During one of my many, brief midlife crises (this one had something to do with turning 30) I decided that I should make a visit to Tokyo. Alone. There were plenty of events at work that conspired to make this happen. I was newly-single, I had been in heat to see the Tokyo Disney Resort, and the recent terrorist unpleasantness had driven travel prices down to bargain-basement levels. With this much going in my favor, how could I say no?
Of course, I don't speak, or read, or really even get Japanese. I like sushi, love it when everyone is shorter than me, and can tolerate Hello Kitty. So that worked. Plus, there's this perverted delight I get when I'm wandering around lost in a place that is just dripping with new things to see and hear. And smell, sometimes taste. Never touch. Never.
There are many stories from that visit and a subsequent trip with my old buddy Neil. But from all of that, this is my favorite picture. It was right above the turnstiles at Ueno Park Zoo in Tokyo:
Clearly, even to an idiot American like me, it was pretty obvious that there was not going to be any Panda inside. Though, at first I thought maybe just the Panda's body was gone and that his head was on display, frozen in this freakish look of surprise.
I was struck most by the English copy...there's a delicious sense that you are reading this sign at the intersection of No-Time, like you're hanging out with the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Be. Has the Panda been absent since March, or is that when he's returning? Or, perhaps, this is a warning, a veiled threat that March will be the time when something bad will happen to the Panda if you don't behave, if you don't pass the school levy or donate to the March of Dimes or something. What if this was some kind of message from the CIA or Osama bin Laden, or the mob? Does the Panda sleep with the fishes?
Whatever its true meaning, the sign was worth a chuckle. I was a stranger in a strange land walking into a strange zoo, snickering in a strange language.
Language differences aside, there is no mistaking the international language of yellow and black safety tape. The idiot I am, I clicked my way through the turnstile and ended up bashing my head on this sign.
I wonder if the Japanese translation is something like "Stupid American Head Knocker"
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