Rent Payment Day: This time last year.
I stand in the center of a Japanese bank, surrounded by huffing men in formal suits, grannies reclining on the leather couches, bowing tellers and ushering assistants; a stark world of white tiles and even whiter flickering tube-lights, black clothes and even blacker printed kanji.
Scared, stressed, clueless and in everyone’s way, I extricate the best weapon in my arsenal: The Look Of Utter Helplessness.
This works brilliantly in University (one frown of confusion and someone in a business suit immediately runs to save the gaijin in distress) but college is not real life and when it becomes obvious that I’m not going to be rescued any time soon, I push down the urge to scream TASUKETE!!!! (save me) at the top of my lungs and decide to be a self-respecting adult, heading to the counter and ripping myself a numbered chit from the roll. I wait beside a granny.
My number is called and grabbing my sweater off the armrest, I rush over to the waiting lady at the counter.
“I want to pay rent,” I tell her in Japanese, and in the style of a three-year-old learning to form actual sentences.
She blinks and throws a glance at the machines (nothing’s really stopping me from doing just that).
“I don’t understand the kanji,” I admit shamefully. What if I end up transferring my life’s savings to some offshore account instead of my landlady? (And here’s some trivia for you: the phrases ‘Tokyo Rent’ and ‘Life’s Savings’ can be used interchangeably.)
There’s some more frustrated negotiation (No, thank you, I really do not want to open an account with your bank for the pure reason that the amount of kanji I can’t understand on the application form is giving me vertigo) and the lady follows me to their ATM machine, somehow still smiling. She works some magic over the touch-screen and before I know it, a hellish slit has opened up and it’s gurgling for my money. I drop the chunk of cash within and watch it vanish forever into the machine’s dark bowels. A receipt is regurgitated into my hand.
I bow several hundred times to everyone I’ve inconvenienced and make my exit. No one ever wants to see me again, but unfortunately, I’m about to become a regular.
***
Rent Payment Day, One month later.
I have my phone in my hand, the screen showcasing a page from one of those expat how-to-survive-in-Japan blogs written by a white man.
“Now, folks, we gotta understand that Nippon ain’t like the good old US of A here. The first time I arrived…….” (author continues to talk about every sin committed in life post the move to Japan)
I scroll down to what I want: Instructions on how to work the esoteric ATM machine.
“Anyway, folks, let’s move on to Step One. Look for a language button at the bottom of the screen and translate the page to English.”
I look down at the glowing screen of the machine that leers up at me. There’s no such button. I double-tap on my phone, hoping for some revelation, but the action redirects me to a page about the man’s first experience at a Japanese maid-themed ear-cleaning clinic (oh, God, how do I unsee those photos?)
To make a long story short, a raging nineteen-year-old girl furiously groping a bank machine for a non-existent button while sixteen other people wait in line behind her during the packed lunch hour is not a pleasant sight to behold and when I hear the patter of rushing heels and recognize the lovely face of the bank staff member who saved me last time, I almost weep in joy and fling myself into her arms.
Much like the popular, glamorous girls who were in my high-school, she pretends not to recognize me (not that I resent her for that at the moment but still…) and taking over, she efficiently concludes the transaction on my behalf and then sees me off before I can harass another machine. I make a break for it, clutching what little self-dignity I have left.
***
Rent Payment Day, Two months later.
She gifts me a free and pre-filled passbook that I can scan to record each month’s transaction, so I won’t have to keep all those receipts and slips of paper with my own phone number and my landlady’s name on it. (Watching a foreigner mess up while typing on a Japanese keyboard and then erasing all the text to start over from the beginning gets intolerable after several dozen times…. )
She actually speaks to me on this glorious day after fighting my battle yet again. Meanwhile, I’m doubled over, trying to catch my breath post the trauma of it all and bundled inside my winter coat, there’s just me and shame and heat from the utter revulsion at my level of incompetence.
“Are you a student?”
(Translation: Is there any place where you can learn some useful Japanese?)
“Yes,” I assert, pulling myself up, “I am a student. At Waseda.”
