A map of the Tokyo subway system. I kid you not.
So I had my placement test the other day, which was an experience in itself. I was late meeting everyone outside the flat, so sprinted to the train and ended up lost somewhere in the urban maze that is Shinjuku station. By the time the test was due to start, I was still wondering around staring gormlessly at various hilariously complicated subway maps, probably looking like most foreigners do in Shinjuku - upset, confused and annoyed! After I finally arrived, the test turned out to be demoralising to say the least, and by the latter half of it, I was so fed up of my inability to understand Japanese that I was mostly just sat imagining biting down on a delicious English sandwich in my lovely English home where everything is written in English and I don't feel like an idiot every day.
However, despite hating the language barrier and wishing I'd studied a bit more this summer instead of watching the Sex and the City series box-set back to back, I'm loving Japan and its little quirks. A few days ago, it was raining, and I saw a man walking his dog. Both were wearing matching raincoats. Yes, a man and his dog. The man was about forty years old. How this is acceptable, I literally couldn't love more.
Today, me and my friend Omolola went shopping in Harajuku and Shibuya. The clothes are all so gorgeous, and the prices all oh-so-expensive, so I've pretty much figured shopping in Tokyo to be a somewhat harrowing experience for any bank account and something that should be carried out with great cation. We successfully shopped all 8 levels of Shibuya 109, although we were flagging by level 5 and by level 8 practically hallucinating - the store is that crowded and surreal. All in all, shopping is a whole different experience here to the Primark smash'n'grabs I'm used to back home, although having to take your shoes off every time you want to try something on in a changing room is a right pain in the arse. No wonder I saw so many people walking around wearing slip-on Crocs with their super chic outfits - shopping is like a very serious sport here (I'm in heaven); and quite rightly so, in what is probably the capital city of materialism.
Food shopping is a whole different story - if you want to survive on anything more than a diet of oxygen here, it costs a small fortune. My old habit of eating the equivalent of your average Tesco's fruit and veg section a day has sadly had to be replaced with drinking copious amounts of cheap green tea and eating odd snacks which shouldn't quite work but somehow do - like chocolate croutons. I would buy more fruit, but the owner of the only shop around here that actually sells apples for less than the usual Tokyo price of something ridiculous like £5 each, has something very characteristic of what I like to call 'see a foreigner and panic' syndrome. Our conversations tend to turn out something like this:
Me: sumimasen, kore wa ikura desu ka? (Excuse me, how much is this?)
Fruit woman: OK OK THANK YOU
Me: ...nihongo ga dekimasu... (I can speak Japanese...)
Fruit woman: THANK YOU *ushering me out the door*
...slightly frustrating. The first time I experienced this gaijin-bashing I wanted to cry, but now it's just mildly annoying; more-so because the people who do it usually don't know a word of English, so you can't ever solve the problem you were asking about in the first place. It's obviously only a tiny, tiny minority of usually ageing Japanese people who have this kind of 'foreigners cannot and may not speak Japanese' attitude, and it's probably nothing personal, but it's a little disheartening nonetheless when you're shakily trying to take in the language and culture of a new country and someone quite bluntly shoots you down. Nevertheless, it's something you have to try to empathise with as a foreigner who's been used to living in a multi-racial society when arriving in a country which is almost 99% Japanese only. It's not like everyone here gets to mix with different races on a daily basis like we do in the UK, so I can definitely see why some people would feel a little uncomfortable when speaking to a foreigner like yours truly in their own language.
So that's cool by me, fruit lady. As long as I can still buy my bananas.
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