Misunderstood

I am the only American in this bar.
Everybody else is Japanese.
(reasonable / Tokyo)
I speak English.
They speak Japanese.
(of course)
They try to speak English. It’s hard.
I can’t speak Japanese. I can’t help.
We talk for a while, trying.
Then they switch totally to Japanese
for ten minutes.
They laugh. They are serious.
They pause between words.
I am alone again. I’ve been there before
in Japan, America, everywhere when you
don’t understand what somebody is
talking about.