Ojisan, Fake Japanese People, and Sneaky Mutts

Can you guess which of these people are actually Japanese? I'll give you a hint -- two out of the four possible Japanese people in this picture are real. The other two are imposters! Choose wisely.

Have you figured it out yet?

While you're thinking, I'll go take a shower.



Lalalalala.....



Ok, I'm back.

If you guessed that Japanese Girls 2 and 3 are the fakes, you are exactly right! You deserve a fabulous prize.* For those of you who don't know them, Fake Japanese Girl 3 is my friend Kat from Stanford, and Fake Japanese Girl 2 is Shisei, Kat's cousin from Taiwan who's studying business and commerce in Kyoto.

This spring, Kat and Shisei came to my island to visit for a couple days and one afternoon we all went to Dougo Onsen, the oldest hot spring in Japan and the most famous tourist attraction in my city. Dougo is a three-story wooden building with several different public baths, and a bunch of tatami rooms where patrons can sit and drink tea. If you pay for a private room there, I think you can even have your own personal tea ceremony, which is supposed to be way cool. The only difficult part of the ceremony is sitting seiza (on your knees with your legs tucked under you) for the whole ceremony. My feet fall asleep after about ten minutes, so standing up at the end of the ceremony without looking extremely silly is a little difficult. Anyway, I digress....

Kat, Shisei, and I were sitting and chatting in one of the public tatami rooms in Dougo when a Japanese ojisan (old man) peeked in the door. He turned, frowned at Kat, who happened to be sitting cross-legged, and said in Japanese, "Hey, you. Why are you sitting that way when even that foreigner next to you can sit seiza?"

Unfortunately, Kat doesn't know too much Japanese (she was just visiting Japan), so she had no idea what he was talking about. There was sort of this odd moment where we all just looked at each other, and then finally Shisei said, "Sir, she's a foreigner. She can't understand your Japanese. Although actually, we're all foreigners...." That just about knocked Japanese ojisan's socks off. I think he was a little embarrassed to be fooled by the two fake Japanese people, (if only he knew that the girl he had called a "foreigner" was actually the only semi-Japanese person there....heh heh) but in the end, I think he was more excited to meet such fascinating foreigners, (he kept asking us over and over again which countries we were from :) and so, before we parted, we took a picture with him and his very embarrassed granddaughter(??) to commemorate the occasion.

The End

* Please send a self addressed envelope to me (KSS 302, 1533-2 Minara, Toon-shi Ehime-Ken, JAPAN 791-0211) and I will send you back something amazing...and thin. I'm serious. Send me an envelope! And a letter too if you feel so inclined. I like real mail. :D