a man who is 50+ talks to me, I assume he is being fatherly and not trying to hit on me. I would have assumed he was kidding if Rachel and Brett hadn't given me a crash course on vehemently expressing disinterest on the way home. Apparently he'd gotten really persistent, and Rachel had told him I didn't have a cell phone or an email account. We're not quite as far along technologically back in the US of A. The whole thing struck me as more funny than anything else, but it's good to bear in mind in the way I perceive interactions here.