For the Love of Español

I bruised my butt on the way to the bar last night.

It's not what you think - there was no alcohol-induced falling involved. Rather, I was sitting on a rack on the back of a bicycle, holding on for dear life as my friend and fellow JET (we'll call him "Steve") peddled down the streets of Fukui-shi. The rack dug in with each bump in the road, leaving my 尻 a bit on the sore side today.

But these are the sacrifices a girl has to make to be able to speak a bit of Spanish in Japan.

Steve and I share a love of all things Latin. We both speak decent Spanish (Steve's able to rock the Portuguese, too). But we're still Japanese newbies, so communication with the locals has been a humbling experience for us both. We miss being able to, well, talk to people.

But all hope for communication is not lost - Fukui is blessed with a lot of Brazilians. They've been coming here for generations to work, and have created a great community in a town called Takefu, just south of Fukui City. So, we decided that spending Friday night at Fukui's finest Brazilian bars would be fun. Portuguese is closer to Spanish than Japanese is. Plus, Brazilian beer is tasty.

We took the train to Takefu. But upon arriving at the station at about 9 p.m., we discovered that there would be a few glitches in our well-laid plans. The last return train left at 11 p.m, so we'd need to work fast. Unfortunately, neither of us knew our way around Takefu. And neither of us knew enough Japanese to be able to ask for proper directions.

Working in charades and broken Japanese, we drew on the kindness of a a railway employee, a taxi driver, a hotel concierge, and a woman working at a video store to help us navigate the streets of Takefu. By the time we made it to the bar, it was 9:45 p.m. We'd only have 30 minutes before we needed to turn around and head back to catch the train.

So what if that left us time for only one beer? It was a sweet, sweet beer.

The bar was tiny. Five patrons sat around one of the bar's six or so tables, playing cards as Portuguese television blared in the background. When Steve and I walked in, all conversation ceased as five sets of eyes looked us over.

It could have gone very, very badly from here. But it didn't.

One of these "patrons" actually turned out to be our server, who politely greeted us in Japanese. But it was when Steve mustered a Portuguese "hello" that the bar warmed up to us. And when I told them I spoke Spanish, they erupted with a hearty "¡está bien!" We passed a delightful 30 minutes chatting in lively mix of Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, or "Jap-ish-guese," a language we all seemed to speak and understand perfectly, though I suspect that this sudden fluency was aided by the beer.

Our server had lived in Takefu for 14 years. Her cohorts - the guys playing cards at the next table - had all been in Japan for at least a decade. They joked with me in Jap-ish-guese as I observed their game. A few minutes later, a woman and her daughter sat down - the girl was 10 years old and had been born in Japan. She spoke better Japanese than she did Portuguese, though you'd never guess by looking at her blue eyes and blonde hair. Is it weird to be jealous of a 10-year-old's language skills?

As bizarre as this scene was, I loved every minute. Who knew that it would take Brazilian bar in the middle of the Fukui inaka to make me feel at home in Japan?

The beer(s) finished, we made our way back to the train and to Fukui City. As it was still early (11 p.m. trains have a way of keeping the night young!), we decided to meet some other JETs at a nearby pub. Steve had left his bike at the station, so this is the part where I found myself half-sitting on a rack, dodging cars and pedestrians as my bum got sorer by the minute.

So was it all worth it for 30 minutes of español?

¡Claro que sí!