Gaijin Jump

By Craig Chapin. First published in July 1987.

This was the very first Gaijin Jump comic strip. And, yes, this incident really did happen. I had arrived in Japan only a couple of weeks earlier and had had only a few lessons of survival Japanese.

The phrase I used was “Seiko-san wo kudasai.” I had learned to use this construction to ask for things, so when someone else answered the phone, I figured that I could use it to ask for Seiko. Unfortunately, the only time one ever asks for a person using this phrase is when one asks a man for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

The man on the other end of the line was understandably surprised. Not knowing what else to say, I just kept repeating the phrase more and more insistently: “Seiko-san wo kudasai. Seiko-san wo kudasai!”

As they say, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.