112. "Hope You Speak Japanese" — An Unexpected Conversation

I considered walking out of a tiny Tokyo restaurant because it felt uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and way too hard to navigate in English. It seemed like every head turned when we walked in, the menu was handwritten in Japanese, and then a “free delicacy” landed on the table that looked like chopped-up worms. That moment could’ve ended with us retreating to the nearest convenience store and calling it a night.

Instead, I took a bite. It was raw baby squid, and it was actually delicious. That tiny choice sparked a conversation with a local man named Hiro and, somehow, turned into the funniest, sweetest connection of our entire Japan trip. We talked, laughed, and even sang Country Roads together when it started playing in the restaurant. It reminded me how rare real connection can be when most interactions as a tourist are quick, polite, and transactional.

You never know what's waiting on the other side of an awkard moment. This episode is a reminder to stay open, say yes, and not walk away too quickly — in travel, in networking, and in life. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more women can find Her Next Chapters. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why We’re Here

Christina Kohl 0:03

Hi, and welcome to Her Next Chapters Podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started. Hi, friends. Welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. I am your host, Christina, and I'm really glad that you're here today. And what I want to talk to you about is a trip that I went on very recently, just um this month in March. It was with my husband and my son, and we were celebrating my son Adam's graduation from college. And what I wanted to share about the trip, because I've been, you know, seeing friends over the last couple of weeks, and now that we've been home, and and I consider you, um, those that listen to this podcast, that you're my friends. I'm talking to you as a friend as I'm talking to up in my office by myself, talking to a microphone. But I I picture us as talking and having a conversation. And my friends had asked me, like, what was your favorite part of the trip? And I was kind of surprised myself, even in answering the question, because we saw so many things. We were in Kyoto for a while. We were in Osaka. We visited Hiroshima and saw the World Peace Museum. I got to see Mount Fuji in person on a clear day without clouds. Um, and you know, we saw temples and things that have been in existence for hundreds of years. Like we saw the oldest, I think it was a temple. It might have been a shrine. And it was uh started in the year 678. So to give you some idea of the history, and then of course, all the modern things in Japan as well, we saw amazing things. And it's hard to pick a favorite out of all of that. But I do have a favorite, and I want to share it with you because it's absolutely none of the things I just mentioned, as amazing as they were. It was, I'm gonna set the scene. So my husband, John, and I were hanging out at the Airbnb while Adam was doing some shopping nearby, and the stores that he was shopping at closed at eight o'clock. And so he gets to the place around 8:30. And I'm telling the guys, like, I'm not even that hungry, but I'll go out with you if you want to go out to eat. And we decided we would go ahead and go out, and we went to the place that's closest to our condo, to the Airbnb, and it was closed because it was late. Like, well, there's another restaurant we can see that it's open, it's down the street. So we kept walking, went into that one. We sit down, we look at the menu. This one had a picture, like very central on the menu, of peanuts. Well, Adam is alergic to peanuts, and he kind of sat back and said, I'm not gonna eat here. I don't trust with the language barrier that I'm gonna get a peanut-free meal. So we got up, used Google Translate to explain why we were leaving. We're walking into our third restaurant of the night, and it's a little farther, a little more off the beaten path, because we we just kept going down the street. And we walked in, and we were the only foreigners in the place. And a lot of these restaurants in Japan, most of the restaurants we went to were tiny. This one probably had maybe four tables and a bar. So we walk in the door and it's like everything went quiet. All the heads turned to look at us, these foreigners walking in, and we hear this voice from a young man up front, and he says, "Hope you speak Japanese." I'm like, Well, we don't. But it was our third restaurant and we didn't see any others around. So, like, we're committed, we're gonna sit down and eat. And we had to use our Google Translate on the phone, so you, which is awesome because if you haven't used it, it's kind of like uh what is that? When you look something up with Google with the picture, it's kind of like that, that you can scan it over the images and it'll read the language for you, which is amazing. Because these menus at this particular location, which I again, foreigners, they don't see non-Japanese speaking people very often. Um, the menu is literally handwritten in Japanese. So we're scanning it, and I just wasn't that hungry. So I wasn't gonna order anything. And so when we asked the guy that asked us about the Japanese, he's the one who actually gave us the menus. He didn't work there, but he was trying to help out. And we let him know, like, hey, we're ready to order. Would you mind helping? And so he took our order, and you know, I think my guys ordered like udon and ramen. And I ordered nothing. I'm like, I'm fine. He's like, no, you have to order something. Come on, if we got sake coming, you gotta order something. I'm like, uh, fine, I'll order the teas. Um, a few minutes later, they came and