at Edgeworth Johnstone 2

(the sound of a passing vikram)

Mark: Ok so I am just sitting at a cafe in New Delhi and I am sitting next to two people. What is your name?
French Guy: Jeremy. My name is Jeremy.
Mark: Jeremy. I am Mark . Hi.
French Guy: Nice to meet you.
Mark: You too. Where are you from Jeremy?
French Guy: From Paris.
Mark: From Paris.
French Guy: Yes.
Mark: And you grew up in Paris? You were born there?
French Guy: Near Paris.
Mark: Uh-huh.
French Guy: (French)
Mark: But you look Japanese . You are not Japanese?
French Guy: I am not Japanese. (French). I am Vietnamese.
Mark: Vietnamese? Ok. So your parents were Vietnamese but you were born in France?
French Guy: Yes. Yes.
Mark: Have you been to Vietnam?
French Guy: Just one time.
Mark: Just one time?
French Guy: Yes.
Mark: And you don’t speak the language?
French Guy: Just a few words.
Mark: Ah Ok. Was it difficult traveling there? Being Vietnamese. Being ethnically Vietnamese and not speaking? Was it strange?
French Guy: Yes a little but
Mark: How do you say…?
Jeremy: : Can you repeat?
Woman: Can you repeat?

at Tambako

Mark: So John..
John: Yeah.
Mark: You are working on a dissertation for a PhD. That is for an American university?
John: Yeah, that is right. It is a university in San Francisco, California
Mark: And what is the area?
John: I am studying..It is philosophy but with an emphasis on Buddhist studies, you know, and Buddhist philosophy.
Mark: In any particular country?
John: Well, yeah, I am mainly interested in Thailand even though I live in Japan, you know. I like Thailand’s version of Buddhism better.
Mark: Is that theravada?
John: Yeah. That is right.
Mark: Ok. So are you studying any particular temple or any particular aspect of Buddhism?
John: Yeah. I am doing research on a couple of temples there in Thailand. One is called Suen Mok, which is pretty famous. It is got a very good program for ten day meditation retreats and they are geared for teaching foreigners meditation; meditation techniques.
Mark: What is the other temple?
John: The other one is north of Bangkok about three hours bus ride and it is called Tam Krabok.
Mark: Uh-huh.
John: And it is… Well it does different things but one thing it does is it helps addicts recover, you know. It has probably cured about one hundred thousand addicts; mostly heroin or opium addicts, you know, and so I am really interested in how meditation can replace an addiction. You know what I mean?
Mark: Wow! So they are like teaching people to meditate and overcome the problems that caused them to become addicted to drugs?
John: Right. Exactly.
Mark: Wow! Isn’t that a wonderful thing. A hundred thousand.
John: Yeah.
Mark: Wow! That is really amazing. You have been to the temple?
John: Yeah and interviewed several of the head monks and some of the other people there and it is just a really really, to me, an effective way of applying Buddhism, you know?
Mark: Right.
John: To eliminate our addictions and work toward something more significant
Mark: Right excellent. That is really…That is great. Like. To use something like that to…That is really good.
John: A real practical form of Buddhism. As I understand it to try to help people live better lives and things like that and this seems to be a real, you know, obvious way to do it.
Mark: Drug addiction is a big problem in a lot of different countries.
John: Yeah.
Mark: And if they are finding something they can do about, it that is really great.
John: Yeah I agree totally there. And it was a big problem in Thailand. You know until 1959 opium was legal in Thailand.
Mark: Really?
John: And suddenly they made it illegal and all these people who would take it as a normal part of their life suddenly were illegal addicts.
Mark: Wow!
John: And so this place has really done something that I think is really important.
suddenly they made it illegal
Mark: What is the name of the temple again?
John: Tam Krabok. It means cave of the “prabok”.  It is kind of like “telling it like it is” or something like that. Originally it was just a group of monks and they lived in caves
Mark: Wow!
John: And then they started making a big temple out of it.
Mark: The caves of truth.
John: Yeah. That would be a good way to translate it. (laughs)

