Combini
Today I wanted to mail a letter and I was told I could do so in a ‘combini,’ a convenience store. These stores which can be found on each block and sometimes there are several on one block (lawson, am/pm. 7-11). They sell magazines, drinks and food (and not bad food either, they have a combination of packaged and fresh food and we have found the fresh food to be quite good. This is caused by the heavy competition between suppliers we have been told. Go kapitalism!), and a variety of other services; the one closest to us is also a dry cleaner. You can pay your bills there too. I was quite impressed with this and was enthusiastically telling R how great I thought these little combini shops are that are often open for 24 hours a day to pay your bills, she answered that paying your bills by stuffing a check in an envelope and never having to leave home was a lot more convenient. Typical American, isn’t she? Especially since although we have a bank account with Citibank here (with quite a lot of money on it, actually) but we have not yet found a way to get money out of that account with the card they supplied (they did not give us a pin we think…but perhaps it was on one of those notes with all the Japanese characters on it they sent us?) nor do we understand how to pay any bills with the account. We have to rely on the combini where we can pay with cash obtained by withdrawing money from our American accounts. Where would we be without the combini?? Deported most likely.
In any case, combinis also sell stamps and have a drop-off box for mail so I am off to the combini with this envelope. I show the man the envelope, point to the upper right corner and mutter ‘onegai shimasu’ which I believe means please, but then there are many different ways of saying please so I am never quite certain. But an immediate showing of recognition appears on the man’s face and he pulls out a plastic file with large sheets of stamps. He then asks me how much I need. At least that is what I think he must have said. I was kind of counting on his expertise in this area, as I have no idea (wakalimasen). Expensive is what I would guess. So now he he pulls out a large manual, and starts studying. After a while he pulls out another plastic file from which he retrieved a tape measure. He then proceeds to measure the entire circumference of the envelope. This took a while, as he had to stretch from corner to corner. When he started measuring the bottom of the envelope, the third side, I wanted to suggest that the length of the top could perhaps be taken as at least a rough estimate for the length of the bottom, the envelope being largely rectengular in shape, but of course I could not say this in Japanese, so instead I waited patiently for him to measure the envelope, then weigh it on a scale he pulled out from under the counter. He then went back to his book and then told me that I should pay 120 yen. By then I had surely missed two trains, and could have hand-delivered the envelope to the destination, but no matter. I still love the convenience of the combini.
12:12:30 AM 
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