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Regular grocery shopping is what I set out to do in my first week of moving to Tokyo. One hour on-emerged spent and exhausted! So this is what it felt like to be an illiterate! Looking at 'pictures' to figure out.A detergent or a softener? But hey this smiling woman on the label could be doing anything. I look around to ask- but who? How? Stone walled. The feeling is scary.
My husband and I refused to take a cab in the early days.Better to walk than stare blank at an equally blank face (cabbie).Or flail violent 'left'' and right' hands. And then it happened. Three magic words. 'Hidari'. 'Migi'. Massugu'. Left. Right.Straight. Voila.We could actually will our way to our destination now! We have come a long way since. To holding somewhat halting conversations with the cabbie about the weather,India or life in Tokyo. And not freezing at the thought of calling a cab.I am sure we have been forgiven for all our wrong innotations and impolite phrases!
How we bought our cycle in the first week of our stay deserves another blog!
Learning 'survival Japanese' is what we call it. And man ,its empowering.
Other useful phrases: (we parrot regularly)
arigato gozaimasu (thank you) - learn it as your plane taxis into Narita-its your life line xyz (destination) made(mud-ay) onegashimasu (take me to xyz)- to the cabbie
koko de tomete kudasai (please stop here) - u r in a speeding cab remember?
ikura desu ka? (how much does this cost?)
hai hai (yes yes)
wakarimashita (i understand) - even if you didnt (nicely replaces the blank stare)
..or when your vocab runs out on you (soon) - Nihon-go wakarimasen (I dont understand Japanese) - meaning -I give up!
7 comments:
So where is the blog on the bike buying? Shall look forward to it!
So right, Japan is such an essay of contrasts in so many spheres of life....
Hey, the pictures of the sleeping Japanese in trains are fabulous! Maybe you could add a few of commuters reading their newspapers/novels in the half inch of space available to them....!
That is so familiar!!! and also the reason I DON'T send my better half shopping for important stuff like detergents, and other assorted cleaning and laundry supplies!!
after a year, it still doesn't get any easier
Anandhi and Vidya...u veterans...glad this resonated with u...u say it doesnt get better??!
Maybe in Tokyo... here' i still haven't cracked the dialect.
Not fiction: a lady who moved here from Yokohama, and heard Shonai-ben (the dialect) for the first time, swears she thought people were speaking to her in Korean!
Imagine now the haalat of a desi with only rudimentary text-book Nihongo?
great going P. Brings back memories of my trip there....may be should head there again instead of the US. Shashi
you forgot : aaanoooo, sumimasen :)
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