the joke that doesn't die
As much as I may have gotten a kick out of the fact that my name is "bu-ree-toe" in Japan, I forgot that it has more significance here at home, and unfortunately it's not something I can get away from. For one thing, it's written on my karate gi, but at least only a limited few can read that. Then there are those who read the j-land adventures and like to tease me about it. But now there's a whole new crop o' kids who are getting a kick out of it; Mesa College Japanese 102. My teacher didn't know how to pronounce my last name; I got the lame Japanese way, "toe-roe-jee", and when I protested to that, she attempted the Italian/Japanese way which ended up something along the lines of "toe-weezy". WHO?! I told her it was okay to go by my first name, and she said "bu-ree-toe?". Unfortunately my "hai, soo desu." was drowned out by the waves of laughter flooding the room as people 'got it.'

I guess this makes up for all those failed elementary school taunts where they tried to make fun of my name by rhyming the only things limited grade-school vocabularies could match, specifically "Brittan Mitten" and "Brittan Kitten". That hurts, kids. That really gets me deep.