Little Girls, Little Girls...
I’ve had a lot of good experiences in Japan. I’ve seen some amazing sights, eaten some incredible food, and have stumbled upon oddities that I had never encountered before. But no matter what I’ve seen, put into my belly, or been weirded out by; my all time favorite thing in Japan is watching little children’s expressions when they catch a glimpse of me.
One day Erin and I were walking back from Makino and were passed by four boys on a bike (yes, I know I used the singular tense there. Somehow four Japanese boys managed to cram themselves comfortably onto a solitary bike). They cruised past us without giving us much notice, but quickly realized they had passed by two foreign girls and immediately all four of the heads twisted around and they all called out “Hello!” to us. We of course said “Hello” back - they pretty much earned it for performing their amazing bicycle acrobatics.
Little girls tend to have the best reactions, though. They’ll either totally freak out about my size and run/cry to their mothers, or stare at me in wonder like I’m some sort of near-extinct magical creature that will spirit them away to Narnia.
I was shopping in the supermarket today and was busy looking at the tempura section when I noticed a little blob of pink dashing through the isle. I turned around and saw a little girl rushing around - darting around people’s legs and generally just having a good time.
Somehow she noticed that I was looking at her and she paused and looked up at me (this took a while, because her eyes went to where she thought mine would be, which was about mid-torso, so her eyes just kept going up and up…). When she finally got to where my eyes were, her head was nearly horizontal to the ground. I watched her little eyes go wide in terror and she ran full tilt to the safety of her mother and spent the rest of the shopping trip looking at me from behind her mother’s legs.
I know I shouldn’t have found it so funny, but that little girl’s abject horror at my size was pretty darn hilarious. It reminded me of the scene from the Road Runner Cartoons where Wile E. Coyote was standing wide-eyed on the ground right under the falling boulder. Hilarious!