She raises an eyebrow and I think I’ve just single-handedly destroyed my University’s stellar reputation. The watchman who opens the door gives me a painfully sympathetic smile.
***
The Next Month.
“Let me teach you,” she offers and steps in, just after I get about halfway through and then flounder and have to cancel the whole transaction for the third time, “Right, to begin, you press this button.”
The place isn’t busy at this time of morning and I wait for her to glide through the virtual quest yet again, but she gives me an expectant look and I meekly reach out and scrape the tab she points at.
“This kanji is お振込 which means ‘transfer’. Do you understand?”
Dazed, I nod.
“Now, type in the Bank’s branch in this bar.”
I obey.
“Insert the passbook.”
Still in a dream (but in reality, haven’t I just woken up at last?) I follow her commands till the very end and try to commit the intricacies of each level to memory.
“There!” she says with a smile, when we finish, “Let’s see next month.”
***
The Next Month..
I leave the bank with my head hung low as the late winter wind whistles around my flushed ears, each howl going BAKA BAKA, and my willpower to live at an all-time low.
***
One Month Later…
I’m in a hurry to see the sakura trees that have burst to life and in order to do that, I need to get to the Hanami Party in time…Rushing into the bank again, I avoid eye-contact with everyone. My passbook and my wallet are prepared and stepping up to the machine, I lower my defences, taking a breath to steady my thoughts and ground myself into this moment. A quick squeeze of my hand to warm my chilled fingers (the weather’s actually getting warmer, I’m just petrified), and I commence my journey through a cyber network fraught with danger every step of the way.
From the corner of my eye, I see that surrogate mother of mine take a hesitant step forward to end my pain (she’s more or less resigned herself to her doom by now), but there must be something new in my demeanour that stops her from interfering this time. Holding back, she returns to her duties but watches me attentively all the while. Even the watchman tiptoes ever so slightly for a peek into our private drama.
I choose the transaction.
I confirm my choice.
I type in the bank branch.
I type in the amount.
I submit my Passbook.
I confirm again.
I offer to pay in cash.
I confirm yet again.
I pay in cash.
I confirm everything once more.
I take my change.
My book is delivered unto my hands, a worn traveler returned from a strange dimension I will never truly understand the innards of, but before I can reflect on that it’s all over and the screen resets.
Turning around, just a little light-headed, I take a step towards the exit but the woman rushes at me and she’s full out beaming, her eyes crinkled, lips curled, and with the residue of an overwhelming sense of pride that she can’t quite press down….worlds away from her strained smiles of courtesy in the past.
“Dekita!” She says, her voice rising, and I’ll never forget those words or her face in that moment, “You did it!”
“Thank you,” I breathe out, more or less intoxicated by gratitude and my own brilliance, “Okagesamade. It was all due to you.”
She denies it, of course, but I insist and thank her over and over again and she asks me where I’m from and what I do. We chat for about a minute and she radiates so much warmth and concern in those fifty or so seconds that I totally forget about the chill in my hands.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” She offers at last. She doesn’t specify what’s so hard, though: My lack of Japanese ability? A delayed learning process? Life as a foreign University Student? Japanese Society? Katakana keyboards? The machine without a translation button? Paying money?
She lets me decide, and as I walk out of the bank that gray-white spring day, I can’t find a reason to slouch. My mind is clear and my chin juts out at a defiant little angle.
In retrospect, the non-judgmental and patient months of teaching was just what I had needed. Being transplanted into an academically driven world where even the seemingly mindless task of buying a carton of milk required a complete upheaval of my existing systems of perception and the reasonably deep penetration of a new linguistic syntax, my sense of competency had been shattered and real life didn’t have neatly tabulated test scores to assure me that I wasn’t sliding backwards. This tiny and ridiculous success in my life was the start of my addiction for that wondrous feeling again: the high of self-sufficiency. Can it become too extreme? Is it praiseworthy to achieve 100% independence of existence? I suppose these are questions for another post.
For now, let’s return to my misadventures at the Japanese bank. There’s only one bit left…
Just like an evanescent ghost in the dark of night, she vanished from my life soon afterwards but lives on within me forever: These days I negotiate all-Japanese bank transactions without so much as a hitch.