Reading is an Essential Life Skill
Living in a country when you don’t understand the language yet can be tricky. Eastern countries like Japan are particularly complicated since they use the Chinese pictorial script for writing. Trying to read a sign with kanji (pictorial characters) that I don’t know can be a time consuming process. Because of that, I have become very good at “reading” pictures and making guesses. After a while, your brain gets used to not understanding and just stops paying attention. That can cause problems because sometimes “reading” pictures works fairly well and sometimes it doesn’t.
Back in April, shortly after we arrived in Japan, a new national law went into effect. It mandated that grocery stores start charging people ¥5 (approx 5¢) for each plastic shopping bag as a way of encouraging people to use reusable bags more. So, we bought some reusable bags and have tried to remember to take them with us to the store each time we go. About a month ago, we were at a store close to our apartment, but not the one at which we usually shop. We saw someone in line in front of us who didn’t have a reusable bag take a card with a picture of a bag on it and place it in their shopping basket. When the clerk saw it, he gave them a plastic bag and charged them the ¥5. “Oh,” we thought, “that’s convenient. That way we wouldn’t have to fumble through telling the store clerk that we wanted a bag if we forgot to bring ours along.” Here clerks are very courteous but often trying to go as quickly as possible and so talking to them can be difficult. We had seen cards like that at our normal grocery store and so we tucked the information away for the next time we forgot our bags.
Forward to this past Tuesday. We had gotten our groceries but realized that we left our bags at home. When we got to the register, we grabbed one of the cards with a picture of a bag on it and put it on top of our stuff. Since it had the same picture as the one at the other store, it must have the same purpose, right? We paid for our groceries and as we were walking away, we realized that the cashier hadn’t given us a bag or charged us the ¥5. “Excuse me,” I said as I turned around, “I needed a bag.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” said the clerk. “I didn’t know.”
Didn’t know? Huh? I had put the tag in the shopping basket. “Maybe the tag isn’t for that we think it’s for,” Theresa quipped. So then, I stopped to read it. They were actually characters that I knew and could have read, had I paid attention. They said in big letters, “I brought my own bag.”
Pray for continued patience and perseverance as we learn Japanese. Pray that we would find good opportunities to practice what we are learning, particularly conversation that is on our level of Japanese.