My Journal

We decided to go to a Japanese Hibachi style restaurant on Monday night. The menu was in English, but the waitresses could only speak a few words of English. My colleague and I ordered what we thought was the surf and turf special for 2. After much confusion with the waitress, we were not quite sure what we were going to get. The first item to hit the griddle was bean sprouts. Right after that, 2 sunfish in all of their whole glory hit the griddle…when my colleague and I were growing up, we called them “sunnies” and we never ate them, we threw them back. We frantically searched for the English menus and pointed to Fried Rice as another dish to have. Right after the “sunnies”, the prawns hit the griddle…heads and shells included. Now, the fried rice was what we were holding out for. Then the beef and chicken (!) came out with the fried rice. Truth be told, the beef, chicken , prawns (hard to get used to eating the shell) and “sunnies” were actually quite good, but not what we were expecting.

As we were finishing up and laughing at how hard of a time we had and how surprised we were, this German couple comes up to order a dinner. They point and the waitress says, “two?”…they say, “ein” (one)… we realize that we were having a hard time, and that the German couple is far worse off than we will ever be. One of our other colleagues had pointed this out for people living in his building. People in China try to speak English. I have not come across anyone who tries to speak another language at first step. In fact, my basic dodge tactic for beggars and hawkers who yell, “Hello, buy this!”..is..”Sprechen Sie, Deutsch?” to avoid the gauntlet. They relent quickly.

PS – the German couple did get a good meal!