Quacking Horror
I have always been very sensitive to sound (that’s why I have such a selective musical taste – long live heavy metal 
) and as of late noticed an interesting relationship between meaning and tone of voice. There is a Japanese – let me call it – food sales person tone. It sounds a bit like Donald Duck, a high, quacking style of voice. It seems that if you say the same thing the whole time it a) looses its meaning, and b) becomes a litany. This litany tone combined with the high quacking style makes it very hard to bear for my ears. There are these women at food stands in the food courts of a shopping malls that quack always “irasshaimaseeeeee” with a penetrating lingering on the “e” at the end.
“Irasshaimase” means “welcome (to my shop)” only shops and restaurants use the phrase. They don’t mean what they say, the language has been bereft of meaning. It’s just an automatism and as such it has changed from normal speech to quack language also in the tone of voice. I am sure all these ladies speaks differently at home (at least I hope so).
The worst case by far though, which makes it a weekly fight for me to go to that particular shop is a certain bakery. I go there every Friday after work to buy bread for my weekend brunches. The bread there is really good, but there is one object of torture in the shop, which makes me run in, grab my bread, run to the cashier’s desk and get out of there again as soon as possible. The torture instrument is astonishingly tall for a Japanese, close to 190 cm, and has also sumo wrestler qualities concerning body circumference, meaning he is quite fat. Nevertheless, he has the worst case of quacking litany I have ever encountered in Japan yet.
In a high-pitched, grave-penetrating quality, he shouts in astonishing volume without regress, “irasshaimase” and praises the freshness and quality of the bread in the shop and the latest delicacies. His job is, by the way, to refill the shelves with fresh produce. The tone, volume and style of his speech literally make my teeth hurt and set my nerves on edge. If I were to work in this shop at the cashier’s for example, I would either go mad after one day or, since I am more of an directing aggression outwards rather than inwards type, beat him up.
I cannot comprehend how anybody is able to work with this nightmare walking through the shop. I feel particularly sorry for the people working in the adjoining food stalls on the floor, since the bakery is in the food court of a department store. The staff of the Japanese sweets shop across the aisle are subject to the quacking horror the whole day as well.
Anyway, this combination of meaningless language having become litany in combination with a high-pitched tone is not unique to Mr. Quack and lets me philosophize about the way we communicate information. I wonder if the quacking horror works on anybody, on me it has certainly the opposite effect and I am currently looking for an alternative bakery in the new department store on the other side of the station… Why do we need all this noise in department stores in Japan? It’s far less noisy in the US for example. I’ve just been to a few department stores in Chicago.
There is certainly the Asian hustle and bustle but I think there is more. Simply judging from the noise level in Asian cities, I cannot get rid of the impression that Asians are more noise resistant than others. So, if you come to Asia, go to a department store and bathe in all the noise and try to identify some quacking. I’ll be on business trip to Shanghai again next week and hope to get the opportunity to visit a department store. I shall explicitly look for the Chinese version of quacking horror there 
