I think I can

 

   This is a huge plate of sashimi that I ate with the help of one other person. For some reason the photo came out poorly, but there are three separate piles of raw fish adorning that gutted fish. To be honest, I can take or leave sashimi. The taste is ok, but the soft texture is pretty gross. I usually enjoy the first slice, and then the rest seem like work. However, people here seem to be under the impression that I love it, and I finally figured out why.

   People love to ask foreigners, “Can you eat [random Japanese food]?” They say, たべれますか？(taberemasuka?). Tabereru is the potential form of the verb Taberu, to eat. The potential form usually means “able to ~.” For example, if you say “Miremasu ka?” (Can you see?) you mean, “Are you physically capable of seeing right now?” So when people ask me if I can eat something, I always interpret it as “Can you eat said food without a) throwing up, b) having an allergic reaction, or c) breaking some religious or philosophical belief?” But I notice that after I say that I can eat something, people usually try to foist lots of it on me. Incidentally, this is the same with alcohol. They’ll ask “Nomemasuka?” “Are you able to drink alcohol?” And I’ll say, “Yeah, I can drink alcohol.” And then they’ll get this big smile and try to bring me drink after drink. Meanwhile, I’ll be thinking, Wait, just because I’m physically capable of drinking doesn’t mean I want to right now.

   Last night, after soldiering through that huge plate of raw fish, all of the evidence finally penetrated my thick skull, and I realized that when people ask you if you CAN eat or drink something, what they actually mean is “Do you LOVE to eat/drink this food?”

   I wish this had been in one of my Japanese textbooks. It would have saved me a lot of unwanted raw fish and Japanese beer.