One recent evening, I was sitting on the couch when our doorbell rang. I assumed it was our lovely landlady or a certain friendly neighbor, but when I checked our incredibly futuristic, color video, two-way speaker device (what’s that even called? We just had a peephole back home!) there was a sharply dressed middle aged man I didn’t recognize.

I opened the door, and noticed he had a brochure for a local Real Estate Company. We’re pretty unlikely to be buying a house any time soon, so I figured it was time to play the “Gaijin Card” as I often do with the nice door to door salesmen/Jehovah’s witnesses that sometimes darken our door.

“SOO MEE MA SEN,” I said in the worst accent possible, figuring he would get the hint pretty quickly that I wasn’t a very eligible candidate for whatever fabulous offer he had up his sleeve. “Eggo…ga…hanasamasaka?” I laid the bad accent on pretty thick, but with a friendly smile on my face. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but I figured the faster he gave up on me the better.

The magnet in question, with non-technologic Peephole

He was a quick one, and shortly made his excuses. As he started to leave, he noticed the sheep faced magnet that Sean recently put on our front door.

“Oh, do you like One Piece?”

“Yeah, it’s great! I love Zoro, how about you?”

We chatted on for a few minutes about this super popular animation (it’s not quite as big in the States, but it’s a Pretty Big Deal here.) Suddenly I realized 2 things.

1. He was a good bit younger than I’d first thought.

2. My jig was up. We had totally been holding a (rather long by this point) conversation, completely in Japanese.

I blushed hard, realizing that he had caught me out, but he had the good grace to take his leave and spare me his sales pitch. In the end, it was a nice conversation with a nice young man about something we both enjoy. It was a pretty nice evening, after all.