"Mysterious Mr. Blue-Suit-Blue-Shoes"

2013/10/03 - (20:03) - I was going to call this "Mr. Blue-Suit, Half-French, Half-English", but then I realized that no one would read that and think I was referring to the man speaking half in French and half in English - this is an inconvenient aspect to the English language that it uses the same words for nationality and language.  In Japanese, you start with the country and add one character to specify if you're referring to its people or its language.  So, for Japan-Japanese-Japanese, you get  日本-日本人-日本語 (Nippon/Nihon - Nihonjin/Nipponjin - Nihongo/Nippongo).  In any case, no sooner had I given up on my first choice for a title than I listened more closely to the monologue (half of a cell phone call) in the park this story is about and realized I wasn't sure the non-English half of the conversation was French - more on that below...

Hamamatsucho - Copyright 2013 by Lyle H Saxon

Now to the text I wrote in my notebook at the time:

(16:30) - Actually, as I listen, I think the main non-English component probably isn't French, although - considering the way he mixes in English with his other sounds, he may well be speaking a mix of Something + English + French.  (The imagination works away trying to imagine who's on the other end of the conversation!).  Whatever it is he's speaking, Mr. Blue-Suit (+ Blue Shoes), who is sitting on a park bench, mysteriously sitting sideways and directly facing me (sitting two benches down), talks like this on his DG-Cell Phone:

"Dabba-munba, jungin.., eh?  Why?  There are two sides.  Dabba-munba, jungin.., eh?  First of all, dabba-munba, jungin.., money is perish, dabba-munba, jungin...  You now come to disappointment... dabba-munba, jungin.., eh?  He's a human being, dabba-munba, jungin, all human beings dabba-munba, jungin, etc. etc."

Naturally, the DMJ parts (dabba-munba, jungin) I can't accurately transcribe, since they are unintelligible to me, but the English parts are direct quotes I've transcribed as Mr. BSBS speaks.

Okay - the above part was written in Real Time, as Mr. BSBS spoke - now let's jump back in time about twenty minutes.

There are three benches in a row in the park I'm sitting in.  When I came to the park, there was one foreigner sitting on the middle bench.  I sat down on the bench to his left.  After looking around and taking in the cooling, but still green park for five minutes or so, a large man, possibly from Africa, wearing an immaculate blue suit, with matching blue shoes, strode upon the scene with active cell phone in hand, and proceeded to sit on the bench on the far right (from my perspective of sitting on the leftmost of the three benches in a row).

As he jabbered away on his cell phone, I thought "I'm glad Mr. Blue-Suit, Blue-Shoes, Cell-Phone-Dude isn't sitting right next to me... d**n cell phones!".  After a few minutes, the man sitting on the middle bench stood up and walked away.  Soon thereafter, Mr. BSBS swiveled on his bench 90 degrees to his left and directly faced me.  It seemed/felt a little weird, so I glanced that way, and he was staring at me from inside that blue suit of his.  I looked away - back to the scene in front of me, but Mr. BSBS's eye-beams still appeared to be on me, so I turned a little to the left so his eye-beams wouldn't hit my face.

However, it soon occurred to me that the view to the left wasn't what I wanted to see, so I looked forward again at the wonderful green trees.  But I could sense those BSBS eye beams again....  For a few seconds, I thought I'd leave, but it suddenly occurred to me: "Wait... that may be *why* he's staring at me!  To make me uncomfortable so I'll leave and convert the public park into Mr. BSBS's private telephone space.  なるほど！  But that's Very Uncool!  Now it's a matter of honor, as a free-park-going human being, that I *not* leave...".

And so I tried to focus on and appreciate the beauty of the not-much-longer (autumn very near) green leaves of the trees in the park again... and then it suddenly occurred to me that Mr. BSBS's way of talking was actually quite interesting, and begging to be preserved....

So - I pulled out a notebook and pen, and began writing.  Suddenly, the situation transformed into one where Mr. BSBS was providing me with pleasurable verbal entertainment.  Not long after coming to this realization, Mr. BSBS's eye-beams bounced off the titanium cover of my "Recording History is Fun!" force-field, and he stood up and walked off.  In the corner of my vision, I noticed that he stopped out on the main street sidewalk, so I looked over.  We looked at each other for a few seconds and I got the feeling I was looking at a boy who had been chased off of a 20th century swing set....

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2013/10/03 - (20:03) - Izakaya under the tracks.  With interesting shadows on the page, animated conversation from a group of three to my right, a silent, contemplative man to my left... and a westerner (country?) at the next table diagonally, and last, but certainly not least, the cool industrial rumble of the trains passing by overhead, I sit with my uronhai and edamame, waiting for a few sticks of yakitori.  ............

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
http://tokyoht.blogspot.jp/