{"id":15587,"date":"2010-12-16T10:59:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T14:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=15587"},"modified":"2010-12-16T10:59:45","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T14:59:45","slug":"justin%e2%80%99s-japan-interview-with-%e2%80%98fried-chicken-and-sushi%e2%80%99-cartoonistjet-alum-khalid-birdsong-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/16\/justin%e2%80%99s-japan-interview-with-%e2%80%98fried-chicken-and-sushi%e2%80%99-cartoonistjet-alum-khalid-birdsong-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin\u2019s Japan: Interview with \u2018Fried Chicken and Sushi\u2019 Cartoonist\/JET Alum Khalid Birdsong: Part 2 of 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Khalid Birdsong at work. (Courtesy of K. Birdsong)<\/p><\/div>\n

By<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong> JQ magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Justin Tedaldi<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his NY Japanese Culture\u00a0page <\/strong><\/em>here<\/strong><\/em><\/a> to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For Fried Chicken and Sushi<\/em>, was it a conscious decision to make the lead character black? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, definitely. I\u2019m obviously an African American, and I think that I was concerned because I thought, is anybody going to want to read about this black guy going to Japan? I felt like I wanted to be true to who I am, and there\u2019s a certain kind of way of being able to comment on race, the way that we perceive and look at people. When you go to Japan, they don\u2019t really care who you are, you\u2019re just a foreigner. So it\u2019s a different kind of perception, and I really like that idea. If I keep Karl as black, I can have things that I think about that can be a whole lot easier to write, but I think it would be an interesting thing that you don\u2019t see very often.<\/p>\n

What kinds of crazy situations did you observe in Japan regarding Japanese people\u2019s impression of you? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Where do I start? One thing in general is that everyone would ask me questions about America as if everyone in America does the same thing, you know? Since the Japanese people have a shared history and are all kind of the same race, they say, \u201cWell, what is it like in America<\/em>?\u201d and \u201cWhat do families eat for dinner in America<\/em>?\u201d, and it\u2019s always so difficult to answer those questions because I have to say, well, it depends\u2014we have a lot of cultures and so everybody\u2019s different, and people celebrate different things. So that always would frustrate me because they want to generalize and put us all into one box, and it was hard to do. I always found that to be funny and I would start laughing when they would ask me those questions and look at me strangely: \u201cWhy are you laughing? This is a very serious question!\u201d<\/p>\n

What were some of the funnier or grossly inappropriate things that you experienced there that may or may not make the cut for future episodes of Fried Chicken and Sushi<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019ll put this one in there\u2014I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m the only one where this happened\u2014but a lot of students always are asking if you have a girlfriend or something like that. But I would have several students come up to me and ask if I had a lover<\/em>, like, \u201cDo you have a lover?\u201d And I always would say, \u201cUhh\u2026well, no<\/em>.\u201d It was just the kind of English that they would use. I\u2019m sure that you remember that there were just certain words that were always just a little different, and it would make me laugh all the time when they asked me that question, which I would always get.<\/p>\n

Did you find yourself in the situation of having to educate your students on certain cultural things?<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the time. About America, and talking about holidays and what people do, just like the whole Christmas thing, like, \u201cHow do you celebrate Christmas?\u201d, you know? \u201cChristmas is not for lovers in America and we have family over.\u201d That kind of explanation would go on and on. Certain things, even racial issues\u2014they would learn about Martin Luther King and then they felt like there were no problems for black people in America anymore because of Martin Luther King, and everyone\u2019s treated equally all the time in America. So there are a lot of cultural issues that I would try to discuss and help them to understand. Also, even though we have things that are different, there\u2019s things that are the same, too. They always wanted to know what\u2019s different, but I tried to say that things are still the same. We have families that we love and we like to celebrate and laugh and eat, and so I think that was allowed because they want to act like we\u2019re so different and no one\u2019s like Japanese people, but we actually do share things in common just as people.<\/p>\n

How about race-related questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just being tall and getting the students who were just shocked at how tall I was, I got that all the time: \u201cOh, dekai<\/em>! Se ga takai<\/em>!\u201d, \u201cyou\u2019re so tall,\u201d and everything. They thought that I played basketball, and I really, really suck at basketball [laughs<\/em>]; it\u2019s really embarrassing. So I was leaving school one day and the kids were out playing basketball, so of course they called me over, \u201cOh, Birdsong-sensei, please shoot the basket.\u201d So I thought, okay, sure\u2014I knew I was going to miss, and they\u2019ll see how much I suck, and it\u2019ll be great. So of course I shoot it, and of course I make it, and they\u2019re all like, \u201cWOAH! You\u2019re the greatest!\u201d [laughs<\/em>] Here we go, living up to the stereotype. Those things didn\u2019t happen much, but they would happen on occasion, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/em><\/strong><\/a> for the rest of the interview.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JQ magazine\u2019s\u00a0Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his NY Japanese Culture\u00a0page here to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories. For Fried Chicken and Sushi, was it a conscious decision to make the lead character black? Of course, definitely. I\u2019m obviously an African American, and I think that I was concerned because I thought, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,340,304],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-justins-japan","category-notable-jet-alums"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-43p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15587"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15593,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15587\/revisions\/15593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}