Knowing An Unusual Language Is Apparently Very Interesting To Strangers

Something I've noticed lately is that understanding Japanese makes strangers want to talk to you. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not.

The first time it happened was in a charity shop, which, bizarrely, had two Shakespeare plays in Japanese in the book section. Naturally, I couldn't resist having a look, so I picked one up and tried reading the first page. I could hardly understand a word of it, but halfway into the first speech I heard a man behind me say "Oh wow! I just realised, that's Othello in... in..."

"Japanese, yeah," I said quickly, sensing an all-too-common inability to differentiate between East Asian languages.

"Japanese, wow. Are you fluent?"

"Ha ha. Not nearly. Two years into a degree in it."

"Amazing. Have you ever been?"

"... no, but I'm going soon for a year."

"A year! Goodness! Well, good luck with that! Japan. Wow."

Now I thought it was a little unusual for a complete stranger to suddenly be so interested in my life. But no, it happened again on a train a couple of weeks later. I was sitting at one of the 4-seater tables, and a man was sitting opposite. I got out a Japanese manga (cartoon) magazine I'd bought earlier and started to read it.

Usually with these magazines I get a few interested looks from the people opposite. Sometimes you can tell they're dying to ask what language it is and why I can understand it, but until this moment no-one had spoken up. Then, suddenly,

"Is that Japanese? Or Chinese?"

"Japanese."

I put my headphones pointedly back in my ears, but he didn't get the hint.

"Do you speak it?"

I told the story as quickly as possible and put my headphones back in. No, he wasn't finished. He didn't stop asking me about it until there was nothing more to know.

Sometimes I enjoy telling people about what I do. I don't mind telling people what language it is and why I can speak it, but I don't want to make a habit of telling my life story to complete strangers.

I suppose it's going to be worse when I'm there.