Kid Ethnic: Mixed-Race Adventures in Japan: Illiterate at 26

Illiterate at 26 · 11 November 04

A week ago, a friend and I went to a conveyor-belt sushi shop. The hostess handed us a sign-in sheet with a spot for our names.

In a stunning moment of simultaneous ignorance, neither of us could remember how to write them.

On this, the first day of my 26th year, I must confess:
I am functionally illiterate.

Detergent and Bleach

One of these holds detergent, and the other contains liquid fabric softener. Or is one of them bleach?

These are the daily questions of the functionally illiterate.

I can’t distinguish between junk mail and bills. A walk through a mall is filled with symbols that amount to white noise. A Japanese menu might as well be a stream of green symbols from the Matrix.

I have a cell phone with GPS navigation, which means it can give me directions to anywhere in Japan from Japan. Can’t read that either.

The Japanese write in three main systems, two alphabetic and one logographic .

“Logographic” basically means “picture words”. Like in pyramids.

You have to know about 2,000 of them to kick back and read a good book.

Luckily, some designers mark packages with just enough English:

A package of beef.

And pictures often save you. This, for example, was obviously designed to make rats wish they had never been born:

A rat trap.

But when the pictures and the English are lacking, you are not saved.

You are illiterate. At 26.

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happy birthday! i’m still figuring out my bills as well, esp ones i thought i had already paid. =P
— angela 1283 days ago #
Dude, happy birthday. Wo0t, ch3erz! Functional illiteracy rocks. I’m proud of the fact that i can’t communicate in at least 83 other languages. Anything i can do to expand my ignorance.
— Simon 1283 days ago #
Know the feeling. In my patch of lovely Japanese countryside, there aren’t many foreigners. I’m often mistaken for being Japanese, but I speak the language like a three year old (a smart three year old). But still, those who don’t know me, probably think I’m “special”...

Well, happy birthday. Hope you had a good one.
— Ching 1282 days ago #
I went to a Mexican restaurant on my birthday. A place where everything was in Spanish, and thus easy to read.

Felt like coming home.

Your friend,
— saleem 1279 days ago #
Happy Birthday. I just came back from Bulgaria myself and the first day there, I felt like the most illiterate person on the planet. Why can’t all nations have one alphabet at least?
— Ela 1277 days ago #
Spanish! Soon we the Spanish-speaking are going to take all over the world! And then everything will be easy. No?

Happy birthday! And do not confuse saikou with psycho.
— Camilo 1277 days ago #
Feliz Cumpleaños!!! te deseamos desde México la familia Castañón… La Mamichi, mi papá, Chipis y yo sent you a chilli (not chilly) big mexican hug… A little late but never is to late.
— Nacho 1276 days ago #
Wow, if your age were dollars, you’d be, like, 2600 in Japan…
— Jeff 1276 days ago #
Yo,

How’s JPN? The $100.00 USD Grade F Steak? Seen my buddy Rickettsu? Finally, how do you go about getting a website domain name secured?

Best, C
— carter the man 1259 days ago #

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