Gaijin Jump

By Craig Chapin. First published in November 1987.

Growing up in the United States, I had assumed that stop signs were universally octagonal. It never occurred to me that they might look different in different countries. Of course I did not expect the signs to be imprinted with the English word “STOP,” but I did imagine them to have the same shape and color.

In fact, however, Japanese stop signs look like the picture to the right.

A group of us were walking to someone’s home. We were all relative newcomers to Japan. It didn’t occur to any of us that we didn’t know what a Japanese stop sign looks like until we had significantly overshot our destination. We backtracked but still couldn’t figure out which were the stop signs. In the end, we used the phone at a convenience store to call for further instructions.