Yours truly standing under a big propeller after a feed of food, beer and green tea, no wonder I look so content.
About 12 years ago I was 3rd mate on an LNG ship running between Australia and Japan, mostly Tokyo bay but other ports around the coast of Japan also. The turn around in port always went like clock work, and the same bit happened at the same time every time. The Japanese were very particular about the run of events. Before you started there was a meeting and after there was a meeting. On an oil tanker you arrive, sign the papers connect and start pumping, but in Japan on an LNG ship, there were procedures to be followed, and by jaysus there was hell to pay if the schedule was a few minutes wrong either way. I got reported for not giving the ETC (estimated time of completion) within 10 minutes of the hour passing, our translator whom we christened Johnny1, because he had one glass eye, started shouting at me to get the figures so he could pass them on to his superior, half of the population of Kawasaki knew what time we were going to finish, I exacerbated the situation by telling Johnny1 to “relax, it will be the same as last time, and the same as next time, and who is going to give a shite at 2′o clock in the morning anyway?” He got so angry that his glass eye started to look as if it was working and his real eye was bonkers, the Japanese make unusual guttural sounds when angry, the more I told him to relax the more sounds emitted. Our cultural reference points being in different zones, and both of us in Japan meant that I got a bollocking. I imagine he knew we were taking the piss out of him also.
Anyway we went ashore in Kawasaki, ate in a restaurant and bought cheap Kimonos and looked very tourist like as the above photo shows. The restaurant had good cheap food and pictures of everything so you just pointed and said “arigato”, the pictures were not for the benefit of western tourists, but for the rural population whose grasp of reading was not as hot as the urban dwellers or so I was told by our resident Japanese expert, he also gave us a few phrases to use and asked me to buy “Pokemon” cards for him to give to his son. he also advised us not to ask for a Kimono, he had some other “better” phrase, but the locals hadn’t a clue until we asked for a kimono, then we were back to thumbs up and nodding and “arigato” I couldn’t for the life of me get anyone to understand what a Pokemon card was, I thought they would be easy to get, I got plenty offers of “posto cardo” which is a postcard believe it or not.
Anyway we were in the restaurant, three of us me the cadet and the gas engineers wife, I had these really big biker boots under the jeans, you can’t really make them out from the photo, they were a fucker to get on and off, but off they had to come if we were going to get into this place, much to the amusement of the staff who were tittering into their hands as I hopped about and fell over getting off the rock star boots. Once inside we pointed like billyo at what food we wanted from the picture cards and lo and behold wasn’t there a lovely picture of a pint of lager beer. Needless to say that got pointed at a lot, I got grunted at for trying to help clear the plates, and on the 5th or 6th round of beer a large steaming pot of green tea arrived at the table. We all looked at each other mystified, “who pointed at that?” I asked of the company, shrugged shoulders all round, but I guess they had had enough of us it was tea and piss off home. The was more amusement replacing the boots afterwards, but I was happy enough with the cultural exchange, few worded as it was.
Recent Comments