brought us this little tiny cup. It was maybe three inches in diameter. And she told us that, you know, it's it was free. You know, she knew the word free. And so basically, and then the guy behind me sitting at the bar, so our my back is to him, but he's at the bar, he kind of leaned over and he's like, and he speaks a little bit of English. He's like, it's um, it's a gift and it's a delicacy. And I'm looking at some tone of are gatto, which is thank you. And I look at this little dish, and it's mostly in front of me. And you guys, it looks like chopped up worms. I kid you not. They're it was gray and little little bits and pieces, and it just did not look appetizing at all. And I'm like, okay. Um, in my own mind, this is kind of like a hazing or initiation, um, depending on how you look at it. And I'm like, all right, everyone's watching. I'm just gonna dig in. Like, it's gotta it it's gotta be real food. So surely it's not actually worms, it's gotta be real food. So I dig in with my chopsticks. We we ate with chopsticks for two entire weeks, no forks for two weeks. So I'm glad that I that I know how to use them. So I get my chopsticks and dig them in there, and I take a bite, and it's actually delicious. And it was not worms, it was baby squid all diced up. It was raw, um, which is why it was kind of a grayish color. And this gentleman who's behind me, who like kind of he he spoke the a lot a lot more English than I think anyone else in the place, um, and he looks at me and he's like nodding his head and and he's raising his eyebrows. He goes, tasty, right? And I replied, oishi. And I know I'm probably not saying that correctly, but oishi is the word for tasty in Japanese. I'm like, total oishi. And so then I was like, oh, she knows some Japanese. So not only did I pass the initiation by eating the food that looks like worms, I actually spoke a little bit of Japanese. So I passed, if that's what was actually going on. They I think they were just messing with me. Anyway, it was it was really tasty. It was delicious. But that kind of like started a conversation with the gentleman behind me. And so then he he's asking us like where we're from. And Adam says, America. And he's like, Looks, he'll I wish you could see me. He gives me this look and he's like, yeah, like and pulling his hand towards him, like, okay, more. I obviously I know you're from America. And so I told him Colorado, and he's like, more. So I told him Denver. He goes, Oh, and he starts singing Country Roads. Um, I'm not gonna sing it here because I'm too embarrassed because when I'm singing with someone else, not so bad, but I'm not gonna sing it here. So he starts singing like Country Roads. So I start singing with him. And if you don't know the song, um, to you know, Country Roads Take Me Home to the Place I Belong. And so and the song is actually West Virginia, is how it's it says, but it's sung by John Denver. And so I'm telling you before we get to that part, I'm like, the song says West Virginia, but we say Colorado. And so when he and this guy, this stranger who I don't know, he and I are singing Country Roads, Take Me Home, etc. We're singing that back and forth together in this bar slash restaurant, hole in the hole type of restaurant, hole in the wall just because of the size. And it was just so funny. And you know, it and that was just be this little thing between um turns out his name is Hiro, Hirito, um, between him and I. And then he goes back to the bar talking to his buddies there, that you know, they're all businessmen dressed in suits, very formal. And a few minutes later, Country Roads starts playing on the radio or in the st on the stereo speakers in the restaurants. I look at him and laugh. So then we start truly singing the song out loud. Um, someone had asked me if I'd done karaoke. And I'm like, no, I don't do karaoke. They're like, well, yeah, that's kind of sound like you were doing karaoke, you were singing in a bar. Um, so we're singing Country Roads, like the whole thing, and just really made this connection. And I want to give the context. So the rest of the trip was amazing, right? We're it totally immersed. We're staying in Airbnbs, um, seeing all these sites and had this whole list of places that we went to. And during that two-week period, we of course interacted with people from Japan, but it was more in the in the setting of you know, a waitress who even then, a lot of the times we would just point at what we wanted, and we had very few words with other with people. Like um, we'd say Konichiwa, which is hello, we'd say Arigato, thank you. Kudasai, please. Um, every now and then it asked for water, or tell them that something was tasty. That was kind of like the bulk of my vocabulary. Um, obviously a few more words than that, but that was the most interactions that we had with people, whether they were an Uber driver, a taxi driver, somebody at the train station, or retail or a wait a waitress, wait staff. That was our interaction with people. And so having this this time with this person, with this man, Hirito, um was really special because we had been just the three of us for two weeks and just barely scratching the surface, right? We weren't getting to know people in Japan. And just because he and I were so close, we were probably like a foot away from each other. Um, we just, he just kind of was curious about us. And he wound up joining our table uh over the course of an hour or two. I'm not even sure how long it was that we were there, and we just got to know each other and know him. And it turns out that he had a career in HR and recruiting, and he is now semi-retired, he's on the board and just kind of does, I think he said 10 hours every three months, once a quarter. He works for like a 10-hour project. Um, I'm like, oh, that's perfect. So, you know, yeah, I got to