Gaijin Jump
By Craig Chapin. First published in May 2007.
I had to take a few liberties with the story behind this strip in the interest of keeping things simple and understandable. To understand what happened, we need a short lesson in cross-cultural plumbing and later a lesson in comparative linguistics.
Let’s start with plumbing. Here in America, homes typically have a hot water tank. When we take a shower, we draw on the hot water in the tank until it runs out. After that, the water runs cold.
Yumiko was accustomed to a system in which cold water is heated as it flows through the pipes. In that system, hot water doesn’t run out unless you run out of either water or energy to heat the water.
After we moved to our apartment in the United States, Yumiko took a shower. Our apartment does not have a very big hot water tank. To Yumiko’s surprise, the water got colder and colder the longer she stayed in the shower. By the end of the shower, when she washed her hair, the water was frigid.
When she came out, she complained to me about the cold water. I should note that she did not accuse me. There was no “Thanks to you” involved in the actual event as there is in the comic strip. I added that so that the strip would make better sense from an American perspective. After all, it isn’t uncommon for the person who showers second to accuse the person who showers first of using up all the hot water. This is a staple on family sitcoms. Yumiko came out of the bathroom upset about the water but not upset at me. However, by the end of our conversation she was pretty peeved at my apparent perversity.
You see—and here’s that lesson in comparative linguistics—when Yumiko complained about the water, she didn’t realize that in English “water” is an all-purpose word for both hot water and cold water. In Japanese there are two completely different terms:
So when Yumiko complained that she had to use water to wash her hair, she meant that she had to use
As our conversation went around and around the same territory over and over again, Yumiko’s irritation grew and grew as I stubbornly focused on the shampoo, which had nothing to do with the problem. Finally in frustration she cut off the conversation. Though she hadn’t been angry at me when the conversation started, by the end she was fuming.
It wasn’t until at least a day—or perhaps as much as a couple of weeks—later that it dawned on me what might have caused the confusion. Once we figured out the linguistic difference, we could finally talk about cross-cultural plumbing.
By the way, this is the first