written before<\/a> about the infrequent visits of the NHK man to try to collect cash for the TV shows you’ve been watching for free for years. <\/p>\nSo I was not exactly happy to see him, and I shifted into my “only speak English” mode. As soon as he saw me open the door he had to stop his canned speech halfway and he stuttered a little before recovering nicely and speaking in English. He asked me if I lived in the house, and I said yes, and then he made his first mistake. <\/p>\n
He asked if I spoke English in my household. Oops – that is a yes. At that point I could see he gave up on collecting money from me, but he decided to keep talking in English. And instead of being a miserable experience, I really enjoyed talking to him. <\/p>\n
Maybe it is because I have been here a while, but I had kind of forgotten how excited some people get when they have a chance to speak to a foreigner. This guy was very friendly, and a little caught between his job and just chatting, but in the end we had a very nice conversation and it kind of reminded me that maybe I should stop and chat with some of the people around me instead of just walking by. <\/p>\n
So it looks like we are in the clear and don’t have to pay NHK fees, but that is about right since we hardly ever watch NHK – at least, at lot less than the average family.<\/p>\n
Also, interesting discovery last night while walking home – just about five minutes walk from our house they have been working on a new building, and yesterday I saw that it was in fact a McDonald’s. We don’t eat at McDonald’s that often, but it will be weird to live so close to one. Maybe I can get a part time job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night after work I was cooking dinner before Kuniko got home, and the doorbell rang several times. The first time was a package delivery, and the second was – the NHK man. I’ve written before about the infrequent visits of the NHK man to try to collect cash for the TV shows you’ve been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-1766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-nhk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-su","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}