Reading Material

You know you've been in Japan too long when... [a book worth buying]

• 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.
  
• you bow to other drivers who give you the right of way.
  
• you rush onto an escalator, and just stand there.
  
• you don't hesitate to put a $10 note into a vending machine.
  
• you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"
  
• you have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like 'building'.
  
• 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.
  
• you get blasted by a political speaker truck and think "sho ga nai"
  
• you think the best part of TV are the commercials.
  
• you develop a liking for green tea flavored ice cream.
  
• you're arguing with someone about the color of the traffic light being blue or green and ... you think it's blue.
  
• you can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the peace sign.
  
• you pull up at a gas station and wait for a bunch of Norman Rockwell type attendants to jump out and clean your windshield.
  
• you go for a drink with friends back home and start pouring everybody's beer.
  
• your idea of a larger home is an extra 10 square meters.
  
• you glance at the clock and accurately predict the next line of dialog in the TV dorama.
  
• you are not worried about speeding in the rain, because you know the cops are only out there in good weather.
  
• you think birds cry.
  
• you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.
  
• you think US$17 isn't such a bad price for a new paperback.
  
• you go to a coffee shop in your home country and order "American coffee."
  
• you are talking on the telephone to your parents and your father says, "Why are you interrupting my explanation with grunts?"
  
• you're talking to your mother on the phone, and she asks you what "genki" means.
  
• you don't think it unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
  
• you think the natural location for a beer garden is on a roof.
  
• you think that you can impress foreigners by drinking Budweiser.
  
• you think "English literature major" is a polite way to say peanut brained bimbo.
  
• you find a beautiful way to eat natto.
  
• you start thinking can coffee tastes good.
  
• you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.
  
• the first option you buy for your car is a TV set.
  
• you really enjoy corn soup with your Big Mac.
  
• you think the opposite of red is white.
  
• you leave your expensive bottle of Royal Salute with a sleazy barkeeper and don't worry.
  
• you pore over the jikokuhyo looking for ways to avoid riding the Shinkansen.
  
• you buy a potato-and-strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing.
  
• 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.
  
• you stop enjoying telling newcomers to Japan 'all about Japan'.
  
• you automatically remember all of your important year dates in Showa numbers.
  
• you think every foreign movie title contains the word 'love.'
  
• you have mastered the art of simultaneous bowing and hand-shaking.
  
• you think it's alright to stick your head into a stranger's apartment to see if anybody's home.
  
• you have run out of snappy comebacks to compliments about your chopstick skills.
  
• you think "white pills, blue pills, and pink powder" is an adequate answer to the question "What are you giving me, doctor?".
  
• you no longer find anything unusual in the concept of "Vermont curry".
  
• you think 4 layers of wrapping is reasonable for a simple piece of merchandise.
  
• you don't find anything strange about a city that puts a life sized, red-and-white painted Eiffel tower imitation in its centre, as well as a scale model of the Versaille palace for its Crown Prince.
  
• you are only slightly puzzled by "Melty Kiss."
  
• you get on a train with a number of gaijin on it and you feel uneasy because the harmony is broken.
  
• you ask fellow foreigners the all-important question "How long have you been here?" in order to be able to properly categorize them.
  
• looking out the window of your office, you think "Wow, so many trees!" instead of "Wow, so much concrete!"
  
• you think NHK is "the Japanese BBC".
  
• you think curry rice is food.
  
• 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 and when you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says
  
• 'thank you' after you buy a coke.
  
• the TV commercials make sense to you.
  
• 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?
  
• you only have 73 transparent, plastic umbrellas in your entrance because you have donated 27 to the JR and various taxi companies in the past few months.
  
• you have over 100 small, transparent plastic umbrellas in your entrance even *after* donating 27 of them to taxis and JR recently.
  
• you are proud of yourself for beating the system by buying a case of Labbatt's Blue for 160 yen a can.
  
• you think rice imports should be prohibited, because Japanese consumers would never buy imported rice.
  
• you think one kind of rice tastes better than another kind.
  
• you rush home from work to catch the last few minutes of sumo.
  
• you get a "Nihongo ga joozu" and feel really insulted.
  
• you see a road with two lanes going in the same direction and assume the one on the left is meant for parking.
  
• you think japan actually has only four seasons.
  
• you pull out your ruler to underline words.
  
• in getting ready for a trip you automatically calculate for omiyage and you leave just the right amount of space in your suitcase for them.
  
• on a cold autumn night, the only thing you want for dinner is nabe and nihonshu.
  
• you return the bow from the cash machine.
  
• you can't find the "open" and "close" buttons in the elevator because they're in English.
  
• you think that coffee goes perfectly well with squid pizza.
  
• the Christmas music in the stores does not make you feel at all sentimental like it used to.
  
• you mention "Japan Times" and "objective" in one sentence
  
• you believe that the perfect side dish to eat with a juicy, deep-fried pork chop is a pile of raw, tasteless, shredded cabbage.
  
• it doesn't surprise you that a case of beer has the same per unit price as a single can.
  
• you think cod roe spaghetti with chilled red wine is a typical Italian dish.
  
• you start to recognize BGM as a meaningful genre of music.
  
• walking into a crowded bar full of non-Japanese makes you nervous, because they "look dangerous." (This was passed on to me second-hand, I'm not that far gone, yet.)
  
• you buy a Christmas cake on Christmas eve.
  
• you no longer pay any attention to what anyone does when you sit down beside them on a train.
  
• when you accompany your "no" by the famous waving hand-in-front-of-nose.
  
• you find yourself apologizing at least three times per conversation.
  
• when you let your car idle for half an hour while you go shopping.
  
• you find your self asking all your foreign acquaintances what their blood types are.
  
• you find yourself practicing golf swings with your umbrella on the train platform.
  
• you take practice golf swings on the train platform *without* an umbrella in your hand.
  
• you buy an individually wrapped potato in the supermarket.
  
• you think that "Lets SPORTS yOUNG gAY CluB" is a perfectly normal T-shirt logo for a middle aged lady.
  
• you order a "bottle of draft" in a pub.
  
• you go to a book shop with the full intention to read all the interesting magazines and put them back on the shelf.
  
• you're careful to specify a nonsmoking seat on the flight from Denver to St. Louis.
  
• you schedule your commute around the availability of seats on the train.
  
• you think Bosozoku are dangerous.
  
• you think sushi at a baseball game is perfectly normal (also applies to "too long in California").
  
• your sister starts making pointed comments about your American spelling.
  
• you vow to gambaru before every little activity you engage in.
  
• you say that one of your hobbies is "doraibu."
  
• you stupidly wait for a kampai at a gaijin party you think no car is complete without a tissue box on the rear shelf and a feather duster in the trunk.
  
• you ask a gaijin colleague who wears short sleeves in October, "Aren't you cold?"
  
• you draw a sharp distinction between "English" and "English conversation."
  
• you use the "slasher hand" and continuous bowing to make your way through a crowd.
  
• all of your December Sundays are reserved for Bonenkai hangover recovery.
  
• you are disappointed when Dominoes doesn't have corn pizza, and the driver is disappointed when you forget the tip.
  
• you forget about July 4th, but get all worked up over Tanabata.
  
• when it all seems normal.