at Your Guide

Mark: So you were born in Brooklyn and you like did you go to high school there?
Steve: Correct.
Mark: And then you went to university?
Steve: University actually was in the Bronx.
Mark: Right. That was during the Vietnam war?
Steve: Yes. Ahm. Yeah.
Mark: And you worked at a high school during the Vietnam war?
Steve: Junior high school.
Mark: To avoid the draft. (laughs)
Steve: Correct.
Mark: You did not want to go to Vietnam and fight in the war?
Steve: Correct. That is for sure.
Mark: Yeah.
Steve: So I taught in a ghetto school in Brooklyn. That was in Brooklyn.
Mark: Right. What did you actually study like in your degree at university?
Steve: Literature English and American literature, I guess.
Mark: Which writers did you like?
Steve: Joyce, Beckett, Salinger, Melville.
Mark: That is right. You loved…. What is that story you like by Salinger?
Steve: The Catcher and the Rye.
Mark: The Catcher and the Rye.
Steve: Well it is a novel.
Mark: There is a saying. What is the name of the main character?
Steve: Holden Caulfield.
Mark: Holden Caulfield. And there is something that he always says that you used to say for a long time.
Steve: Is that right?
Mark: Yeah there is some sentence that…
Steve: You know I think you are thinking of “Bartleby the Scrivener“. “I’d prefer not to”.
Mark: That came later but earlier on it was Holden Caufield. I remember you saying to me once when we had lunch at Kerala, that earlier in life you used to say this thing that Holden Caulfield used to say or maybe it was something that Salinger used to say and later you changed it to Bartleby.
Steve: Is that right? It very well could have been.
Mark: So you taught at the school in the ghetto. Where was that?
Steve: A neighbourhood called Brownsville.
Mark: Brownsville. Which borough is that in?
Steve: In Brooklyn. The black ghetto in Brooklyn.
Mark: And then later, like, were you from a Jewish area or an Italian area?
Steve: At first a Jewish area and then… Actually when I was…You will find this interesting. You tapped into something here. When I was about six years old my parents moved. When my sister was born, when I was six years old or seven years, we moved from renting an apartment to buying a house a few blocks away.
Mark: Right.
Steve: But the house a few blocks away was no longer in the Jewish neighborhood. It was in an Irish Italian neighborhood. I was the only Jewish kid.
Mark: Right. Mixed it up a little bit.
Steve: ah from time to time I got picked on but I would not stress that.
Mark: When they say like a Jewish neighborhood or an Irish neighbourhood, how long is a neighbourhood. Like two blocks, three blocks?
Steve: No no. Could be much bigger.
Mark: Could be like big ones and small ones, I suppose.
Steve: Yeah.
Mark: Some times you see like in Sydney you might see a couple of streets with some Chinese stuff. You can call it a Chinese neighbourhood…
Steve: There is a Chinatown in New York City now.
Mark: Yeah a big one.
Steve: It was one of my favourite places always. Even before I thought of studying anything about Japan and China I was always fascinated with … Asia… Japan and China.
Mark: When you go travelling in little towns in Australia, the two cultures that got there first are the Chinese and the Italians.
Steve: Is that right?
Mark: There is nothing from the outside. The first that gets there; it will be either pizza or a Chinese restaurant.
Steve: Yeah America too. Every place has a Chinese restaurant.
Mark: Although Chinese food is pretty different from… chop suey is pretty different from the stuff you get in China or Taiwan.
Steve: Yeah but like in California and New York you can get just as good…authentic…
Mark: I had good Chinese food in San Francisco.
Steve: I was once driving across country recently and late at night … I ended up in…I was in Oklahoma somewhere and the highway sign says the next stop is Shawnee. I am thinking I know Shawnee. I know the name but I was tired. I got off there and found a motel. And there was a Chinese restaurant buffet style and the thing was they had a hundred different dishes to choose from.
Mark: M-hm
Steve: So there were these really really really fat Americans were going up big pile after big pile and they are fat and that is why they are fat and they were taking from a hundred different things … you know … picking this and picking this and I am sitting there… I took a modest thing myself. I did not want to stuff myself..you know
Mark: Mm.
Steve: And then I remembered Shawnee is the hometown of a notorious gangster called “Pretty Boy Floyd”. The song they sing about him ..
Mark: Pretty Boy Floyd?
Steve: Pretty Boy Floyd from Shawnee and of course it was..his being a bad guy was totally unjustified. It was the authorities fault. You know. They spoke rudely to his wife one Saturday afternoon.
Mark: They done him wrong.
Steve: They did indeed. They done him wrong. Whatever the specifics of it was and he had to lay that policeman down. That is how the song goes I think.
Mark: Shawnee is a town?
Steve: Shawnee is a town in Oklahoma.
Mark: Right. ok
Steve: Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Mark: It is an Indian tribe too, isn’t it?
Steve: Yeah. Yes.
Mark: Yeah.

