Yesterday was a horrible day. Here, in translation, is a conversation that took place at the desk directly in front of me:

Koji: "You talk to him."
Waka (shaking head frantically): "No, no, no."
Koji: "Say something in English."
Waka: "No, I can't. It's too scary. You already told him, anyway."
Koji: "So you're not going to talk to him."
Waka (giggling): "No I can't. You're better at that sort of thing."

Koji, who speaks fearlessly to me in whichever language is more convenient, wanted Waka to talk to me about the year-end party. Waka, who fearlessly takes a poop in her pants if I so much as look in her direction, was unable. She says "Hello" like an ambassador and "Good morning" poses no problem. She can even point at various objects, concrete nouns such as watermelons, and deftly hurdle all four -- I mean five -- syllables: "Wa-ta-me-ro-n." That's not bad for ten years of English education.

Later in the day, at the supermarket, I asked the information counter people if they had any old boxes I could use to send Christmas presents in. The woman I talked to froze upon my opening my mouth. First she blushed the most stupendous shade of red. Then, she started to giggle. And giggle. And giggle.

I asked again, "Furoi hako ga arimasu ka? Kurisumasu purezento wo okuritain kara." Maybe she thought I would disappear if only she could just keep on giggling, because when she noticed I was still there and still wanted old boxes, she really freaked out. She sort of buckled over, like she'd seen a bear, and, not knowing what else to do, did what all good people do upon seeing a bear: she pooped in her pants. When she finally got the stink out, she called a conference with the five other women working the information counter. Thank God I heard Nancy calling. She found some boxes piled up behind the tills. I got to leave the conference early.

This kind of crap happens every day. At this point in my Kochi life, I'm almost certain that it isn't culture shock that's pissing me off. I've studied the language hard and, although I don't speak the emperor's Japanese, I know more than enough to get by. I've studied the culture, too. I may not be the most practiced in how low to bow or what level of language to use, but it's not like I'm visiting temples in my sneakers, running around blowing my nose with one hand and stuffing cheeseburgers into my gob with the other. When people actually do give me the chance, I usually manage to have a normal, everyday conversation: good places to go fishing in Shikoku, was Yukio Mishima gay? and why squid sashimi is as appetizing as spitballs for breakfast. We're not discussing the finer points of Japan's re-emergent military program and the possible effects on Sino-Japanese relations, but who wants to talk about that anyway?

Probably, what's pissing me off is that I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere and I'm the only person who's different. As if that wasn't bad enough, people take every encounter with me as an opportunity to rub that difference into my face. Instead of saying "Ohayo" they say "Good morning". Instead of "Genki?" they ask "How are you?" Instead of "What did you do last night?" they ask to confirm the size of my sniffer: "Your nose is really big, isn't it?" What happens to those language skills -- those communication skills -- when I need a couple of used boxes? Where's that friendly "Good morning" camaraderie when there's a staff party that everyone but me has been invited to, not because I don't understand the language, but because I only visit the school once a week and just plain old didn't know?

But, like I said, yesterday was a bad day. I let all the little irritating things about this place get to me. I let myself fall victim to the idiotic comments and rude behaviour, rather than dealing with them outright. I should have asked Waka what she wanted to talk about. I should have asked the information counter people if they could understand my Japanese. Or at least I could have offered to get them some toilet paper. I really am sorry about that.