KID ETHNIC IS WRITTEN BY:
saleem
who is currently moving around East Asia.
kidethnic@gmail.com
ALSO BY KID ETHNIC:
The Alpaca Song
I wrote and recorded this for you. Because you <em>need</em> a song about alpacas, don’t you?
100JapaneseThings
A collaborative site to help folks (and each other) find Japanese stuff.
SEAWEED BREAKFAST
A weekly column about Japan that I wrote for Glimpse.org.
Twitter
I twitter infrequently. But hope we can stay friends.
The Whiteboard Videos
Music+Whiteboard Markers+Friends=Good ways to spend weekends
The Annual Kid Ethnic Valentine
Because I love you so much.
A Rock. A Pigeon. A Tiny God. · 15 June 06
A boy’s voice yelled across the playground: “Konnichiwa!”.
I stopped walking and turned toward the sound.
About 50 yards away, a tiny child looked back at me. I assumed he’d been talking to someone else. I’d never seen him before. But on the off chance that he was talking to me, I replied.
He came running in my direction. Fast.
He stopped a slowed few feet in front of me and spoke quickly in very polite Japanese.
“Hey! Hey, I want to ask you what you think about that?” He pointed to his right, my left.
A trail of feathers lead to the body of a decaying pigeon. I hadn’t noticed it. It’s rested a few inches separate from his body.
“Woah. Um, wow. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?” I said.
“I wonder what it is,” he said. “Have you seen this before?” He held out a red rock streaked with white lines. It looked like a tiny slab of marble, but the color of clay.
I thought we should talk more about the dead bird, but maybe that wasn’t going to a happy place.
So, I looked at his rock.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Ha ha,” he said. “It’s a stone.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Have you ever seen this stone before?”
“No, I haven’t seen that stone before.”
He looked down at his stone. I did the same.
“What’s your name?” I said.
In very humble Japanese, he replied, “My name is (unintelligible) Shota.” I had him repeat it, then I told him my name.
“I must say, you’re Japanese seems quite good,” he said. “So, I want to ask you: Where do you come from?”
“Where do I come from?”
“Yes, where do you come from?”
“I come from America” I said.
“Ah, America.”
He looked at his rock.
“Well, I guess I’d better go back to school,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. And he turned.
“See you,” I said, but he’d already begun running. Fast.
“See you,” he yelled back. He seemed to be running with a purpose.
I took another look at the dead bird. It was pretty gross.
* * *
Good Writing: A Warm and Stinky Fear of Birds | Briefly: An Open Letter to North Korea
— sho-chan 1502 days ago #
— Mel 1498 days ago #
— saleem 1492 days ago #