When I lived in France and Italy, I found it wasn’t long before the novelty of being in a new place wore off and I got used to seeing everything in a different language. Certain things still tickled me, of course, but on the whole everything was very much like home. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because Japanese has a different script, but I still find myself gazing in wonder at things on a regular basis. I have been here for almost three months now! I still marvel at the coins:
50 yen and 5 yen pieces have a hole in the middle. Sometimes I consider threading them together on a piece of string, like something from Muppets Treasure Island.
I still yearn to know what all of the buttons on my A/C remote do:
Other regular day-to-day items just look so much cooler in Japanese:
I would also be grateful to be able to buy food from the supermarket without limiting myself to items whose packets have a picture of the cooking method with ５分 (5 mins) next to the picture. My diet would certainly be more varied if my kanji wasn’t limited to about 60 words, as it is at the moment.
An element of my life which I feel will never cease to be a source of wonder (and vague nostalgia) however, is the コンビに (conbini - convenience store.) There are so many convenience stores in Japan; I pass three on my way to school alone. They are generally open 24/7 and sell snacks, newspapers, a limited selection of hot food, alcohol, tobacco and manga comics (every time I walk in there are at least three boys in the manga section, reading their favourite comics before replacing them on the shelf and leaving.) Many of them also have an ATM inside. At the counter you can pay utility bills and buy tickets to baseball games. Sounds like an amazing place to go, right? It gets better. If you order something from Amazon, you can print off your order and take it to the conbini and pay for it there. They scan the barcode, take the payment, and trigger the delivery. If you want, you can have your items delivered to the conbini and collect them when you are free - extremely handy if you work during the day and are always missing deliveries!
As they are open 24/7, I sometimes slink off to my local one in the wee hours if I’ve been up late and fancy a snack, just like I did at university. Of course, Costcutters back home would always be closed by 11pm six days a week, but it’s the same idea. That slightly guilty feeling of knowing you’ve already had dinner but fancy a cream-filled doughnut, a box of Pocky (chocolate covered sticks of biscuit) or a carton of indulgent, sugary drink.
This is ‘café au lait’ if the carton is anything to go by. Iced coffee is very sugary in Japan. I’m starting to get accustomed to it now, but I do wish they would put only half the sugar that they normally do. It’s good on a hot day anyway, especially as during the summer here you sweat an inconceivable amount. I’m not saying this to be disgusting - it’s the truth! People carry towels around during the summer to periodically mop themselves up. Replacing salts and sugars lost during the summer sweating is probably one of the reasons drinks are so sweet here.
I bought this recently, thinking it was just banana milk. To my delight it turned out to be choco-banana milk! On the carton it says チョコ バナナ (choco-banana) in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words. For the record, I did discover the true flavour of my drink by reading the carton before I opened it, but only once I got home. It was delicious.
This is an iced-coffee drink made with soymilk. I thought it would be like the iced coffees Aimée made for me at university. Alas, it was vile. Nothing like the refreshing, delicious drink I imagined. Gag.
So thus far I don’t quite feel like everything is ‘normal’ yet, not in the way that I have done in other countries. It’s not such a bad thing though; now that I have settled more or less into the routine of my job, it is nice to still come across things that make me go ‘wow! That’s actually pretty cool!’
Even if, at the same time, I can’t help but wish some of you were here for me to say it to!
50 yen and 5 yen pieces have a hole in the middle. Sometimes I consider threading them together on a piece of string, like something from Muppets Treasure Island.
I still yearn to know what all of the buttons on my A/C remote do:
Other regular day-to-day items just look so much cooler in Japanese:
I would also be grateful to be able to buy food from the supermarket without limiting myself to items whose packets have a picture of the cooking method with ５分 (5 mins) next to the picture. My diet would certainly be more varied if my kanji wasn’t limited to about 60 words, as it is at the moment.
An element of my life which I feel will never cease to be a source of wonder (and vague nostalgia) however, is the コンビに (conbini - convenience store.) There are so many convenience stores in Japan; I pass three on my way to school alone. They are generally open 24/7 and sell snacks, newspapers, a limited selection of hot food, alcohol, tobacco and manga comics (every time I walk in there are at least three boys in the manga section, reading their favourite comics before replacing them on the shelf and leaving.) Many of them also have an ATM inside. At the counter you can pay utility bills and buy tickets to baseball games. Sounds like an amazing place to go, right? It gets better. If you order something from Amazon, you can print off your order and take it to the conbini and pay for it there. They scan the barcode, take the payment, and trigger the delivery. If you want, you can have your items delivered to the conbini and collect them when you are free - extremely handy if you work during the day and are always missing deliveries!
As they are open 24/7, I sometimes slink off to my local one in the wee hours if I’ve been up late and fancy a snack, just like I did at university. Of course, Costcutters back home would always be closed by 11pm six days a week, but it’s the same idea. That slightly guilty feeling of knowing you’ve already had dinner but fancy a cream-filled doughnut, a box of Pocky (chocolate covered sticks of biscuit) or a carton of indulgent, sugary drink.
This is ‘café au lait’ if the carton is anything to go by. Iced coffee is very sugary in Japan. I’m starting to get accustomed to it now, but I do wish they would put only half the sugar that they normally do. It’s good on a hot day anyway, especially as during the summer here you sweat an inconceivable amount. I’m not saying this to be disgusting - it’s the truth! People carry towels around during the summer to periodically mop themselves up. Replacing salts and sugars lost during the summer sweating is probably one of the reasons drinks are so sweet here.
I bought this recently, thinking it was just banana milk. To my delight it turned out to be choco-banana milk! On the carton it says チョコ バナナ (choco-banana) in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words. For the record, I did discover the true flavour of my drink by reading the carton before I opened it, but only once I got home. It was delicious.
This is an iced-coffee drink made with soymilk. I thought it would be like the iced coffees Aimée made for me at university. Alas, it was vile. Nothing like the refreshing, delicious drink I imagined. Gag.
So thus far I don’t quite feel like everything is ‘normal’ yet, not in the way that I have done in other countries. It’s not such a bad thing though; now that I have settled more or less into the routine of my job, it is nice to still come across things that make me go ‘wow! That’s actually pretty cool!’
Even if, at the same time, I can’t help but wish some of you were here for me to say it to!
