The Language Barrier

He and I don’t speak the same language.

He is a 34-year-old Japanese man, and a brilliant chef to the downtown Ramen-Ya. He only understands Japanese.

I am a 23-year-old white woman going to college for a business degree. I don’t know a second language.

The only communication I have with him, as a waitress in his restaurant, is through the tickets I write the customer orders on. #1, #15 large, #8…Takeshi knew the menu by heart, so he didn’t mind that I was presenting only numbers to him.

“Ear-rash-ma-say.” Every work day, I’d butcher the Japanese greeting, and I’d try not to grimace when I see the smirk on his handsome face. But, since the day I started working, Takeshi never spoke to me. There were other wait staff, like Rudy, who could do some translation for me. He’d speak to his kitchen staff, and his deep, melodious voice suited his appearance so well: a medium build, short black—but graying—hair that is hidden behind a crimson red bandana, and a pair of toned arms and hands. He always wore long sleeves to work, and at the end of the work day, he would roll up his sleeves and lean against the kitchen counter with his tired head in his hands. Both arms were covered in tattoos; perhaps he was embarrassed to show them.

Somewhere in between the busy kitchen counter and the dining area, I started to really like him. But, I couldn’t have picked a more challenging prospect for a date. How exactly do you ask someone out on a date if you don’t speak his language?

On my first attempt to ask Takeshi on a date, I stupidly wrote the word “date” on an order ticket, in English, and presented it to him in hopes that he might be able to understand it. When he narrowed his eyes in a quizzical manner at the ticket, I knew I didn’t reach him.

On my second attempt, I played charades. I used my hands to motion as though I were eating out of a bowl. But, this was a terrible thing to do while standing inside of his restaurant. Takeshi must have understood this to mean that I wanted him to make me something because he then nodded and began making me a bowl of his signature ramen dish.

Rudy must have caught on because he pulled me to the side one day and asked if he could help translate. As convenient as that would be for me, I knew I couldn’t rely on Rudy. Would I need Rudy at the date to translate for us as well? That would be ridiculous. No, I needed to do this on my own.

I didn’t get a third attempt, though. On one particular Saturday, Rudy called me to say that I needed to cover his shift, but only for the last four hours of the service. I figured Rudy had an emergency, and I went in at about five in the evening. But, the restaurant was closed. There was a sign hanging on the front door that said so.

“Is everything ok? The shop’s closed,” I said on the phone to Rudy.

“It’s not. Go on in,” He replied.

I never would have guessed that I would be walking into a date with Takeshi: he closed the restaurant on his busiest day of the week just for me. He came out from the kitchen with a smile on his face while I looked at him in a confusing manner. Takeshi motioned to a table—the only table in the entire restaurant that had silverware, glassware, and napkins laid out. There was even a small lit candle in the center.

I gave a nervous chuckle. I didn’t know what to say to him because there was nothing I could say that he would understand. I merely smiled and took a seat at the table. I thought he’d treat me to more ramen, but instead, he reached behind him for two take-out boxes. He laid one in front of me, and the other in front of him. Before any one picked up a fork, I immediately stood to fetch us some cups for water, seeing as how there weren’t any. But, Takeshi held up the palms of his hands to stop me, as if knowing what I was going to do. He left the table for the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Merlot and two wine glasses. He popped the cork and grinned as he poured me half a glass.

I was just dying to communicate with him somehow. I wanted to know how he read my mind. It was then Takeshi sat down and began tapping away on his smartphone. After looking at it for a few seconds, he placed the phone down in front of me and turned it to face me. He had written something in Japanese, but it had been translated to English with the use of a translation software. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?

“I hope you like Italian,” he wrote. I grinned as I took out my own cellphone. This would probably be the only time where using a cellphone while on a date was encouraged.

“Yes,” I wrote back. “Is this a date?”

“Is that ok?”

“Of course!” I chuckled while typing this. “Do you know the difficulty by which I thought to ask you date with me?” It would seem that the translation wasn’t entirely accurate, and it took Takeshi a few extra seconds of reading to finally understand what I was getting at.

“The other day, Rudy told me you wanted to ask me on a date,” he wrote back.

Rudy spilled the beans, but boy was I glad he did or else I probably would not have succeeded in asking Takeshi on a date.

After I began to type into my phone to respond, Takeshi immediately added something else: “I was a bit surprised. You are really cute.”

Immediately, I felt my face turn red and my body a few degrees warmer. I suddenly became that giggling young school girl again, and it was like I was climbing the stairs to reach cloud nine.

“I always thought you were so handsome,” I wrote back.

Perhaps it was Takeshi’s turn to blush—or maybe I assumed he blushed by reading his body language: he smiled and then rubbed the lower half of his face with one hand. After a moment, he leaned back against his chair, his eyes on the phone while he then rubbed the back of his neck. Slowly, his eyes turned to me. There were no exchange of words in this moment; we simply smiled at one another. Finally, after a minute of silence, he remembered we had food sitting in front of us. Takeshi nodded to the dish and said, perhaps the only English word he knew, “eat.”

We could have gone for hours without eating, and I wouldn’t have minded. I sipped some Merlot first, savoring this long awaited moment. With a fork in hand, I started on my now lukewarm alfredo pasta. Perhaps it was the language barrier that kept us quiet as we ate, but I sat at the table in comfortable silence, hearing only the occasional sound of our silverware scraping against the styrofoam box.

Not too much longer, I felt the inevitable disappointment of our date coming to an end: we both finished our food, the Merlot was no longer in our glasses, and the translation software reached its limitations. I want to go on another date with Takeshi. Truth be told, I want more than just another date with Takeshi. I want to hold his hand, hug and kiss him, and carry a conversation with him. But, getting there was a separate hurdle. I have to first communicate.

“Ari-goto.” I tried to thank him in Japanese as I stood by the restaurant’s door.

“Arigato,” Takeshi corrected with a smile.

I could only chuckle in response, knowing that I wasn’t very good at pronouncing Japanese words. Afterwards, we stood in silence, but we both looked at each other as if there was something on the tip of our tongues just waiting to come out. Eventually, I mustered the courage to hug him; he smelled like delicious food. Takeshi rewarded my courage with a kiss on my hand. He said something else in Japanese. Though he didn’t translate it, it was ok. I didn’t need to know then what he said to me. The soft tone of his voice and the gentle gaze of his eyes told me all that I needed to know. Silly me. There was no language barrier between us after all.