I’m Just Another Obnoxious American - My Monthly Visit to Yoahan Plaza
Pace has a hole in their 606 bus schedule on Saturdays that spans from 10:20 to 11:20. The CTA’s Blue Line drops me off at 10:25 and I have to wait. While I wait, all the CDs I have with me become useless and unlistenable. While I wait, three highschool sophomores ollie, grind and slide over and on the slickly painted wheelchair access bus depot islands. While I wait, two 13 year olds fake fight in the kiss n ride parking lot and the smaller one throws a punch too hard. While I wait, a smelly, grossly overweight man paces with his ornate walking stick and the jangle of the parade of buttons and pins adorning his acid washed jean jacket, tight over his shoulders, he’s going where I’m going.
Yoahan Plaza is a mall in the middle of Arlington Heights, IL that is made up of a Japanese grocery store, book store, video rental, stationary, tourist trinket trap, and food court. I guess Arlington Heights must have a large number of Japanese to accommodate this mall. My main interest, among many other otaku, is Asahiya Bookstore. It has a large anime book section and a whole wall of current manga. As a caucasion, it’s hard to keep a low profile in this place, sometimes I pretend not to go straight for the anime, and take a detour into the fashion magazines. I don’t belong to any anime clubs run out of the local colleges, so it seems odd and disturbing when I see a large (3 or more) group of people huddled around a new Tenchi film-book loudly discussing how rad it is. Then when they go to pay for the thing they can’t believe how expensive it is. Asahiya has its own inhouse monetary conversion system– ¥100 equals $1.40. This seems ridiculous with the current state of Japan’s economy where ¥100 equals $0.80 or less. Maybe they have to pay tariffs. So I smile to myself when the obnoxious college kids grow even louder and more uncomfortable at the checkout.
I don’t speak any Japanese, though I’m learning, so it is hard to communicate with the older women behind the register. If I have a special request, they signal me with their index finger to hold on a sec and call out one of the younger, bilingual employees. I never attempt to thank anyone or say excuse me or anything in japanese, for fear of ridicule. Instead, I overcompensate after I am handed back my credit card in a little dish and maybe even pick up a southeastern accent with my loud thank you and waltz out of the store with my purchase. I also get the feeling that the more you buy the more they like you, but I doubt anyone is so shallow.
The bus ride home is always longer. I take my purchase out of its thick plastic blue bag and page through it only looking at the pictures, I can’t read a thing. Luckily, as a design rule, most of the titles of articles and chapters are in roman characters, though in most times hilarious broken english. Just out of Arlington Heights is where the buyer’s remorse sets in, and I still have another hour and a half until home.
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