Offense

I was offended for the first time a few days ago. At lunch, a second-year boy started talking about his trip to America. He had gone to St. Louis and New York with his elementary school baseball team. I was really excited to talk with him until he started saying, "Big Boy," and "Big Girl," and holding his arms in a wide circle around his torso. It is no secret that Americans are much bigger than Japanese people, and I've had many interesting conversations about this fact with many Japanese people, but the thing that bothered me was that all the students at the table, and the classroom teacher as well, started laughing really hard as the boy continued to gesture. Now, I do have to take into account that I could have misunderstood what they were laughing and talking about (they were speaking in Japanese, of course), but it really seemed like they were laughing at obesity in America. It was the first time I became offended by Japanese people making fun of American culture. I guess I just hope I misunderstood them and was being overly sensitive.