Today was going along just fine, actually. I spent the morning in the heart of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, teaching business English to company executives. One of them even invited me to a ship launching, with the breaking sake bottle and everything. After work I headed all the way to Higashi Kakogawa and spent a few hours helping Nozaki sensei try to wrap up her thesis. Then I was done for the day, so I took a train back to Okubo around four in the afternoon.
I bought a couple of bottles of local sake and had them wrapped as presents at the Vivre store near the station, and then headed over to our new neighborhood to check on the house building. It is going quite well, with work started on the second floor. The builder was working alone today and trying to get his things in order before it got dark.
We chatted for a little while, and then I gave him the bottle of sake as a combined “New Years gift and thanks for building our house” present. He didn’t quite know what to do about it – at first he didn’t look like he was going to accept it. Finally he reached out and took it, and said thanks, and then we moved on to other topics. I could tell he would have rather been up on the second floor hammering nails than talking awkwardly with this foreign dude that keeps showing up, but where could he go? I let him off the hook after about five minutes, took some pictures and then headed off.
On the way home I stopped in at the MaxValue supermarket across the street and did a little shopping. As usual I had my own “eco” bag, so I put a big cardboard tag into my basket to indicate that I didn’t need a plastic bag. The clerk was someone I had seen there quite often – we shop there every day so we know everyone (at least by appearance). She rang up my groceries, and told me the total in Japanese. Here’s where things got weird.
She said the total was 726 yen, but I heard 716 yen, and put down 721 yen, hoping to get just a 5 yen coin back. She said the total again, and I realized my mistake and threw in another 10 yen coin, still expecting to get 5 yen back. But somehow she miscounted the coins she now had, and she pointed again at the total on the computer screen – totally giving up on speaking Japanese to me. So now I’m thinking I’m still mistaken, and she’s thinking she must be right because I already screwed up once, and probably because I don’t look like most of their customers. And meanwhile, the line is backing up, and they are probably rolling their eyes wondering why I don’t learn Japanese and make everyone’s life easier.
So I count the coins for her in her hand, and the total comes out 5 yen over, and I think she realized that she had enough money to process the transaction, so she just goes ahead and does it. I get my five yen coin back, and we parted ways probably equally confused about the whole thing.
Anyway, walking out of there I felt like I had just gotten off the boat. Between confusing my house builder about gift giving protocol and convincing a line of people in the supermarket that I couldn’t handle a simple grocery transaction – I felt pretty lame. I guess my point (if there is one) is that you never really do completely fit in here – sometimes in a good way and sometimes like today’s adventures.
Tonight Kuniko is doing a school party tonight after work, so I’m on my own tonight. I’m thinking about running over to Red Spanky for cocktails later on – it has been a while since I hung out over there.
