The fruits of my labors.

[snarp]

Check-Out Girl: Here’s your change.
Gaijin: Thank you. Uh, I need to turn a jar of coins into bills. Can I do that anywhere here?
Check-Out Girl: Oh, go over to the service counter.
Gaijin: Over there? Okay, thank you.

Gaijin: I wanted to turn this jar of coins into bills. Can I do that here?
Service Counter Girl: Oh… that’s a lot…
Gaijin: Yeah, sorry. And I’ve actually got a second one…
Service Counter Girl: …Sorry, but you should probably go to a bank or a post office.
Gaijin: I can do that at the post office?
Service Counter Girl: Yeah. The nearest one is -
Gaijin: No, it’s okay, I know where it is.
Service Counter Girl: Sorry about that.
Gaijin: No, it’s okay. Thank you.

I realized after having these conversations that I’d gotten through them without pausing to think about what I was saying or confusing anyone. No, this is a big accomplishment.

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)

Comments

[elongated-tito.livejournal.com]

That's means you are fluid.

[snarp]

One must hope.

(Today I attempted to actually exchange the money at the bank, and the teller was so flustered by the presence of a non-Japanese person in there that she kept switching from Japanese to very disjointed English at me. She only knew two or three phrases, and her accent was so heavy that the only one I'm totally sure I understood was, "I don't speak English," so this did not facilitate the transaction.

I was speaking Japanese the entire time, so she actually had no way of knowing I even spoke English - maybe I should have just told her I was French or something. Except I don't know if that would have helped, since she seemed to understand my Japanese fine when she actually listened to it. She just had this impulse, upon being confronted with a foreigner, to try to speak English. (Brazilians in the US must get people speaking bad Spanish at them a lot. I bet Brazilian English textbooks all teach you, "I speak Portuguese, not Spanish" within the first few chapters.))