Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Its official. I’m staying for another year.

Yes folks, its re-contracting time. After informing my supervisor at an enkai that the four other JETs also present at the enkai had been asked for their re-contracting forms a long, long time ago, he looked surprised and spluttered that I should give them to him as soon as possible. So with only days to spare before the deadline, I handed in my forms. Whether this was a thinly veiled but ultimately foiled attempt on his part at making me leave Japan this year by default, I will never know.

In other news:

It turns out there is a place to go indoor rock-climbing in my own gun. It is with a slight amount of displeasure that I discovered this fact no less than 6 months into my stay here in Japan. Anyway, I went there this weekend. The unassuming barn-like building did indeed hide exciting climby-type antics within, but there was a problem.

In broken Japanese, I stumbled through the door and asked if it was possible to climb today. With cocked heads and a slight grimace, everyone in the reception replied,

“thsssssssssssssssssssssss”

For this is the way Japanese people say ‘no’, without saying no. You will encounter this with annoying frequency in Japan. It is the infamous teeth-suck. To try this for yourselves, simply tilt your head slightly to one side, show some teeth like you are snarling or just bad at smiling, and draw air in through the exposed teeth. This is how a Japanese person tells you “no” without point blank refusing, leaving the actual act of refusal up to your own interpretation.

My instant response to this was “ah”, but I was asked to sit down - as if they were about to tell me something really terrible.

Cue a long winded explanation of which I only understood about 34% of. A panel is broken and they need to get it fixed, then re-certified or something like that. So they took my phone number and said they will ring when it is fixed.

Ho hum.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 9th, 2003 at 4:04 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.