Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

And I returned home to find that all was well.

Rewind to 2 days previous.

I came home on Wednesday evening, readying myself for my daily binge of internet usage. Undeterred by the nightmarish image of last months 20′000 yen internet bill that kept flashing before my eyes, I switched on my computer and clicked “connect”.

“The other line is busy”, a pop up message told me.

Upon the 4th unsuccessful attempt at connecting to the internet, I felt my body start to tremble. The withdrawal symptoms were starting already. Wiping the drool from my mouth, I ripped the resting handset from my telephone and placed it by my ear. Engaged tone.

“Odd”, I thought to myself.

Sifting through the pile of magazines, clothes hangers and other items unrelated to each other on my coffee table, I found my keitai (mobile phone). I dialled my home number. Instead of hearing a satisfying “ring ring” sound, all I could hear was a recorded message, in Japanese. The horrible truth dripped into my mind, but I wasn’t ready to accept it yet.

As I dialled a friends number on my keitai, the notion that I hadn’t paid any of my landline phone bills since I came to Japan became ever more apparent. The consensus from my experienced 2nd year JET sempai was that this is the phone company’s way of saying “gaijin-san, you no pay phone bill for two months. Soon all our children starve. We punish you”.

I rummaged through the pile of bill-like envelopes that lay inside my postbox. Lo and behold - 2 phone bills. Oops. In Japan, bills are paid either by direct debit, or by giving someone somewhere a wad of cash - its very unusual to pay for anything by cheque. So, I stoked the fires of my steam-driven k-car and drove off into the night. I was in search of a 24hr convenience store - for I had been told that you could pay bills at these.

However, instead of driving to the convenience store, I found myself driving into a massive catch-22. I needed money to pay the bills. Unfortunately, as it was evening all the cash machines were switched off. Because of this, you might be led to believe that post- 7pm in Japan, all goods and services are free. But no. I drove around and around, finding one 24hr cash machine that I couldn’t work out how to use. In retrospect it probably wasn’t even a cash machine, perhaps it was a toilet or a robot or a robot toilet.

Henceforth I sheepishly made my way back home, phoneless, cashless and crucially, internetless.

The next day I actually managed to procure money from a cash machine and set off for the convenience store. In my mind I pictured the clerks disapproving face as I handed her 2 phone bills - one of which was 2 months out of date. In reality, the clerk had the same dazed look she always has, deriving from the fact that she is probably forcefully being denied sleep by the evil 24hr convenience store fatcats. She took my bills and scanned the barcodes without moving her head. Clunk, Blip, Ch-ching. Done.

I drove home, half expecting my phone to have been magically reconnected upon arrival, due to the incredible Japanese efficiency I had come to expect.

And you know what?

It had.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 11th, 2002 at 2:30 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.