Gaijin Jump
By Craig Chapin. First published in February 1993.
There was a long break between the previous comic strip and this one. I spent the years in between mostly in the United States. Friends, however, continued to ask for more of Gaijin Jump, so when I returned to Japan, I took up my pen again.
I think I can safely reveal that that woman on the left is Michi Hattori, who gave “Sarah” and me Japanese lessons once a week for a while. “Sarah” knows who she is, and her identity shall remain confidential for my sake. Actually “Sarah” was a good sport but was kind of shocked when the words escaped my lips.
“Come” (kuru) is one of the few irregular verbs in Japanese, but I can’t blame my mangling of it entirely on its irregularity. I had no idea how to construct the form I needed, and for some inexplicable reason I enlisted the plain past tense (kita) to talk about the future.
The word kirei can mean either beautiful or clean, and for a while I assumed that the word kitanai could mean either dirty or ugly. This turns out not to be the case, so at least I didn’t call “Sarah” ugly. It could have been worse.
Right? Sarah?
