There are some silly things about Japan. When you call up an internet company and you want to start up some web surfing, normally they ask you when you’re available, and you’ve probably got internet in about a week.
The Japanese system has taken me thus far about eight. The first step was going to the Japanese version of Best Buy called K’s Denki, where I had a very painful conversation with the store clerk there. Mostly just painful because I didn’t really understand a thing that he was saying. He finished the half hour long conversation by saying “Owarimashita!” It’s done! And I sat there thinking “WAIT! What’s done!? What did I do!?”
A week later I get something in the mail, I have to send them a copy of my Alien Registration Card along with some dates that are good for me for them to come and install the internet. But those dates have to be at least 17 days from the day I send them my alien registration card.
I’ve now been here about six weeks and no internet company wants to take my money.
Cut to: Leasing a car. I’ve been with my parents to car dealerships before. It’s always an obnoxious ordeal where you sit down with the salesmen and you have a long conversation and you negotiate prices and you try to convince them to give you accessories for free and then you talk to someone about insurance and yaddah yaddah yaddah. It’s seriously an all day event.
I met with the lady at the car dealership with my very-good-at-speaking-Japanese friend Aaron where we sat and he asked her if they good do the same deal for me that they gave him. She said it was no problem but that I’d have to come back another day because the car wasn’t ready yet.
So yesterday I give them a call to figure out when I should come in, and the lady says that she’s going to come pick me up from my apartment to have me fill out the paperwork, and by fill out, I mean I throw my signature down on a piece of paper and she hands me the keys. We drink some tea and I speed away in my new-to-me black Suzuki with custom break lights and some seriously tinted windows. So seriously tinted, that you CANNOT SEE into my back passenger windows. So seriously tinted, that I CANNOT SEE ANYTHING through the rear view mirror.
It’s very safe, I’m sure.
Life is good! I can get to the beach in five minutes instead of 30 or 40! I can go buy a trunk load of groceries and I won’t have to bungie cord it to my bike. I can go wherever I want…. as long as I have cash to pay the toll roads, and sure gas if five bucks a gallon, and SURE there’s some sort of weird scratching noise the car makes in first gear, but repairs are INCLUDED in the price of the lease AND I have a CAR.
CAPITAL LETTERS.
Anyhow, life is good. And tonight I have a sushi date with Kasai-san. We’re going to one of those rotating sushi places where the sushi comes by on a plate and you pick it up and eat it and it’s delicious.
Hurray!
1 comments:
crazy! you can't get internet, but they'll come to your house and give you a car. and the US still thinks it's the best country right? hrm.
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