Download the text: The Story of Green Willow (Word doc), by Mark White

at Mark White

Mark: Ok, so I have got my newspaper. I am going to sit down and read the newspaper. I have to find a park. There is a lot of traffic here. There are lots of cars. There is a park over there in front of the city office. I will go and sit there and read my newspaper….OK….Very interesting. Very interesting…Hello!
A Woman in the Park: Hello.
Mark: How are you?
The Woman in the Park: Oh very well thank you.
Mark: Lovely weather.
The Woman in the Park: Oh it is beautiful… What are you doing?
Mark: Just reading the paper. Just relaxing. I am new in town.
The Woman in the Park: Oh wonderful!
Mark: You live here?
The Woman in the Park: Yes, I live just round the corner.
Mark: I have just come from Japan.
The Woman in the Park: Oh Japan!
Mark: I have just moved here.
The Woman in the Park: Very interesting.
Mark: Have you been to Japan?
The Woman in the Park in Front of the City Office: Never. I know very little about it.
Mark: It is a very interesting place.
The Woman in the Park: Sumo wrestling.
Mark: Sumo wrestling. Sushi.
The Woman: Oh yes. Sushi.
Mark: Have you ever eaten sushi?
The Woman in the Park: Well, actually there is a sushi bar here.
Mark: Oh really. Have you tried it?
The Woman in the Park: Yeah I try it regularly.
Mark: Right.
The Woman in the Park: It is not a “Kaiten Sushi“, though. It is just an ordinary very small sushi bar.
Mark: I don’t eat a lot of sushi actually. I like vegetables.
The Woman in the Park: Oh vegetables. We have plenty of those. You might have found out about that.
Mark: Yeah yeah. I have seen there is a lot of fresh fruit too. It is good. It is lovely. This is a lovely place. What do you do?
The Woman: Well, I am a farmer.
Mark: Oh.
The Woman: A farmer’s wife, excuse me.
Mark: Right. OK. And you are at the City office today…You have come in to do some business?
The Woman: Well, Mosquito City isn’t that big.
Mark: Right.
The Woman: So I like to stroll around, you know, interesting atmosphere.
Mark: Right. OK.
The Woman: I know a lot of people here.
Mark: Right OK. That is a lovely duck you have there too. Is that your duck?
The Woman: Yes, that is my duck.
Mark: Right OK.
The Duck: Quack quack.
Mark: Right. OK. Oh well. I think I will go for a stroll.
The Woman: OK. Have a nice day.
Mark: Nice talking to you. Bye.
The Farmer’s Wife: Bye Bye.

at John W

Mark: Ok so. You. So. Misun. You were born in Japan. Is that right?
Misun: Mm. (Yes)
Mark: Where were you born?
Misun: I was born in Osaka.
Mark: In Osaka. In Osaka City?
Misun: Yes.
Mark: How old are you now?
Misun: I am twenty.
Mark: And your mother and father; were they born in Japan?
Misun: Yes, they were.
Mark: In Osaka?
Misun: My father was born in Osaka but my mother was born in Hyogo.
Mark: Uh-huh and excuse me.
(Interruption from third person)
Mark: (to another person) Can you talk to me later? I am doing something now.
(to Misun) ahm so your father was born in Osaka but your mother was born in Hyogo. Where were your mother’s parents born?
Misun: My mother’s father was born in Korea and my grandfather was born in Korea.
Mark: Where in Korea?
Misun: Is it “Cheju-do“?
Mark: Ah the island.
Misun: Yeah.
Mark: Ok ok. How about your mothers parents; where were they born?
Misun: Ah no my fathers parents were born in Cheju-do. But my mother’s father was also born in Cheju-do. But my mother’s father was born in Japan.
Mark: In Hyogo?
Misun: I don’t know.
Mark: Are your grandparents alive?
Misun: (Japanese pause word) Only two grandmothers.
Mark: Right Ok. Do you have a Japanese passport?
Misun: No, I don’t. I don’t have.
Mark: Do you have a Japanese name?
Misun: Family name; I have.
Mark: Can you get a Japanese passport?
Misun: I can(t?). (can? cannot?)
Mark: So you have a Korean passport.
Misun: I have.
Mark: If you …if you change your Korean name and make (a) total(ly) Japanese name, can you get a Japanese passport? Is it possible? Do you know?
Misun: I don’t know.
Mark: Ok. Good. Thanks.

