今日のお昼頃、愛しの旦那様から「新しい部屋決まったよ！」の連絡が来た。詳しく聞いてみると、なんと自分の部屋は4畳半程度の大きさらしく、キッチンとテレビの部屋は大きな部屋で、4人ほどの学生さんとシェアすると言う。 私は自分の耳を疑いたくなったけど、「そういえばこれがカナダ人タリクの普通の学生生活なんやったわ！」と我にかえった。しかも大学時代も友達と部屋をシェアしていたと昔聞いたことがあった事も思い出して納得。
タリクさんには今までけっこう驚かされることが沢山あったので、今回のニュースであまり衝撃は受けなかった。しかも「知子が来たら大きな所に移るって大家さんにもう話しておいたよ」と付け足してくれたので納得できたのかもしれない。 それにしてもやっぱり不可解なのが、外国人はどうして部屋をシェアしたがるの？か。 日本人が共同生活なんてドラマだけの話みたいやけど、外国人にとってはごく普通のことみたいに思える。現にECCのネイティブ講師もルームシェアしている人がたくさんいる。 共同キッチンに共同バスルームに共同テレビ？日本人同士だったら遠慮の塊爆裂で、気軽に料理もできないし、テレビのスイッチも変えられないし、ゆっくりトイレにも入っていられないと思う。 外国人同士は遠慮しないからとは言わないけど、明らかに日本人よりはフランクに自分の意志を主張し合えるから実現できる話なのかもしれない。 ちなみにタリクに今まで一番驚かされたことは、ある日タリクの京都の部屋の冷蔵庫に冷ご飯があり、どうやって食べたのか気になったので聞いてみると、牛乳と砂糖をかけて食べたと言われた。 「うぇー甘いご飯なんて気持ちわる！」っと私が言うと、「じゃあおはぎは何？いなり寿司のご飯はどうして甘いの？」と反論され、「あれは別物」とし言えなかった。あぁ情けない・・・。 これは食文化の違い？人の好みの違い？ Got a good news from my lovely husband today. He found a new place to live in Winnipeg. I asked about the detail and I could not believe what I’d heard from him. He said he is going to live in a 4-mat-size small room and share the kitchen and the TV room with 4 strangers(students). Why on earth does he want to share the rooms? But then I remembered once he was saying that he had some roommate when he was a university student in Waterloo. So I decided to convince myself, ‘ Come on tomoko, this is Gaijin Tariq we are talking about. It’s pretty natural thing! ‘ Since I have been astonished by Tariq so many times until now, I was not so shocked by the news this time. Maybe because he has told the land lord already that he is going to move out when I come and I think THAT helped me to become feeling better. Anyways, I still can’t understand why do foreigners intend to share their rooms with strangers. Room sharing? That would happen only in TV dramas in Japan. But I guess sharing room is pretty common thing to do among foreigners. In fact I know there are many ECC (No-Japanese) teachers who are living in Gaijin houses in Japan. Sharing kitchen,TV room and even washroom? If Japanese share rooms and live in the same house, they wil go crazy in high possibility. They will have to care who’s cooking and they’ll be frustrated by being not able to cook anytime they want, as well as changing TV channels and washroom hours. I am sure most Japanese people are reserved and they avoid to express their own feelings directly to others. I reckon that’s one of the reasons which makes Japanese dislike the idea of room sharing. Of course I’m not saying all the foreigneres are unreserved but they can insist their own ideas or feelings each other more frankly compared to Japanese. By the way, as I wrote above, Tariq has surprised me a lot before and that reminded me of one story. Once there was some cold rice in the fridge as a left over from the night before. I was curious how he ate the rice so asked, “How did you cook and eat the cold rice?” “With some surgar and milk” answered Tariq and I said ” THAT’S GROSS!” Then he went on the counterattack, saying ” What about OHAGI?” which is a rice cake with bean jam, “And Inari-zushi?”, sweet fried bean curd stuffed with sweet sushi rice. I couldn’t say anything but “Oh they are exceptions.” Is this cultural difference? Or pesonal taste difference?
Recent Comments