Big Giant Gaijin

(at Zojo-Ji Temple with Tokyo Tower in the background)

Even though I am dead tired when I get home from work, I am still reading books. One of the blogs I follow (I can't remember which one, I'm ashamed to say) recommended Memoirs of a Gaijin: A Humorous Look at the Daily Life of a Foreigner in the Japanese Countryside. This caught my eye for two reasons: 1. I have co-workers who relocated to Japan and told me many strange and funny tales of their own experiences, and 2. my job eventually sent me to Japan where I stumbled into my own funny circumstances.

My boss had traveled to Japan several times before me, so I followed his recommendation to pack extremely light even though I'd be gone for 2 weeks. I only took a backpack, my computer bag, and a carry-on (yes, amazingly light for a woman) so that I could easily hop on & off all the trains I'd have to take from the airport in Tokyo to my final destination of Yokosuka. The hotel had a reliable laundry service that would return clothes in 24 hours, so that enabled me to pack only one pair of pants (it was summertime, so I wore shorts when I wasn't at work.)

That Saturday I turned in my pants to have them clean in time for Monday morning. Sunday I stopped at the front desk to retrieve my clean pants, and they told me that the cleaners did not work Sunday--I wouldn't get my pants until Monday afternoon. I had to work Monday morning. No problem--there were many places in Yokosuka where I could buy some new pants, and my co-workers & boss were looking to walk around the city shops anyway.

We hit one of the malls first. Since we didn't know what the conversion was between Japanese and American sizes, we had to ask a sales lady if they had anything for me. She got wide-eyed and ushered me over to what turned out to be the extra-extra-large Japanese sizes. Of course, this brought some snickering from me and my two male co-workers. The lady handed me the largest size they had, and I went to go try it on. To my amusement, I couldn't even get one leg in--it got stuck on my lower thigh.

So we moved on to the next store. Same thing: wide-eyed sales lady who took me to the "big & tall" section. Again, did not remotely fit. Lots more snickering from the males who were accompanying me. Now, I am not a big girl--I am an average American size 10.

This happened repeatedly at two more malls before we realized that we were out of luck with Japanese stores. We had to go to the Navy Exchange on the US base to find some giant American clothes for this apparently fat gaijin (pronounced "guy-jean"--the derogatory Japanese word for foreigner.) This is one of two stories my co-workers love to tell when anyone asks how that trip to Japan was. I'll save the other one for next time I have nothing to write about!

(Don't ask--I don't know why all these people dressed in strange attire and offered free hugs while flashing peace signs everywhere. They hang out in Harajuku, Tokyo.)