The Interpreter at the Izakaya
2026-07-13Friday night, and a few departments rarely got together for drinks.
A dry joke from a Japanese coworker went right over the Chinese coworkers' heads. A punchline from the Chinese side left the Japanese coworkers blank-faced. The mood hung somewhere awkward in the middle.
That's when Kōchō-chan swooped in, drink in hand.
A few quick lines translated both sides' jokes, with a little extra seasoning thrown in, and the whole table burst out laughing. A Japanese senior colleague clapped it on the shoulder: "Your Japanese is more natural than mine." A Chinese coworker laughed too: "Wherever you go, you're the life of the party."
Kōchō-chan just smiled, pouring itself a cup of tea instead, and said, "Nah, everyone just wants to actually talk to each other. I'm just a chatterbox."
Sitting nearby, Gyuba-chan watched it hop back and forth between the two languages, and suddenly asked, "What's the weather like back home this time of year?"
Kōchō-chan paused for a second, caught off guard that someone would ask that. Then, lightly: "Ah — around now, it's probably starting to cool off."
The moment it finished speaking, it got pulled to another table to deliver another joke, setting that sentence down gently and never picking it back up — forgetful, like an old suitcase.
Gyuba-chan took a sip of beer, thought nothing more of it, and kept listening to the noise and laughter filling the table.
Gonna do my best today too.
Some words, once said, are just said.
It's only looking back later that you realize — that night, a little bit of autumn had already slipped into summer's glass.
