Fake Invite

Often people say to me, 'Oh, please come over to my house some time!' in a friendly way. 'Oh, ok,' I think, but more often than not that is the end of it. This kind of language in Japanese often isn't actually a real invite but it throws me off until I think about it. I get frustrated by this and wish people just wouldn't say it to me in the first place!

At a new school I am teaching at this happened with one of the teachers. We were having a nice conversation and she started telling me about her family. One of her daughers works for a video game company so I told her about my major being in computers. 'Oh, you really should come over one day,' she said. Now, just because of the feeling of the conversation it felt like a real invite. Later I remembered not to trust these 'invites' and to forget about it.

The next day the same teacher suddenly said to me, 'How about at during the first week of August?' She had really meant her words and I was actually invited to her house for real.

This post is something I am really writing with pleasure because after the first conversation with the teacher I was ready to write, 'Never believe a Japanese invite to actually be an invitation!'