Lost in Translation?

Apparently, (and for those of you old enough to remember Frankie Howard "...Titter ye not!") I'm very "Big" in Japan. This may not come as much of a surprise to you (especially as the average height of a Japanese man is 5ft 4in, and the average height of a Japanese women is 5ft exactly) when you consider that I'm almost 5ft 11! However, this comment was not meant to be sizeist, but to reflect the fact that an article published in my name has actually created some (considerable?) interest amongst the Japanese press.
This resulted in me being interviewed today by a journalist from Nikkei (the Japanese equivalent of the Financial Times), an interview which was conducted in Japanese, although to help me with the few Japanese words that I didn't understand (99.99999% of them) an interpreter was also present.
It is quite a strange experience being interviewed in a language that is totally alien to you. I sat opposite the journalist who spoke to me as though I understood him, and yet I had made the decision not to mirror any of his many smiles or nods until his interpreter had spoken, as I didn't want to make the wrong gesture in the wrong place. To smile at the point where, for all I knew, he could have been telling me that he was late because his dog had just died, or to nod in agreement when he may have just told me that I reminded him of the devil, might not have been entirely appropriate.
The whole experience reminded me of a recent sketch on the Catherine "Do I look bovvered?" Tait show, where her character pretends to be able to speak, and translate, six languages in a business meeting, but in fact all that she is able to do is speak in six different stereotypical foreign sounding accents to match the nationality of the person she is supposedly translating for.
At times during my interview I did wonder whether it would have been worth trying "my version" of Japanese in response to some of the questions, but you will be pleased to hear that I resisted the urge to give it a go.
After an hour the interview finished with the interpreter asking whether any other Japanese media had made contact with me (that would be a “No”), and stating that Japanese women employees “...would love to hear me speak” - although this comment may have lost something in translation!