適当-ness

I'd like to introduce a new word to everyone's lexicon (everyone who doesn't already speak Japanese, anyway). The word is tekitou, pronounced 'techie-toe', like the toe of a guy who likes technology. In Chinese characters it's written 適当. It's an adjective, hence the '-ness' in this entry's title.

So, what does it mean, and why I am I telling you about it?

It's probably easiest to illustrate what tekitou means with examples, since the whole reason I'm telling you about it is because I can't think of a good way to express it in English.

Example 1: You go to the barber and ask for a buzz cut. The guy takes the clippers, runs them over your head, then barely takes the time to brush you off before charging you and sending you on your way. While you're reaching your hand back to the nape of your neck to brush off some of the hair that the barber didn't bother to clean off, you notice a big patch of hair that he completely missed. You go back, ask for him to redo that spot, and the guy looks at you and says 'Oh, it's no big deal - you can hardly notice.' This is tekitou.

In fact, this example has two instances of tekitou-ness; the guy gave you a tekitou haircut, and then did a tekitou job brushing the hair off. And then when you went back, he gave you some tekitou excuse about not being able to notice the spot he missed (whoops, there were actually three sub-cases of tekitou-ness in that example).

Example 2: This is a real-life example from our Canadian friend Meg. Apparently in Canada, it's standard to write post-dated checks when paying one's rent. Meg recently discovered that we don't do this in the US. This alone does not qualify as tekitou; just a cultural difference. The tekitou-ness occurred when Meg went to the bank and asked the teller about writing post-dated checks. Apparently, the teller couldn't believe that the practice is common in Canada; how, she wondered, would the tellers keep from processing checks before the date they are post-dated for? Meg explained that the teller simply looks at the date on the check (s)he is processing. To which the teller responded, 'you mean to tell me in Canada the tellers check the date on every check they process??'

...

yeah.

That is tekitou.


Example 3: This is one my friend Nhan recently posted on his blog:

Free Internet?

Ha. I laugh at the situation. The cable guy was supposed to come between 8a-11a this morning to pick up the cable modem. The internet was also supposed to be turned off yesterday. As you may have guessed, neither of these things happened. They said the cable guys didn't get the dispatch for some reason and that my billing did in fact stop yesterday. So yippee, I am getting "free" internet and have to drive to the place to go drop off the modem. No wait. I am already paid up through the end of the month anyway! Ha. "Free" indeed.

Indeed. Some free tekitou-ness.

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Why did I write this? Because I think there are a lot of tekitou things in the US. I'm sure you have stories of your own. And now you have a word to describe those situations and those people. Tekitou.