Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

The ever efficient Japanese.

Last week I ordered a stereo and a sofa. My sofa was delivered today. At the exact time I specified that I wanted it delivered. When you order something in Japan, you will usually have to specify a ‘preferred time of delivery’ as well as a date. I find this totally bizarre, coming from a country where ‘delivery’ more often than not means ‘notification of attempted delivery’ and consequently involves you trundling down to the courier depot yourself.

So, my sofa arrived at 11am on the dot. After a few minutes of faff and sucking of teeth, we concluded that we would be able to get it in the sliding side doors, at which signal the delivery men sprung into action and proceeded to rip apart my house. I had no idea you could remove the sliding panels, and just feigned a sense of calm, hands in pockets, whilst the deliverymen disassembled my home piece by piece.

The stereo was another story. In a boredom-fuelled fit of blind audacity , I decided that I could easily buy a stereo with no assistance from a native Japanese speaker, and went to my local electronics shop. After making my choice, I boldly said “sumimasen, kore o kudasai”, to the nearest member of staff, which was met with a massive nonsensical flurry of Japanese. I panicked and blurted out the only other word I knew concerning ordering goods (noted from my previous sofa experience) - “haitatsu?” (delivery). More Japanese babble. I smiled and nodded, diluting our exchange in false comprehension, marking the end of his sentences with a “hai” or a “ee”, at my discretion. I shut out the unintelligible noise going on in the world outside my head and took the time to gawp blankly into the void of my own crap grasp of the Japanese language. I waited for him to use his power of chronological assumption to decide what we should do next. He moved. I followed. We filled in a form. I paid. I left. Dear God, I hope my stereo comes.

Today I saw my first person with a cold, in Japan. Its easy to spot a Japanese person with a cold, as they will be wearing a surgical mask. This is paranoia about airborne germs taken a step too far. I found it hard not to cack myself laughing when a lady walked into the office with a huge pink cloth covering 2/3 of her face, making her resemble some kind of gay ninja

This entry was posted on Monday, August 26th, 2002 at 1:34 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.