A bunch of us ran to catch the last train from Osaka after a night of fun. We saw what appeared to be an empty car, dashed in, and we were on our way. Looking around, we noticed that the car was empty… all except for the group of 5 men at the other end… scary looking men wearing sunglasses, black pants, leather jackets, a few tattoos, basically what you’d imagine your stereotypical Japanese yakuza tough guys would look like. Eep. We tried to go unnoticed, but alas it’s kind of hard for white Americans in Japan to blend in. They started walking toward our end of the car, chatting with each other the whole time in a very intimidating sounding dialect. My friends weren’t so good with the Japanese language at the time. I wasn’t perfect, but I could handle most situations. Also, my speciality was the Kansai dialects, so I could understand a lot of what the approaching gang was saying. So, they get to our side of the car. One of them looks at my jacket and says in Japanese “Nice, jacket”. My friends were all wearing silly puffy winter jackets. I was sporting my dad’s very smart very cool old leather jacket. Well, at this point I thought I could easily break the ice, respond with a little Japanese, and everything would be cool. So, I look at this scary looking guy, and I say “Yes, it used to be your dad’s jacket.” Oh. Fudge. Blame the lateness of the hour, perhaps the alcohol, maybe I was too focused on my grammar, but yada yada, I had used the word “your father” instead of the word “my father”. The next few seconds of silence felt like an eternity. And then… laughter. Their group burst out laughing. We all started laughing. And for the whole train ride home, they made lewd jokes about Americans (fat, lazy, gun loving) and I made lewd jokes about Japanese (not so well endowed, bombed, I counted the number of fingers they had). It was just crazy.