ask him about, you know, more about his life and living in Tokyo, what it's like, and um, and he wanted to know if we'd been to Japan before, and you know, we told him that we're there for Adam's graduation, and he I don't remember the word, but he taught us the word for like being happy and congratulations, and he says it means that we were all very happy. Um, so it was a really neat, sweet interaction. Um and made Japan more real, made Tokyo more real. And I do have to say, when we first sat down at the bar, well, at the table, there were posters behind on the wall behind my husband and son. So what I'm looking at the whole time is, I'm looking at their faces. Right above them, their faces, on the wall are pictures of models, and they might be wearing G-strings, but there wasn't much to it. Literally, like a piece of yarn would have would be the same equivalent of what I was looking at. So I'm looking at two butts on the wall the whole time. Um, that's just kind of the environment that it was. And, you know, when we first sat down, I'm like, I don't know if this is the right place. Like they don't seem like they're accustomed to serving foreigners. Um, it felt uncomfortable. And there's like I said, there's nothing on the menu that stood out to me. But yet we stayed. Because it was our third restaurant. We stayed. And we had this beautiful interaction, um, a fellowship? I don't know the right words. This is beautiful time connecting with another human. His curiosity is what led to the conversation because we weren't going to be like buddying up to people we don't know, we don't know the language. He knew enough of the language that we were able to communicate. And I wound up connecting with him on LinkedIn. And as I was doing that, he's telling me his name. So Horito, and he says, just call me Hiro. I'm your Hiro. So it's easy for me to remember um Hiro. And we wound up getting a picture of him, you know, the four of us, actually. We got a picture of the four of us, and sure enough, there's another butt that shows up in that picture that I didn't know was there is on the sidewall. So it's the four of us and um another model's butt picture. Um, so if I would happen to publish that anywhere like on LinkedIn, I'll be covering up the butt part with something. Um, but we just had such a beautiful time sharing and getting to know each other. And um, you know, he saw that I did the podcast. And so, Hiro, if you're listening, thank you for being the highlight of my trip to Japan. It was a pleasure to get to know you and thank you for spending time with us. Um, but yeah, like he got to see where John works and we got to look up where he works um separately for off of LinkedIn and and saw him on his company's website. So that was it was just really a neat interaction and just felt so authentic. Um, like I said, the all the other interactions we had with Jap with Japanese people were either in passing or were transactional. And this was just an honest, real and fun connection. And I just wanted to share the story, number one, because it's just it's on my mind, um, because it's so recent, but also you just never know where things are gonna lead, right? Had we turned around when somebody says, I hope you hope you speak Japanese, we've been like, oh geez, not the right place for us. Let's go somewhere else. Let's just go to the convenience store. Because I mean the 7-Elevens there, oh my gosh, they're amazing with the amount with the quality of the food and the variety of the food. That was gonna be our next option. But I'm glad that we stayed and that we that I ate what looked like worms, um, showed that I was kind of cool. So I'm glad that we stayed and were able to have that really fun experience getting to know Hiro and him getting to know us. And the the lesson is you never know where things are gonna lead, right? Had we turned around and walked out of there, we probably would have gone to the the quicking mart across the street from our Airbnb and and had a sad, quiet little dinner at our place. But instead, we had a very rich filling. Um, and when I say filling, I don't mean the food. I mean the experience, a kind of a real human connection. That's what it was. It was the human connection is what made it so special. Um, we said we'd be back to the place, but we didn't make it back. We only had a couple days left and we didn't make it back. But I am connected with Hiro on LinkedIn. So I'm gonna send him this podcast um and to say thank you for being curious and being friendly and being open. Um, it really truly was the highlight of the trip. You guys, we almost walked out of that restaurant, or at least I was ready to walk out. It didn't feel comfortable, it didn't feel familiar. We I felt so out of place, but we stayed, even though I was staring at butts over my son and husband's head the whole time. But you know what? It turned into for me the best part of the entire trip. And I keep thinking about how often we do that in other areas of our life, especially in our careers. And we don't want to network, we don't want to be pushy, we don't want to bother people, or we stick to the plan, or we wait until something feels more certain and we miss what could have happened. Because at the end of the day, what made that night so special, it wasn't the food or the place, it was the connection. So if there's anything I'd leave you with, it's this don't underestimate the power of one real conversation. And if you want to have that conversation, you can schedule time with me through the link and the show notes. Well, that is it for this week's episode, my friends. Have a wonderful week, and I will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you. And if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember your story is uniquely your own. And your next chapters are ready to begin.