Idea of the century

I ws kinda wondering what to write at first. I mean, like i said before, so much to say and not enough time. And must admit I post more on the French said of this blog, you know family and friends take priority. But it’s been a while here. I could have talked about how I got my Japanese (nihon-go) cell phone. But just that took me 6 pages on the French side, so.... aaah... the hell. You have to hear that story cause hell it was one stupid day.

So Tuesday. 7am, alarm, I wake up from a terrible night of sleep, but resist the temptation to snooze, ask me how I did it, I don’t know. But I did. I thought that it was a really bad way to start my first day at school. And put it on the back of the jetlag, but I woke up. Get out of bed, go to the bathroom. Shave; I cut myself about 7 or 8 times, too sleepy to shave correctly apparently. Anyway, I stop the blood. And I find a way to poke my eye with the toothbrush. Yeah right. Get out of the room, which is right next to the entrance, my head hit the toilet door right in front of me. Notice here that the toilet is separated from the bathroom. So you shave, take a shower or a bath in a room, and go to toilet in another one. Anyway, I’m sure, but not quite, that my teeth let a mark on the door. Anyway, I’m about to turn around, a bit dazed, when I hear:”Aye aye aye! Ali-san [insert something I didn’t understand here] ne.” Apparently I triped on Aika-san who was searching something in her purse on the ground. Take notice here: Miyako (okaa-san) and Aika absolutely can’t pronounce my name. They first tried Olivier, but they put an A instead of the O and a B instead of the V. But in the end it sounds kinda like “Alibuer”. So we tried to settle for Oli, my nickname. But still can’t pronounce the O correctly. So now I’m Ali-san.

Anyway, we go to the kitchen, Aika pour serial in a bowl while I start boiling water. I burn myself with the water, Aika-san too busy to laugh at me find a way to hit her head with the fridge’s door while looking for milk. We transfer to the kitchen’s table. I burn myself with the coffee and spill half of it on my last clean shirt. AIka-san can’t refrain to laugh and spit her mouthful of cereal and milk on the table. Doesn’t we go well together or what?

Anyway, while I try to find something less messy to put on, I hear “Itekimasai” from Aika-san. Ok, she’s gone to work. Not long after I’m on the street walking to my subway station and fighting the wind to try to light a cigarette. Nearing the station I put my cigarette butt in a kind of portable ashtray. Japanese don’t throw their cigarette butt in the street. Ok. And now, I must explain you something. It’s usually a known fact that Japanese are horrible at map reading and I’ll tell you why. Because, Japanese never had the stroke of genius to put the north on their maps. So when you enter a subway station, the maps of the trains are not always oriented with the north, nor they are not always oriented with the subway line you need. So when you go in one of those subways. Just take time to triple check where you’re going cause after the pusher gave you one hell of a back pain after pushing you with 150 people in a wagon that smells like shit you’ll find yourself really stupid if you took the wrong line.

So I get in the wagon, and put a huge smile to the pusher whom I would like to punch straight in the face cause he gave one hell of a back pain. SO the train start two station later I get out of the wagon for Monzen-Nakacho. So i look around and see Kiba written everywhere. Fuck! Take a wuck walk to the other side of the line to take the subway back in the right direction.

From there everything is well. First school day, nothing much to say. Mariko-sensei learn us to tell our name, where we’re from, waht we do for living. You know that kind of stupid thing when you start school. 12h40 end of school for today. Not unhappy, if I have to here one more “nani” I’m gonna go crazy. So Julien, my brother who is recovering from a cold, Eimrich, a French we met Monday, and me decide it’s time to explore Tokyo. Hello World! But we must first go find an ATM cause my brother is short on cash. So I remember that I saw something called [insert word here]bank. Excellent here we go.

And now start the worst case of stupidity you’ll ever see. First we show up in front of the building. The name seems to be Softbank. Maybe some of you already know that place, not me. So we’re at the entrance; two sliding doors with some kind of slim metal rectangle on each side of the center. So I step first and wait for the door to open. And wait, and wait... wait some more... maybe a little more... hum... ahum! I said. Nothing happen. OOOK! I guess we don’t do it the right way. So I try to push aside those little squares and still nothing happen. I feel extremely stupid, EImrich seems lost and my brother can’t stop laughing. Finally, someone get in front of me and simply touché the square on the sign written “Enter” on it. AAARG! I guees it wasn’T obvious enough. We enter and come to the realisation that the Softbank is in fact a cell phone shop. Holy hell! We’re about to leave when I see Oliver-san talking with a salesperson. Oliver est a Sweden student in my class. Curiosity gonna kill me one day, so I tell the others to wait a second and ask Oliver what he is doing. He tells me that he is buying a cell phone.
Yeah but you’re not Japanese.
Maybe but I can still buy one here, that is less costly and more convenient than the one they are trying to rent us at school.
And could I get one even if I only stay two months?
Of course.

