Over the weekend, I went shopping with students from Shimane
University here in Tyler at the Broadway Square Mall. This is not the first
time I went shopping with students from Matsue, but this group of students was
different than the first group I escorted to the mall. It was a new experience
for me entirely.
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| The infamous Octo-Cutie |
The first group of students (Group
A) had both young men and women in it and they were randomly divided amongst us
eager GATE students by whoever wanted to go to which store and who showed up at
what time. When my group first showed up to the mall, our advisor Ashley
instructed us to find the Shimane students in Buildabear. This baffled us, but
once we got to Buildabear, we found our pair of students to show around the
mall. One was quite puzzled as he looked at a pink octopus/squid hybrid with
lollipop wings and the other student was standing beside him holding a little
skeleton costumed hedgehog as though trying to understand why in the world such
things would exist. Upon asking me what it was, all I could think to say was:
“It is cute.”He smiled, content with my answer and repeated it back to me.
“Cute. Kawaii?” While before he wasn’t entirely sure what I was saying because
of the language barrier and acting out what we were trying to say with
charades, he got the message clearly.
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| It's looking into your soul! |
After a little deliberation amongst themselves, the two young men from Shimane University asked us to take them
where they could buy casual shirts. As we browsed through the racks of JC Penny
for men’s clothing, he brought everything that was pink, sparkly, or animal
print to my attention with one simple word: “kawaii?” In turn, I tried to
figure out exactly the look the two were after. There were so many options: polo
shirts, t-shirts, long sleeved shirts? The (all girl) GATE group I led searched
relentlessly, finding all kinds of cute t shirts and business shirts, each time
the question asked was: “do you like it? We think it’s cute!” Each time, we
struck out.
It wasn’t until we tried Old Navy (where I
discovered the fox sweater) that we found the perfect look. It was a simple
white collared shirt, with brown shell buttons. Suddenly it clicked with our
group. This was the perfect shirt for what we were looking for! Both groups
looked at each other and asked the following: “Do you like it? We think it’s
cute.” The shirt was so simple and so clean that we fell in love with it instantaneously.
While not initially what we (GATE) was looking for, the purity of it was what
made it so special. After a makeshift fashion show in the middle of Old Navy,
they bought the shirts.
To an onlooker who had no idea what
was going on, it would look like a field trip and nothing more, nothing less.
To us, it was something more than a quest for a shirt. We could’ve played
charades all day trying to figure out what each group was saying, but at the
end of the shopping trip, we were both searching for something we found “cute”
or “kawaii” that each other liked. The friends that shop together, stay together.
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| Universal Cuteness <3 |
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