Cross-cultural communication （35）　

35） French people who can only speak French
Most French people who come to Japan can at least speak some English. Also, there are many young French people who come to Japan for work and can speak fairly fluent Japanese. Therefore, it seems that many French people know that their French is not understood in Japan.

However, there are some people, especially tourists, who can only understand French. One day, during a morning consultation, the clinic received a call from a French person. When I answered the phone, the person began speaking in a hurried, rapid-fire French. I was in the middle of a consultation, so I was a little nervous, but I calmly said the set of French phrases I had prepared for just such an occasion, slowly and clearly.
Parler plus lentement, s'il vous plait. (Please speak more slowly.)　Si vous parlez lentement avec des mots et des expressions assez simples, je vous comprends. (If you speak slowly using simple words and expressions, I can understand you.)When I say this, the other person also feels reassured and calms down.?A mother and daughter were traveling around Japan and had come to Osaka, but the mother's ankles were swollen and painful, making it difficult for her to walk, so she wanted to see a doctor.

Since it seemed like it would take a long time to communicate in French, I decided to ask them to come to the my office in the afternoon when there was no patient. When I examined her, I found that the ankles of the mother, who was in her 60s, were indeed a little swollen. When I asked her about it, she said that she didn't do much exercise in France, but that she had walked around a lot in Japan. Looking at the shoes she was wearing, they were hard leather shoes that didn't seem suitable for a trip where she would be walking around a lot. As she wanted to continue her trip for another two weeks, I prescribed her some painkillers and ointment, and recommended that she buy some shoes with shock-absorbing soles for jogging.

She said she didn't know where to buy shoes, so I called the hotel where she was staying and asked them to direct her to a suitable sports goods store. After that, I didn't hear from her again, so I think this worked out well.

There is no further twist to this story. I think that overseas travel by the elderly is popular in Japan too, and stories similar to this are probably commonplace. I thought that tour guides must have a hard time looking after them, as the elderly are not good at foreign languages and many of them have chronic illnesses.

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