At that point my face change expression, EImrich seems anxious to see me like that and my brother have a growing smile on his face while he understands where I’m going with my idea. The idea of this century. Buy a cell phone in Japan while i don’t speak a fuckin word of Japanese at all. Yeah they should give me a Nobel’s prize or something like that.

So we way behind Oliver-san who start to explain to me that he have been here for 1 hour. He explain that i can’T choose my cell phone, there is a precise model for the prepaid card setting and only got to choose the color. Ok. After a while, the saleswoman explain something to Oliver and he stand up to go away a bit frustrated. When I ask him what happened he answer that he can’t rent the phone cause he’s only 19 years old and we needs to be 20 to rent a phone. Anyway, I sit down with the girl who was talking with Oliver-san. And believe me or not, it takes at least 15 minutes to make her understand that I want the same thing that the guy before me wanted. After this 15 minutes, she ask my age. I’m 24 so it’s ok. And then she starts to ask me a lot of thing, most of them, in fact all of them i don’T understand. 10 minutes later (total 25 minutes) she is on the phone japanesing with someone and then she passes me the phone. I push an uncertain “moshi-moshi” and a woman with the worst ever English speaking I ever heard start to ask me questions. 15 minutes later, I know i have to give my address and my phone number to the girl in front of me. For the convenience her name is Hitomi. So I write those two things, pass the paper to Hitomi-san and she starts to enter the information in the computer while I’m still on the phone with the support. After maybe 5 minutes (totalling 45 for now) Hitomi-san try to say something to me. I don’T understand, she asks for the phone, I give it to her; Japanese again, give me back the phone. Support still talking in Japanese when I say:”nani?” She switches to her horrible English. 10 minutes again to understand that the phone number is not valid cause it is a cell phone, or something like that. So I give another phone number. Ok! The support tell me that Hitomi-san gonna enter the information and i’ll have my cellphone right after. Good. Hitomi-san hang-up the phone and i give her my passport so she can write down my name and things like that. Soon she asks me something again. She’s trying her hand at English and I finally understand that she want my middle name. I simply don’t have one, we don’t use them in Canada. I try to explain to her for 5 minutes and she’s back on the phone. Oh crap! Not again. She passes the phone to me. Yes.... And I there’s a man on the other side of the line with an exceptionally good speaking. Cool. So he ask for me middle name, I explain taht i don’t have one again... and then silence. I ask “moshi-moshi” and he asks for my middle name again. What the hell!?! Trying to explain again after 10 minutes (sub-t: 70 minutes)he understands that I don’t have one and tell me that they’ll need to do a check or something like that so I’ll have to wait 20 minutes or so. Waiting again. I suppose that Hitomi-san received confirmation cause she ask me which color i want. Give me black, a goth should always have a black or a metallic phone, always.

After that, Hitomi-san decide that she’s gonna explain me what I can do with the phone. Can you imagine that jsut for a second. Think about it. Think at how it gone so far and now she want to do that. Oh MY fu*beeeeeeep* god. Guess what? It went so well I can’T believe it. She switched the phone to English, showed where to find my phone number, showed me how to use the camera, where to go for my setting preferences. In 15 minutes it was all clear and done.

Totalling 90 minutes, 1 hour and half to buy a cell phone. Not choose, not discuss what best suit my needs. But simply point at one and say I buy it: 90 minutes. But I have my Japanese cell phone now, how cool is that.

And I’m gonna keep it at that for today. Already a long post.
But before I forget. Moi asked me tips to learn Japanese. Well Moi, first I should advise you to not learn Japanese, it’s the easier way around. But if yous till want to. First, and i’m deadly serious, donT’ even try anything else before you do that, learn all you’re fucking hiraganas and katakanas. And I mean it. Check every single one of them, make sure you memorise them. You msut be able to use them easily and even then double check them. It’s the first thing you’ll need and the most important one. Cause when it comes to Japanese you won’t go far without hiragana and katakana. You’ll learn kanji on the way to learning Japanese anyway. And grammar is not as difficult as it may seems, but it is strange and really different from occidental grammar.

Ok... well...
CYA