No Barrier Language

Something worth to tell happened on my stay at my hostel in Napoli. Once I arrived, I was assigned to an empty dorm room. An hour later, the girl working at the reception came in with a Japanese guy and I immediately understand that he couldn’t speak English. In any case I welcomed him in the room and in Napoli, just few words that maybe he didn’t really understand. We tried to have a sort of conversation using 10 English words and lot of hand signs. Tourists in Italy can always count on signs, we are famous for that! I understood that this was his first time abroad (or at least his first time in Italy), he came from Tokyo, he traveled from north to south of Italy and his next destination was Palermo, city that he would reach with a night ferry. He loved Italian food, but missed Japanese food too. I told him that in the last months I planned a trip to Japan (where eventually I didn’t go), that it was one of my dream trip. We talk for a while, we made an effort to understand each other and tried to formulate a concept in many different ways. I gave him some suggestions to places to visit in Napoli and how to get from place to place. I taught him some English and Italian words, He taught me some Japanese words.

The day after, he came back in the hostel after visiting the city. He came to me and told me in English ‘’present for you’’. He had in his hand blue bag with something inside. I wasn’t sure if I’ve understood, so I asked him again if it was really for me. I was very surprised, didn’t expected at all to receive a present from a guy I didn’t really know, that I just met the day before. I opened it and inside there was a book about Japan – Landscape, Soul and Traditions. On the first page he wrote ‘’Thank you so much. I was glad that you talked to me there. Vieni a giocare anche in Giappone!!!’’.  Probably someone in the book store helped him to write it or he translated it using some automatic translator from the internet, his English or Italian wasn’t that good. He completely surprised me. Than he gave me another package with a Japanese Fragrance. Without any other words, I started thanking him, in English, in Italian and even in Japanese! He wanted to thank me just because I tried to communicate with him, because I really tried. From what I understand, since the beginning of his trip in Italy, not so many people tried to talk to him. Probably, I just identified myself in him. As I said, not long time ago I planned a trip to Japan and knowing that English is not a very common language there, I was a little bit concerned about my communication skill in that country. I even tried to study a little bit of Japanese through Youtube lessons, but I without many results.

When I traveled in South America, I had the huge advantage to understand the language. I’ve never studied Spanish, but it’s so similar to Italian that I could understand and I could talk with local people from the beginning of the trip. With the time I learned more and more, but I saw many tourists struggling with the language barrier. Knowing the local language, not only make your trip much easier, but open up to you so many opportunities to get to know the place, the people, the traditions, to make new local friends, to contract with vendors, to read signs in the street, to understand a travel guide, or just to chat with people.

I was afraid that going to Japan without knowing Japanese I would lose these advantages. Of course this would not stop me from visiting a country and my Japanese friend was the proof that you can enjoy traveling even if you can’t speak the local language or English. He probably felt a little bit lonely and in need to talk with someone and he really appreciated the fact that I tried no matter if sometimes it took us a while before we could understand each other.

We spend the rest of the evening reading the book he gave me. It was in English, with titles both in English and Japanese. We talked about it for hours. The morning after we were both leaving: me going to another hostel in Napoli and him going to Palermo. I was going to thank him again for the present, but he thanked me even more and more.

Arigato gosaimas!