At work, I had to call up a technician about something after he had come in already. When he answered his phone and heard it was me, the first thing he says is, "Moshi moshi!"
It's a good thing I was on the phone because otherwise, he'd have seen me roll my eyes and make a face. I didn't even have the energy to say that I'm not Japanese - not that it would've mattered to him. Don't get me wrong - he's a super nice guy and he didn't mean anything by it. He just thought he'd be cute or funny. But really, it's not. It's not offensive or anything either. It's just stupid.
I know I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it many more times in my life. If you're not asian, then please don't go throwing random phrases in various asian languages at asian people. (Actually, I wonder if people actually living in asian countries would find this amusing or not. Like, if you went to Japan and started saying stuff in Japanese, they might actually think it's funny.) Asians like myself, who've grown up here, I think I can speak for most of us when I say that we all generally think it's lame.
I hate when people start speaking to me in whatever language - Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, whatever. Why do you assume I don't speak English? I don't go around to every white person I see and start speaking German, Italian, or French to them. Hmm.. that guy looks Eastern European, I'll bet he knows Polish! Seriously. Anyway, that's my little pet peeve of the day.
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