camgriff5

Suzuki and Mikiyo are both in their late 60’s. They share the job of building superintendent at our modest, ageing apartment block. Both had been friendly to us, saying hello and goodbye as we went in and out. We needed to park our new (to us) second hand bikes in the building’s modest undercover parking area, and they were the guys to ask. Seemed simple enough, I just needed to get past the language barrier, Susan having kindly allowed me to take on this task. I spent an hour cobbling together a few sentences to make myself understood and set off down the lift to find the superintendent of the day. I found Mikiyo sweeping leaves at the front of the building and, after opening the conversation with what was hopefully an observation about the weather, I launched into my possibly unintelligible request – a handful of nouns, demonstratives and verbs that made perfect sense on google translate.

Mikiyo looked a little taken aback at my attempt and took a few seconds to respond. He spoke softly but confidently with a lovely tenor voice and restated my request in English to see if that’s what I was actually talking about. Yes, I wanted to park 2 bikes in the car park. He led me to the office and gave me 2, no it was 3, forms (all in Japanese) that needed to be filled out by way of application. Very kindly, he circled the parts I needed to fill out and wrote in English the type of information needed – name here, address here etc. He also very kindly pointed out that the cost was to be Y500 per month, per bike and one of the forms was for a monthly banking transfer. Our apartment is located in one of the central business and shopping districts so parking is at a premium, even for bicycles. Mikiyo couldn’t help but look slightly amused as he explained while I nodded and kept saying ‘yes, yes’. I’m sure my eyes started to cross unconsciously. I retreated to number 709, papers in hand, ready for the challenge. It wouldn’t be too hard to fill them out in Japanese. An hour later Mikiyo rang the doorbell. He was sorry but he had forgotten to give me another form that needed to be filled out, also kindly marked with English to show what information needed to go where. The desperate thought crossed my mind – I should just ask him if he could fill it out for me – , but he hadn’t offered and really, it’s only filling out a few forms.

Two days later ….. I triumphantly carried my prize paperwork down the lift to seek out the superintendent of the day. I was pretty happy with the katakana for our names and the hiragana was probably passable, but I was worried about my attempt at kanji. I found Suzuki in the office and lifted up my fistful of papers to get his attention. Unlike Mikiyo, Suzuki doesn’t speak a word of English. Suzuki has a real sense of humour about him and a very friendly disposition. He knew what the paperwork was for of course as Mikiyo had told him about it, and they had both been watching us wrestle our bikes in and out of the tangle of bikes parked on the pavement in the street at the front of the building over the past few days. Suzuki started looking over my handiwork, reading partially aloud with an occasional sharp, clear “Hai” accompanied by glances in my direction. He actually looked a little impressed initially. A few minutes in he stopped to put on a face mask with a ‘whoops, I forgot’ gesture. I wasn’t wearing one either. We were probably a little too relaxed given the circumstances.

It all seemed to get a pass mark until the banking form, the one I thought had needed some kanji. He stopped and looked at me, said something in Japanese. “What the hell is this”, would be my guess. I looked at my pathetic scribble and dropped my head onto the bench saying, “sumimasen, kanji, sumimasen”, in between bursts of laughter. He thought it was pretty damn funny but apparently legible enough. Wait though, what is this where the Hanko stamp should be? It took a few minutes and the translate app to explain that the bank had accepted my hand written initials as my official mark, this having been organised by our employer, and that therefor they need to be on the form, not a stamp – which I don’t have anyway. It’s still very unusual in Japan for handwritten signatures to be accepted on documents. I read recently that the national government were considering changes to the law to allow various legal documents to be processed without the necessity of them being stamped with Hanko. A lot of people were still traveling in to work during the covid-19 state of emergency mainly due to this particular requirement.

His skepticism eventually gave way and with great enthusiasm Suzuki led me to the car park and showed me 2 spaces, 16 and 17, indicating that we could park the bikes there immediately. It was my turn to be surprised. He didn’t have to submit the paperwork first? It didn’t need to go through several layers of bureaucracy over several days before being returned by post with a stamp of approval? I went to get Susan to tell her the news and move our bikes. When we came down Suzuki could see how happy we were and came out to supervise the transition and place the official building parking stickers on our bikes. He genuinely appeared as happy as we were with the arrangement. It never ceases to amaze me, the extent to which it’s possible to get a real sense of connection between people who have no common language other than a shared humanity.

