Charles Stross' Diary (RSS Feed)
09-20-2007, 09:32 PM
I'm just about over the jetlag from Japan, and writing up a travel piece for publication elsewhere. Hopefully I'll be able to repost it on the blog in due course, but not for a month or two. Meanwhile, one impression of lasting strangeness stands out enough that I want to share it with you now:
On our last day in Kyoto, my wife and I headed out of our hotel to do some exploring. As we descended into Shichijo subway station, an elderly fellow rushed over. "Hello! remember me?" (Apparently we'd met him a couple of days earlier while exploring some of the Buddhist temples for which Kyoto is famous.) "Here, please help." He thrust a sheaf of papers at me. "Can you proof-read?"
It took us a quarter of an hour to disentangle ourselves from his polite but insistent demand that we check the English vernacular in his papers, which turned out to be part of the second edition of the Japanese-English dictionary that, being a Professor of English at Kyoto University, he was editing: between us I think we checked about five pages.
How often have you been accosted on the subway by feral English professors and forced to proof-read Japanese-English dictionary entries? Alternatively — how many countries have you visited where elderly English professors would feel safe enough to approach near-total strangers on the subway, and invite them to proof-read their dictionaries? I think it says something fascinating about Japanese society that none of the participants in this little incident realized just how outré it would seem anywhere else. Food for thought ...
(Original Post) (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/09/final_impact.html)
On our last day in Kyoto, my wife and I headed out of our hotel to do some exploring. As we descended into Shichijo subway station, an elderly fellow rushed over. "Hello! remember me?" (Apparently we'd met him a couple of days earlier while exploring some of the Buddhist temples for which Kyoto is famous.) "Here, please help." He thrust a sheaf of papers at me. "Can you proof-read?"
It took us a quarter of an hour to disentangle ourselves from his polite but insistent demand that we check the English vernacular in his papers, which turned out to be part of the second edition of the Japanese-English dictionary that, being a Professor of English at Kyoto University, he was editing: between us I think we checked about five pages.
How often have you been accosted on the subway by feral English professors and forced to proof-read Japanese-English dictionary entries? Alternatively — how many countries have you visited where elderly English professors would feel safe enough to approach near-total strangers on the subway, and invite them to proof-read their dictionaries? I think it says something fascinating about Japanese society that none of the participants in this little incident realized just how outré it would seem anywhere else. Food for thought ...
(Original Post) (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/09/final_impact.html)