In Tokyo: I Have No Idea What I'm Eating

While I spend most of my working week in an English-speaking bubble known as The Office, as soon as I step out of that bubble I am repeatedly reminded that I do not speak the language of this country. Every Japanese person I have met has been so patient and kind, but there have inevitably been some very awkward moments which, of course, I will entertain you with throughout my trip. We begin with food....

1. Grocery shopping

Supermarkets are ranked #1 on the list of Places You Will Most Likely Confuse Others. You could be forgiven for thinking that I could just enter the store, pick up a few items, hand them to the shop assistant along with my credit card in total silence and be able exit with my dignity intact. What you don't realise is that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM BUYING. I can't read any of the labels...

... and a lot of things I should have recognised come in very different shapes...

An incredible variety of mushrooms...if I don't know what the thing I'm eating is, it has usually turned out to be a type of mushroom or a type of seaweed

My last resort has been to type into my Google Translate app and show it to a shop assistant, who will take me to what I need. Sometimes they will type something back to me - as a system it works ok.

Once I was hoping to cook dinner at home (mistake) and I had no idea which of the sauces I was supposed to use. A very kind shop assistant led me over to the sauces. I showed her my translation for "I am allergic to onion and garlic", which she understood. She then said in broken English "what...cook?" and I showed her my shopping basket, which included tofu. She got excited by the tofu and pulled a few sauces off the shelf for me, which I then bought. I still have no idea what the sauce is, but it is delicious with tofu. 

Last week was embarrassing. As usual, I was trying my now standard Just Smile and Hand Over Your Credit Card routine. As I was paying, the shop assistant started putting my items in a bag, and she said "Something something something receipt something something?" Thinking that she said "Do you want a receipt?", I said "Iie" (which means no). She then froze, her hand poised above the bag....she stared at me confused....then with a raised eyebrow she slowly started pulling things out of the bag and putting them back on the counter. I quickly said "Hai uh I mean iie I mean hai bag yes bag yes" and she smiled confused and put the items back in the bag. She must have been like:

2. Dining Out

Dining Out is #1 on the list of Places Where You Will Most Likely Be Confused Yourself. On our first night in Tokyo, we had dinner at a delicious izakaya. As soon as I slid across the wooden door and entered the restaurant, the chefs and waiters started yelling at me! One of the other trainees then said to me "Oh you'd better take your shoes off before going in". So I assumed that they were yelling "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! TAKE YOUR BLOODY SHOES OFF?! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE COMING IN HERE WITH YOUR SHOES ON!" We then had a lovely dinner with delicious food, and a week goes by. I later recalled the event in a conversation, and said to my friend "Yeh...like that time we were yelled at when we entered the restaurant". He turned to me and said "They weren't yelling at you. They were welcoming you. The restaurant was loud and they were just welcoming you inside".

Right.

So when I entered the restaurant last week, they were just saying "WELCOME!! COME IN, WELCOME TO OUR RESTAURANT WE HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT TIME HERE, YOU ARE SO VERY WELCOME ENJOY OUR FOOD". Ok.

We went out for lunch the next day and ordered a delicious meat fry-up. There was Japanese-style battered chicken and other meats with a side of salad. One of the trainees speaks Japanese so he was very kind in ordering for us. Once the dishes were laid out on the table, the chef personally came around to ask how we were enjoying our meals. We all bowed and smiled and said arigato gozaimasu. The trainee translated that the chef said not to forget the sauce. My friend reached for one of the sauce bottles and squeezed it generously all over the chicken. Suddenly, the chef cried out. I can only imagine he was saying:

Turns out my friend had just poured salad dressing all over her fried chicken. Poor chef.

Through my "Everything Once" philosophy, I have tried not to let my complete unfamiliarity with Japanese cuisine stop me from trying new foods. Yakitori is my absolute favourite at the moment - it's a delicious Japanese style of skewered chicken, although they don't just limit it to the breast and thigh:

So far I have eaten off a skewer:

• Chicken hearts
• Chicken tails
• Chicken liver
• Chicken skin

And then from a bowl, chicken intestines. I completely agree that if you're going to eat an animal, you shouldn't let any of it go to waste. That said, I'll be happy if I never have chicken liver or heart ever again...

