Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!

Last night, sweaty and flushed after a soak in the onsen, I met a man in the lobby of my gym. He stared at me as I passed and then blurted, “Hello. English?”

I stopped with my arms full of shoes, a sweatshirt, and my gym bag.

“Hello,” I said.

My answer was all he needed to hear.

“Just a minute,” the man said in Japanese.

He pulled out a small notebook and started frantically flipping through the pages. Sitting to the left of us, two old women with beet-red faces cooled down from their dips in the onsen and looked on, amused that a Japanese person was attempting to make contact with the tall, white, silly creature they often see but never dare address. The man finally found the page he was looking for.

“This,” he pointed to the top of the page. “In English? Uhh…you say? In English?”

The words “Pride and Spirit” were written in shaky script above many lines of Japanese. I looked at the man and smiled. This sort of thing happens on occasion in Japan, a country bloated with foreign English instructors. People see white skin and assume it belongs to an English speaker.

I pointed at the words and used my ESL teacher voice—something that sounds like the voice a parent uses with a toddler (minus all the cooing and pet names.)

“This says ‘Pride and Spirit,’ ” I said clearly. Before he asked me to, I repeated it two more times, “Pride and spirit. Pride and spirit.”

The man repeated after me and used gestures to explain that he was a singer and ‘Pride and Spirit’ was the title of a song he wrote. He pointed to the lines of Japanese verse below the title and I could see that the words ‘Pride and Spirit’ were written in as a chorus throughout the song.

“Sing? Pride and Spirit? Like this,” the man said. He started singing “Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!” off-key and heavily accented in the gym lobby. The two old women laughed and the receptionist acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, like the lobby doubled as a concert hall a few times a day without notice.

“No, no,” I said, laughing, “I’m a bad singer. Very bad.”

The man insisted. “Please, you sing. Pride and spirit.” He jabbed his finger at the phrase in his notebook over and over again like a preacher with his bible. His request turned into an order, “You sing. You sing this.”

I looked around. People were coming and going. The old ladies were staring as if they were observing some strange social experiment that could explode in flames or morph into a foreign dance or display of culture at any moment. The receptionist pretended to be interested in her sign-in sheet but I could tell she was listening, waiting.

Tired and ready to go home and eat, I said frankly, “I’m sorry. No. I’m a bad singer.”

The man stared at me with a flat, unshaken expression on his face. My answer was not received or even understood.

“Please, you sing.” He smiled.

Sing or not sing. Sing or not sing. Hmmmm.

Oh fuck it, I thought. Singing the damn thing will be easier than getting my point across to this man—the path of least resistance.

“Priiiiide and spirrrrrit. Priiiiide and spirrrrit,” I sang, feeling faint from the immediate rush of blood to my blushed cheeks and forehead.

The man clapped and said, “Amazing! Amazing!” in Japanese and then tried to imitate my pronunciation and pitch.

“Nice to meet you,” I said and we shook hands.

I walked away and left him singing to his small audience.