at Myyogaonline

Mark ran into a Japanese guy at a travel agent in Rishikesh.

The Japanese Guy: Do you think I ought to take a local bus all the way?
The Travel Agent: No no no. It is open at five o’clock. Four o’clock. From this time. (There is a direct bus at four or five o’clock)
The Japanese Guy: Today?
The Travel Agent: Yeah, every day.
The Japanese Guy: Every day.
Mark: Where are you going?
The Japanese Guy: Dharamasala.
Mark: Dharamasala.
The Japanese Guy: You been there before?
Mark: No, I want to go.
The Japanese Guy: Too hot right now..here.
Mark: Yeah.
The Japanese Guy: It is no time for yoga now.
Mark: Yeah.
The Guy: I was taking a yoga class.
Mark: Where are you from?
The Japanese Guy: Japan.
Mark: Which part?
The Japanese Guy: Tokyo.
Mark: Right.
Another Customer: Do you how much I can get a…?
The Travel Agent: Seven hundred.
The Other Customer: Seven hundred?
The Travel Agent: Yeah.
The Japanese Guy: (to travel agent) So that is it? Thanks.
Mark: (to the travel agent) Do you have a ticket to…an air ticket from Delhi to Calcutta and also from Delhi to Bangkok?
The Travel Agent: Yes.
Mark: How much?
The Travel Agent: From Delhi to Calcutta and from Delhi to Bangkok. I will check.
Mark: Ok.

at Hobo pd

Miyako: Wow! She speaks really good English!
John: So do you.
Miyako: But she speaks it better than me. She speaks it much better than me.
John: I don’t think so. I think your English is just as good as hers.
Miyako: You’re just being nice.
John: I am not. Your English is great. In fact everybody in Japan speaks great English. People say they speak bad English but it’s not true. People speak great English in this country. I can’t learn any Japanese because everybody speaks such good English and everybody wants to practise their English all the time.

at Skinny Epicurean

Hiroko: Hey, John. It�’s me, Hiroko.
John: Oh, hi Hiroko. What’s happening?
Hiroko: I’m cooking. Do you want to come over to my place for dinner?
John: That sounds great. What are you making?
Hiroko: Korean. Have you ever had Korean food?
John: No, I haven’t. I’ve never tried it? What’s it like?
Hiroko: Well, it’s kind of spicy. It’s like Japanese food only it’s pretty hot.
John: It sounds good. Japanese food can be a bit bland sometimes. I like hot stuff. What time do you want me to come over?
Hiroko: You can come anytime you like. You can come now if you like.
John: All right. I’ll come now. I’ll see you in about an hour.
Hiroko: Okay, see you then.
John: Oh, do you want me to bring anything?
Hiroko: No, just bring yourself.

at james spahr

John: I am lonely. I feel lonely. I feel really lonely. I live in Japan but I don�’t speak Japanese. I study at a Japanese university but I don’t understand anything. People are nice, but I am still lonely. Everybody is kind, but I feel lonely. Miyako is nice, but she has a boyfriend. Yumie is nice, but she has a boyfriend. I want a girlfriend. I need a girlfriend. Where can I find a Japanese girlfriend?
Hiroko: Hello. Who are you? Do you speak Japanese?
John: I speak a little Japanese, but I don’t understand much.
Hiroko: Are you a student?
John: Yes, I am. I study Japanese. Are you a student too?
Hiroko: Yes. Where do you come from?
John: I come from Australia. What do you study and where do you come from?
Hiroko: I study English and I come from Kyushu?
John: What’s your name?
Hiroko: Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Hiroko.
John: It’s nice to meet you Hiroko.
Hiroko: It’s nice to meet you too, John. Sit down.