Don't Bother Me While I'm Eating 食事中は歌うのやめてください

Japanese follows English.  英語の後に日本語が続きます。

Not always but sometimes, men acting as if they were cool and the center of the universe make me sick and an Italian man I saw at an Italian restaurant a couple of days ago is one of them.

He is in his 50s or 60s. He sings off key when customers come in and if they are young girls, never misses the chance to talk to them in Italian or broken English. He also talks to Japanese men and women in English, but not to me who is reading "A Mind To Murder" by P. D. James on Kindle. Does he think that I'm not Japanese? No, it has nothing to with my ability to speak English. It’s just because this guy never wants to talk to customers, but wants them to listen to him. I know of another Italian man of the same type working at another Italian restaurant.

More than ten years ago, I read a news article about men coming from other countries to Japan who misunderstood that they were popular among Japanese women because they were “cool.” Yes, they are popular but not because they are cool, but because they are non-Japanese (but not Chinese or Korean and it’s discriminatory, isn’t it?) and speak, fluently or not, English. The post-war era isn’t over yet. Many Japanese are still awed by those from other countries, gaijin, particularly by Caucasian. I’m not interested in how many Japanese girlfriends they have, but want this Italian guy at the Ginza restaurant to stop singing at least while I’m having lunch.

ちょっと感じ悪いけど、俺が世界の中心だと思っている男性を見るとむかついてしまう。数日前、銀座のイタリアンレストランで見かけたの人のことです。

50代か60代でしょうか。歌っています。音痴です。若い女性が入ってくるとすぐにイタリア語か片言の英語で話しかけ、日本人の男性にも話しかける。でも私には話しかけない。P.D. Jamesの「A Mind To Murder」を読んでいたので、日本人ではないと勘違いされたのでしょうか。

10年以上前、日本に来て突然もてるようになった「勘違い外人(ただし、差別でしょうか、中国人と韓国人は除かれるんですね...)」の記事を読んだことがあります。確かにそういう外人(個人的にこの言葉は好きではないのですが)いますよね。でも「違いますから、あなたがもてるのは外人だからだけですから」と言いたい。まだ戦後は終わっていないのです。今でも日本人、特に女性は白人に弱いです。日本人のガールフレンドを何人作ろうと知ったこっちゃありませんが、私がランチを食べている間は歌うのやめてもらっていいでしょうか、というお話でした。

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