Funeral flowers

On our way to Brett and Bong’s house, we wanted to get them flowers. There is a small flower shop down from our apartment, so we just stopped in real quick. We noticed a nice bouquet already put together as we walked in the door. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was nice enough so we picked it up and handed it to the man working there. He began saying something in Japanese and we were able to understand that he didn’t think those flowers were a good choice. We thought it might be because he wanted us to get a more expensive spread, so we just handed them to him. He took them, but then asked what they were for. We told him they were a gift and he said then proceeded to tell us that we had picked out the traditional Japanese funeral flowers. Nice, huh? Of course, it wouldn’t have really mattered because neither Brett nor Bong is Japanese, but there would have been plenty of Japanese people there, so it was best to not offend anyone. I love the confusion that comes with living in a foreign land…