Miscommunication and Servanthood
What is the connection between trying to order a sausage as a side dish at a pancake restaurant in Japan and servanthood? Would you say that they are totally unrelated?
I grew up in Japan many years ago, the daughter of missionaries, and returned ten years ago as a missionary myself. The fact that I came back to live and work here is evidence of God’s grace and patience because, like many missionary children, I struggled with identity issues when I was a high-school student after my family had returned to the United States. I had no desire to become a missionary like my parents, particularly not one to Japan! I did teach English in Japan for a few years but without the label of missionary. Even so, I struggled to balance my identity as an American with trying to fit into Japanese society.
Over the past ten years, I have been able to live in Japan with a sense of freedom to be who I am, without needing to try to perfectly fulfill the expectations that I used to think applied to me. I have come to realize that my Japanese friends and neighbors, particularly those in the church, are much more willing to excuse the missteps and misunderstandings that I make as a foreigner than I had given them credit for. When I have done something that really offended someone, I have been able to ask for forgiveness and have been forgiven.
Within this new-found freedom, I have been able to relax in the face of the frequent miscommunications arising from my “fluent broken” Japanese. But the freedom to accept myself as a foreigner, without feeling guilty about not measuring up to Japanese standards, has led to a different miscommunication problem. It is very different from the kind caused by linguistic deficiencies; rather than failing to communicate a message, I communicate something quite plainly and later regret it very much. I do it not just through words, but also through actions and attitudes.
Which brings me to pancakes and sausages. In May, an American friend and I celebrated her birthday by going out for breakfast. Eating breakfast out is very popular in America, and we Americans are very attached to our way of doing breakfast. My friend suggested a very trendy pancake restaurant that opens at ten in the morning, which is early enough to classify as breakfast time for us.
Most of the menu items were dessert pancakes, but two or three items combined savory foods with pancakes, including one with a nice big sausage. That sausage caught my eye because in America sausages or bacon usually accompany pancakes for breakfast. So, when I gave my order—a custard pudding and a side of ice cream—I asked the waitress if I could also order a single sausage on the side. As I made that request, I was prepared to be turned down as I have found most Japanese restaurants are inflexible about their menus. But, I have kept on trying. It’s been my little campaign to get restaurants here to do things the way restaurants do in my country.
The waitress looked surprised but replied that she would ask. She returned with the message that it would be possible. I was elated and told her how happy I was and how rare it was for a restaurant in Japan to be so flexible. But when my friend also asked for a sausage with her order, the waitress looked really taken aback and again said she would have to ask. When she left us, my friend and I looked at each other in amazement and wondered why it should be allowed for one customer but not the other. In the end, neither of us was allowed to order a sausage on the side.
We both had a good laugh about it, partly out of amusement, partly out of chagrin, and, I am ashamed to say, on my part, partly out something uncomfortably like scorn. We were genuinely puzzled about what had gone wrong linguistically, though we had both had similar experiences where we had seemed to be communicating but the end result was not what we had expected. The incident nagged at me for the rest of the day. It had definitely been awkward for the waitress and had made my friend and me feel very much the foreigners. I felt guilty. Some of the guilt probably came from residual “third-culture kid” issues that still occasionally pop up where I feel guilty for “acting American.” At the pancake restaurant, I had acted like an American for sure. This example is probably more benign than some other cases where I truly offended people by showing my anger or being too direct in my criticisms. I have had to apologize on several occasions for such responses. In this case, we were able to smooth over the awkwardness with pleasantries.
However, I understood later that the main source of my guilt lay somewhere else. It had to do with servanthood. If I am here in Japan as a servant of Jesus Christ, how did I communicate my servanthood to the waitress? Or did I communicate instead an attitude that my country’s way of doing things is far superior? In the Japanese context, surely my trying to persuade the restaurant staff to change their practices came across as arrogant or condescending. If I had had a different focus, perhaps I would have found a way to share, at least indirectly, a bit of the gospel with the waitress.
Communication is at the heart of what a missionary is all about. A missionary is a “sent one,” sent out with a message from the King, the good news of Jesus Christ. Part of the message is illustrated when we show the love of God to people by demonstrating a servant’s heart, just as Jesus “came not to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45).
I have the right to enjoy my own culture, to do things such as eating sausage with pancakes, but I also have the privilege of setting aside my own cultural needs in order to communicate as well as I can with the people of Japan. I can surely share the positive experiences of my culture with people as a way of sharing myself with them, but my attitude at the pancake restaurant was a demanding one, not a giving one.
I may not have gotten what I asked for that morning at the pancake restaurant, but I am glad for having had my eyes opened to see how my attitude toward my cultural identity is connected to servanthood. It is one more thing that I need to submit to the Lordship of Christ in order to be the best servant of His that I can.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_importância_de_escutar.png
