The Ducklings Take Manhattan

Sometime last winter, I was teaching a semi-private class consisting of three girls in their early 20s. The class is very beginner, so conversations usually consisted of them filling in the blank, practicing a few times, and then trying to say the sentence without reading it off the board. One particular Wednesday evening, the sentence was this:

I really want to visit _________.

All three girls filled in the blank with New York (pronounced New Yol-ku) with a surprising amount of enthusiasm (read squealing, bouncing and clapping). Whenever I find a topic that interests my students this much, I stick to it since my job is to keep them talking. So, I asked some follow-up questions:
"Have you ever been to New York?"
"No. I want to go to New York!"
"Have you ever been to America?"
"No, I want! でもう,あの。。。(but, um...)
(frantic typing in dictionary)
"I am Scary! Not good English. Scary."

This made perfect sense to me, so after class when we went out for a few drinks, I told them (in Japanese) that they should come to the States while I'm home on vacation. I volunteered to pick them up at the airport, show them around for a few days and translate to the best of my ability. The girls took me up on the offer and about 8 months later, I watched them bounce single file out of the terminal gate at JFK.

I only had three and a half days to show them America. This was a lot of pressure since it was a life long dream to come here, and I was on tour guide and translating duty. I gave it a lot of thought and in the end we ended up basically splitting the trip into thirds between Manhattan, Philadelphia and Ocean City, NJ (my Dad's). I can honestly say, I don't think I could have given them a better taste of the US in three days without the use of a private jet. The saw some ideal, some normal, some scary, some inexplicable. All in all, a fairly accurate sub-section of the American experience.

Along with my friend Masako in tow for translation assistance, we all piled into the car and started their first full day in the States. Day one was spent on my Dad's beach, or as some call it, Corson's inlet, in Ocean City. The stars really aligned for me and we had a "perfect 10" beach day. Perfect weather, clear water, great breeze, good sailing and DOLPHINS! We piled 7 people in total onto two catamarans, went about a mile off the coast, and had all jumped in for a swim when I caught a splash out of the corner of my eye in the distance. I pointed it out to my Dad and we watched for a few seconds before realizing it was a pod of dolphins. We jumped back on the boats and headed in their direction. Within minutes both boats were surrounded by 15-20 dolphins within a few feet of the boat. They looked at us, we looked at them, and after a few minutes they dove and went on about their day. I've lived at the beach all my life and that is the best dolphin encounter I've ever had. I felt so lucky that it happened while I was proudly showing off my home town to my students.

Masako playing in the surf

For dinner we unabashedly made the most stereotypical American Barbecue we could imagine. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw and potato chips served on American Flag place mats. We really drove the point home.

Yuri's Big Bite

That night we took them to the Ocean City boardwalk for a little of that 1950's "apple pie" America that still exists in small pockets like this one. We rode the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, looked out at the dark ocean from the music pier and of course had some Kohr Brothers ice cream. The girls did some souvenir shopping and all three of them fell asleep in the car on the way home.




The next morning, Dad and I were sitting at the breakfast table discussing the plan for the morning. The girls wanted to take a ride on the Harley, and my Dad thought it would be fun to teach them how to shoot the bb gun just to round out the American rites and rituals. I suggested he take Miku first, and then realized he couldn't tell them apart from his expression. I wasn't surprised, even in Japan these three are impossible to tell apart. They are all the same height and build, have all dyed their hair the same red/brown color, have the same basic hair cut, wear their make-up the same way, and sound identical. My Dad and Cheryl had been doing fine telling the girls apart based on what they were wearing, but needed a refresher course on names and which color they were wearing now that it was a new day. I had no sooner finished the thought when I heard Dad mutter "oh hell..." under his breath. I turned to see that the girls were awake and had lined up behind me, wearing identical dresses bought at the boardwalk the evening before. To illustrate that Japanese conformity knows no geographical limits, Masako unknowingly arrived a few minutes later in her own very similar orange dress. Dad promptly gave up on addressing them individually, and they became "the ducklings."
I dare you not to come up with the same association when you see three girls, a fraction of my height, dressed identically in yellow and orange, following Masako and me in single file and nodding in unison when we spoke.

My Ducklings: Saki, Miku and Yuri

That morning we fed the ducklings some eggs, toast and scrapple and then spent a few hours taking pictures while they posed with Dad's car collection, shot at bottles and cans with the bb gun and took turns going for rides on the back of a Harley.









We did the standard Philadelphia tour that afternoon, City Hall, Independence Mall, the Bell, cheesesteaks, etc. Then my friends who had recently moved back to the States after two years in Japan joined us at the Piazza for a Mexican Dinner. Next was the grand finale: New York City.
We stayed in a hotel right on Times Square. From there the super rapid Manhattan tour included Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Soho, The East Village, and a boat tour around the island.

Masako wasn't able to come along to New York, so I was on my own to translate. The boat tour proved to be a mental decathlon, keeping up with the tour guide's speech over the speakers, pointing things out and getting the point across in Japanese before the next point of interest came up. I did pretty well, although my descriptions were less than complete. For example, when we reached the part of the Hudson River where Captain Sullenburger performed that miracle emergency landing, I listened to the tour guide's description and then (in Japanese) said this:

"Ummm, here, on this river, at this place, there was a plane. Remember? A few months ago there was a plane. The plane had a problem. Big problem. How do you say, how do you say...Emergency!! Plane went down. Here on the river. Captain Sullenburger. Do you know that name? On the television? Plane was emergency. Plane down on this river here, rescue from that pier over there. Everybody ok. totally ok. Remember that?"

Towards the end of that fine speech, Yuri came to my rescue and put the clues together. She explained it perfectly in Japanese as I nodded enthusiastically and made mental notes (Oh, is that how you say that..) and then before I could take a breath, we were onto the next thing that needed translating. You can imagine the headache I had when we finally stepped off the boat after circling the entire island of Manhattan, Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty.
The Ellis island speech went like this:

Umm, In Japan, everybody is from Japan, but in America everybody came here from, you know, far away. So, in the beginning, people came here, that island first. They had to go. That island is the entrance. America's entrance. Some people changed their names. Doctors, and papers and very crowded. Very important island for America. Ellis island.

I dragged them around New York at a break neck pace for another 8 hours, let them sleep, and then woke them up at 7 for breakfast in Central Park before their flight. We grabbed coffee and bagels from a street vendor, took a carriage ride to a good picnic place, watched the commuters hustle to work and reflected on the past three days. I bought some soft pretzels, wrapped them up for the plane ride, and then put my three crying duckings in a cab for JFK.

About 18 hours later I got an email in English.

Gail! We returned to Tokyo now! We love New York and Philadelphia and the Ocean City. We love John and Cheryl. We love You! Thank you! Thank you to Masako. Also, we eated soft pretzel. We love soft pretzel. Thank you Thank you Thank you- Miku, Yuri, Saki