Kate’s Quests

I took my Japanese friends on base the other day. It was very exciting for them. They couldn’t get over how cheap everything was. I’m just not a base kinda girl. Overseas and especially stateside, I would like to stay as far away from the base as possible. It’s just all concrete and barbed wire to me. It feels oppressive seeing as how you have to show ID just to go home. No thank you. I’d rather live in a normal neighborhood in any country than on a base.

Anyway, we all had a good time and afterwards we went to Starbuck’s to relax and one of the girls said that her opinion of Americans had changed dramatically since having met me. She explained that she had been to America once (I believe SanDiego) and was on the shuttle to a shopping mall from the hotel. An older American lady sidled up to her, got right in her face and said, “I HATE Japanese.” She was shocked and hurt and went she came back to Japan, she figured all Americans were aggressive, blunt, forceful, obnoxious and mean. This was why she hired a Canadian man as her daughter’s teacher and when he left, they hired me. He confirmed her idea of Americans by telling her that yes, all Americans are like that. Canadians, he said, were a much calmer and nicer lot. But, she said, I really changed her mind about Americans. That’s one down and only 127 million more to go.