But We’re Speaking Japanese!

[Using my wife's account. My 2-factor authentication is out]
I do not speak any Korean, but when we had an engineer from Korea visit my department, I was asked to 'translate' for him . . . when he was speaking English! My ability to decipher his accented English was called into play as we worked out a collaborative project.

I'm originally from South Dakota While in the Air Force, I once performed an honor guard ceremony in north-central Nebraska. Airman Mise, from the Boston area, had such a thick accent that I had to translate all of her food orders at the local Pizza Hut, Boston-English to Rural-Nebraska-English. I thought it was one of the most bizarre experiences in my life, but obviously it's happened to a lot of other people worldwide.

I could really get behind a team named the Ham Fighters.

Had a similiar experience in Japan. My husband and I are American (caucasian) do not speak Japanese, but were traveling with two people who spoke Japanese but are American, not of asian decent.) All four of us were looking at a resturaunt menu sign outside, figured out the food sounded good and decided to go in and order. All of us pretty much knew what we wanted and we had two people who were fluent enough to order dinner. The waitress was insistent that we needed an English menu because none of us were Japanese. Our friends were a little offended because she didn't want to listen to them telling her we were fine without it. This was the one and only time anyone was even somewhat rude about it though.
Typically the waitstaff, and everyone else for that matter, were very helpful and accomodating even when we didn't have our Japanese speaking friends with us. After all, it's not too difficult to point at what you what you want politely, nod and say "hi" with a smile.

OMG! This vid just summarized my last 11 years living in Japan. I just about hurt myself laughing so hard! This was just PERFECT! I LOVE the horrified look on the waitress's face the moment she realizes she has to serve a table full of "gaikokujin" (foreigners)... And then immediately gravitates to the one Japanese-looking person for help. Absolutely spot-on! I've been in this situation too many times to even count.