Sorry to take so long responding to this, Mr Berglund's past off-list
contributions to my mailbox have lead to all mail from his domain
receiving special processing.
But finding to my surprise I had a copy, and having dug it out - well
- I passed it along to MY nearest-and-dearest for her comments, which
were typically inscrutable... "He is plick", apparently. (No idea
what she means - I can't find the word in my dictionary.)
Racism - real racism - is obnoxious. For that reason, as most long
term foreign residents - particularly those in mixed marriages, will
tell you, it is the explanation one should reach for last when
attributing motives to the actions of others.
For people outside Japan; Japanese TV and Japanese people generally
have lots of fun with what my Japanese friends call "Japlish". I
occasionally even drop into it deliberately to improve the
communication environment for an imperfect Japanese speaker of
English who is too proud to speak Japanese to me.
In other words, it is no big deal for the Japanese, as far as I can
see, and really shouldn't be for Mr Berglund.
("Plaise the Rord" stuck in my mind after a conversation a few years
ago with a heavily tattooed and almost spherical gentleman with whom
I was - carefully - discussing the previously noted phenomenon after
we found ourselves - he, me and 10 of his tattooed acolytes -
sharing a public sauna. He suddenly threw two huge but not fully
fingered fists into the air and, breaking into what were possibly the
only words of English he knew, yelled out "plaise the Rord!" before
collapsing into a heap of tattoo wobbling laughter.)
Now - I have a mail filter to fix...
Nick
Received on Sun Oct 16 05:35:38 2005