An Aussie London Lawyer in Tokyo: Settling In

As most of you know, I was extremely lucky to be sent on secondment to Tokyo for my third rotation. I know you all want an update, because my inbox is flooded with kind messages from dear friends but all saying the same thing: "HOW IS TOKYO!?!"

There is a lot to say, more than I can cover in this post, so let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start....

Being me, I packed a ridiculous amount of stuff to take with me to Tokyo. Not only filling up the two boxes allocated to us by our firm, but also taking an over-the-top amount of luggage on the plane which was physically impossible for me to carry (my friends very kindly helped me carry it up the hill to our apartments).

Speaking of apartments, I am thrilled to report that I have exactly 575% more space all to myself than I did in London - we each get a studio apartment, and my old 2.5m x 2.5m bedroom pales in comparison.


I was so happy to confirm that we had Japanese toilets in our apartment. At least ours have pictures where you can kind of gauge what their function is: bidet spray, warm seat, warm air etc. I went to a work dinner last week, and hung around in the bathroom for what seemed like forever, pressing all the buttons (and getting some unpleasant surprises) until I found the one that made the toilet flush!

A few hours after landing, we were taken out by the outgoing trainees to a delicious izakaya (type of casual Japanese restaurant, though its business card suspiciously calls it a "Specialty Store". That must mean something different here). It was not only our firm's trainees who went to the dinner, it was a group of the trainees of all the different law firms here in Tokyo. Apparently this will be my main social group while I'm here.

There's a word here, gaijin, which means foreigner. When I think of the word gaijin, I think predominantly of white "expats" who stick together and don't bother to learn the language. It's used almost like a punchline here - "a gaijin supermarket" or "ordering like a typical gaijin". It seems like the goal of those who live here long-term and speak Japanese is to be as little gaijin as possible, but it's not something you can ever escape. I really hope I can learn as much of the language and customs as I can, so that I'll at least be a respectful gaijin!

On our first whole day in Japan, we headed to the office to receive Emergency/ Earthquake training. Well frankly that scared the sh*t out of me. THAT'S the first thing on the agenda? We were told all about the Fukashima earthquake 5 years ago, and how the building swayed back and forth so much that the solicitors got motion sickness. At least they were safe! We have an "emergency pack" both at work and at home, which feature canned food, water, helmets, blankets and first aid (mine is below). Apparently there are so many tremors and small earthquakes here that I will definitely experience at least one during my time here.

We then got given our Japanese business cards (English on one side, Japanese characters on the other side). The absolute best thing was that our names had been translated into Japanese pronunciation. My last name was SOOOOOOOO fantastic. An example is watching Friends in Japanese (PS available on Netflix) - over here we get Chan-de-rah Bing.

That night, we were taken out by the entire firm for a "Goodbye old trainees/ hello new trainees" night out on the town. Wow. I mean what a crazy night. It started off with pre-drinks, followed by dinner at a restaurant where the size of your drink doubles every time you order. By the end, the size of the glasses become ridiculous!

We headed to karaoke after that, it was so much fun! The group had booked a private room, and the drinks kept flowing. Unlike in Lost in Translation, where one person has the microphone and people respectfully listen to their awful singing, we had 4 microphones and the entire group was dancing and singing at the top of their lungs - no cause for any stage fright!

It was not this calm

We then headed to a club. By this stage I had acquired stickers on my face, and when we went inside and pushed our way through the crowd, the Japanese club-goers stared at my face. They were understandably puzzled as to why I had stickers on my face, but what was less understandable was when they started to push the stickers. Multiple people poked at my face as though they were pushing buttons and were curious to find out what each button did (now that I think about it, kind of like my fascination with the toilet buttons). My friend tells me not to flatter myself, and that the stickers were probably falling off and the Japanese club-goers were helpfully sticking them back on. For whatever reason, it was a strange end to a strange night.

And that concludes my tale of the first 1.5 days of my secondment!