The Census Taker Commeth

Tonight they tried to enumerate me. It's not as painful as it sounds. They just wanted me to fill out the census form. Of course Mr. Census Taker didn't know any English, and my Japanese only works with 4 year olds. So unless he was going to say "wait a sec" or "wait your turn" or "bad girl" I wasn't going to be much help. So he pulls out his trusty little book and finds the phrase "This is the census". Well I had already figured that out. So then he pulls out a census which is thankfully translated. Ooops, not so fast there. It is translated alright...into Portuguese. That is the number one non-Japanese spoken language in Hamamatsu. In a total population of just over a half million, Hamamatsu has 11,000 Brazilians. In comparison there are 121 Americans. You would think all us Yanks would be on a first name basis. But not quite. Well back to the census. So he leaves me the Portuguese census, even though I keep trying to ask for one in English. I filled it out to the best of my ability. Luckily enough it looks a bit like Spanish (although it doesn't really sound very much like Spanish). There was only one question that I really couldn't figure out. Oh well, I don't think one little foreigner can skew the statistics too much. Or could I? (giggle, giggle).