 |
| This is where I came out of Chiba JR Station - this is far less crowded than when I arrived on a Saturday night. |
I came here briefly in ’98, but coming back with a basic grasp of the language is giving me so much more pleasure. In the last couple of days, I’ve got my residence card registered at the city municipal office, started a health care account, opened a bank account, moved into an apartment and had the gasman come and connect my utilities. Also, I managed to get my internet connection set up; that was quite an achievement because my Macbook Pro doesn’t have an ethernet port or CD/DVD drive; so had to buy an adaptor … knowing the kara/made (from/to) sentence structure allowed me to articulate that I needed an adapter (which I figured would be like most modern words spelled out in katakana アダプター… adaputaa) thus said, アダプターはUSBからLANまでがありますか。/ adaputaa wa USB kara LAN made ga arimasuka … do you have an adapter from USB to LAN? And of course, got lead around the shop looking at all sorts of USB adapters, but no LAN connection.
So one guy went off to get another guy and I explained again … but they both looked a little confused … and each time I explained with more and more detail and they went off and got the more senior staff member to come along. In the end, the top tech guy came along and to my astonishment, he just asked one question; “Macbook Air ga arimasuka” … and immediately led me to where there was a whole shelf of USB to LAN adapters! Of course he then wanted me to buy the fastest one, so because it was my birthday I thought, “fine - treat myself to a birthday present.” Got home, but couldn’t get it to work because it needed a driver installed … oh dear … now I had to go back to the shop and explain that the driver was on the CD-ROM and my Macbook doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive. So today’s morning challenge was that; but managed to tell the whole story (which was now becoming like ‘the little old lady who swallowed a fly” song) in great detail and with a few questions about had I tried this … that … oh OK … and so I said I’d like to buy an older adapter because the operating system ought to support it … so once again, found myself having a technical debate about which vendor was most likely to have their adapter supported by OSX 10.9.
There was a happy ending. I came home today with the replacement adapter and ta-daa; I was all setup with broadband internet access! Sat there for a good few minutes just smiling because when I thought about it; I would more than likely have had just as many problems if this had happened in England if I'd gone to Curry’s or PC World. That was, for me, a super very YAY moment in my language learning adventure.
So one guy went off to get another guy and I explained again … but they both looked a little confused … and each time I explained with more and more detail and they went off and got the more senior staff member to come along. In the end, the top tech guy came along and to my astonishment, he just asked one question; “Macbook Air ga arimasuka” … and immediately led me to where there was a whole shelf of USB to LAN adapters! Of course he then wanted me to buy the fastest one, so because it was my birthday I thought, “fine - treat myself to a birthday present.” Got home, but couldn’t get it to work because it needed a driver installed … oh dear … now I had to go back to the shop and explain that the driver was on the CD-ROM and my Macbook doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive. So today’s morning challenge was that; but managed to tell the whole story (which was now becoming like ‘the little old lady who swallowed a fly” song) in great detail and with a few questions about had I tried this … that … oh OK … and so I said I’d like to buy an older adapter because the operating system ought to support it … so once again, found myself having a technical debate about which vendor was most likely to have their adapter supported by OSX 10.9.
There was a happy ending. I came home today with the replacement adapter and ta-daa; I was all setup with broadband internet access! Sat there for a good few minutes just smiling because when I thought about it; I would more than likely have had just as many problems if this had happened in England if I'd gone to Curry’s or PC World. That was, for me, a super very YAY moment in my language learning adventure.
Then when I got home from my afternoon wander around Chiba park, there was a note from the post-office that I couldn’t read (didn’t understand a lot of the kanji) - but given the context and the information I could read, it seemed to be one of those notes that the post-office leave when they can’t deliver something. So I went off to the nearest post office to ask what I needed to do. It turned out to be that I hadn't written a name plate by my letter box and so they couldn't deliver in case I didn't live there. So we went through a form and apparently they'll attempt to deliver my mail tomorrow.
But just as important as getting that issue resolved; I ended up chatting away with most of the staff in the local post-office … and found that my local postman is a Liverpool supporter … so I said that I was a Chelsea fan, but please don’t burn my mail!!! Anyway, once more, loads of praise on my ability to speak Japanese (which, of course, you get if you can say the most basic things anyway, but for me it’s always encourages me to learn more, become more articulate, be able to have deeper, more interesting conversations) and I left the post-office feeling yet another buzz from the experience.
But just as important as getting that issue resolved; I ended up chatting away with most of the staff in the local post-office … and found that my local postman is a Liverpool supporter … so I said that I was a Chelsea fan, but please don’t burn my mail!!! Anyway, once more, loads of praise on my ability to speak Japanese (which, of course, you get if you can say the most basic things anyway, but for me it’s always encourages me to learn more, become more articulate, be able to have deeper, more interesting conversations) and I left the post-office feeling yet another buzz from the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment