Friday, May 11, 2012

Mundane adventures in Japan

Not surprising, my Japanese-English dictionary has been the best purchase everrrrr.

Every day is an adventure in a land where you don't speak the language. Not being able to communicate transforms every day tasks like dropping off dry cleaning or picking up mail into fun,exciting, sometimes awkward stories.

Here are said stories...

Aimed with my Gaijin card, beloved dictionary, and "pick-up-your-mail-from-the-post-office" slip, I went to the post office to pick up mystery mail. Maybe a package from home? Even better... my bank card awaited my rescue. Couldn't be that hard, I figured...

After going to the wrong post office, I made it to the correct post office only to be told something super confusing in Japanese. I asked "Yukkuri itte kudasai" (slowly please) and instead heard this: "somethingsomethingsomething... ATM". AH! ATM! Ok, that I know! Weird, I guess I put the slip in the ATM? But whatever, they are super advanced here.

After standing at the ATM for about 7 minutes, jamming buttons and trying to put the paper in random places (all the while looking like a first class idiot), I finally see a window with the post office logo. Turns out "somethingsomethingsomething..." was "Next to the..." Right. My Japanese has GOT to get better.

Another fun task was taking clothes to the dry cleaners. This time, I was armed with my partner in crime as we fumbled awkwardly together through the translation attempts. I frantically flipped through my dictionary looking for words as John gestured to his suit jacket using Jap-lish. The final result? The dry cleaning ladies CALLED THEIR ENGLISH SPEAKING FRIEND TO TRANSLATE. Lol. It was ridiculous customer service (and I also think they were closed). PLUS, the fee was minimal and done within 24 hours. Incredible. To show our gratitude, we brought goodie bags the next day...


 Thanks to Mom and Donna Paez for loading us up with tons of American goodies (it has been incredibly hard not to eat them... We may or may not have sneaked a bag of cookies for ourselves). She loved the adorable flower lollipops!!!

Until next time Minions...
All of us computering


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