Ahh, what a feeling of equanimity and, indeed, achievement. Now we just have to sort out the compulsory third party insurance.

“Ahh mate, it’s the land of convenience”. Glenn’s words were ringing in my ears as I sat down at my laptop, once again, on my day off. He was here before the internet was a thing. Though there are definitely a lot of convenience stores, at least 4 within 100m of our apartment. I’d been following this routine for 2 weeks. Time off equals trying to get the wifi working so Susan can access the internet from her laptop. The current ethernet arrangement was wearing thin as it only worked on my computer. After being quoted Y17 000 to have someone come and sort it out, I was feeling determined to resolve the issue myself. Anyway I didn’t feel too useless – Stephen, a smart young guy I met at work last week, said it took him 6 weeks to sort it out, and he’s got a degree in mechanical engineering.

So I began my ritual again with a renewed sense of purpose. Laptop connected to wifi, wifi connected to router site/settings but not the internet. I opened the browser on my phone to see where I’d gotten to last night. I’d been searching the help sites, “can’t connect wifi to internet, try these 10 steps”, etc., etc. Where was I? Ahh yes, this site from last night seems particularly apt – the 12 steps, after all I’d consumed most of a bottle of whisky during my attempts this past week. My phone goes from browser to google translate camera mode, back and forth as I read the tips then try to decipher anything in the all Japanese language settings that looks familiar.

Thankfully I was past the ‘pull your hair out phase’ and was feeling strangely at ease. I began casting my I-phone enabled eye over the top of yet another setting page and saw the words “How do you want to connect to the internet”. I turned to the check box options to find the ‘with ease and simplicity’ box. No such luck, but I did notice that it was set to automatic – sounds reasonable enough. As I moved my phone across the page, watching Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana slowly become English, I saw the characters PPPoE6, or some such, as a connection option. These vague characters somehow resonated and, as I stared at them, they took on a kind of numinous quality. Without waiting any further I checked that box. Up came the user and password page, at least I knew what to do here. Then I hit ‘set’ – 90 second wait, an actual countdown on the screen. 5,4,3,2,1, then glanced down at my wifi bars, the yellow dot was gone. “Susan can you please try the wifi on your computer”, further waiting. “Oh, oh, what did you do to get it to work?”

Where’s the last of that whisky?

I decided to take the subway and visit the business myself instead of using the online appointment system. After 4 weeks in Japan I’ve learned to take nothing for granted – especially when it comes to money. I needed to get out for a walk anyway, things were getting a little tense in our apartment. My laptop had internet via ethernet cable but the wifi router we had bought wasn’t connecting to the internet. For 2 weeks I’d spent a large portion of my spare time staring at the wifi bars with the yellow dot, laboriously going through the router’s settings, all in Japanese, with my phone set to camera mode in google translate. Clearly the router was connecting to our devices, but why wasn’t it connecting to the internet?

I had seen an add on my phone during my frantic searches for a solution. Home visits to solve computer and internet connection problems. English language no problem. the pricing seemed a little steep but I’m getting used to that here. There can be hidden charges just going out for a drink and feed – a per head table charge, around Y500 – not usually advertised when entering. Most prices for things are displayed as before (consumption) tax, which takes a surprising amount of time to adjust to when shopping. I arrived at the modest shopfront having had a nice brisk walk, the business being conveniently located halfway between 2 subway stations. I saw the slippers when I entered and realised my mistake in wearing my Doc Martins. It was only a 3m sq area of carpet, but customs are customs.

Like many of the service industry workers we’ve encountered, the guy who served me looked a bit freaked out at first when it was clear I only spoke English, but was good naturedly determined to press on. Business is business. Using our translating devices I managed to make clear the issue I was having and he proceeded to show me the cost structure that would be applied for them to resolve the problem. There were 3 separate charges, of course, and as I did my mental calculation I couldn’t contain an exclamation of surprise, “New computer”, I said. He smiled. It would cost Y17 000. I explained that I thought the problem was simple to fix, it was the language barrier that was thwarting me. He smiled and pointed to his pricing. I explained that I thought any high school student could probably sort it out, I just didn’t know any. He smiled again. It took a full 5 minutes to put my boots back on. We thanked each other and apologised to each other, but I had gotten nowhere. Thankfully the convenient location of the store meant that I had a good walk back to the subway. I needed one.

Author: camgriff5

Land of Convenience – 3

Land of Convenience 2

Land of convenience?