Spent a few minutes practicing how to find the business card counter, "meishi uriba wa doko desu ka?" and tootled off to the local department store to get some business cards printed, western on one side and Nihongo on the other.
Straight upto the information desk and proudly ask my question...then ask it again slightly differently...and then again..and again..and finally "Ah-soo Meishi uriba!" floor 5. So slightly deflated at my obviously extremely poor pronunciation of Japanese of I go to the fifth floor. There I find that I have been directed to the business card holder collection so yet again I have to inflict my Japanese on some poor unsuspecting soul. Whats interesting is the way they all look so scared when the Gaijin approaches then look so happy when I start to speak Japanese and then start looking confused as they realise they have no idea what I am trying to say. Anyway this guy takes me to the stationary department on floor seven and now the fun begins.
I explain I want them to make me some cards with Romanji on one side and Katakana on the other and i show them the text that I want. The katakana causes no problem but the western letters do cause a major issue. Apparently they only ever see Romanji in text books and so never actually see handwriting, what this means is that my very neat and tidy notes takes three of them to convert into exactly the same letters but in japanese writing style so that they can understand it. All the time the senior lady is bowing to me and speaking the shop talk that show proper deference. Then another girl arrives to explain to me that I should return on the 1st of October (we went to another part of the shop to get a calender) for the final proofs and that when everything is ok the cards will be ready on the 6th. Phew everything done and then I just have to go through the bowing, the senior lady has her head on the desk as I leave so hopefully she didnt notice me knocking over loads of stuff off the shelves....
Well lets see what turns up on the 1st of October...
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