09 February 2008

I had a right to be confused, right?

So tonight, like everyone else in my area apparently, I ordered pizza for dinner. I had no problem waiting the 90 minutes and I was pleasantly surprised when it showed up after only 60. Can you imagine my surprise when I opend the door, saw a pizza delivery guy and he wouldn't give me the pizza. Now it takes no Japanese language skills to answer the door for pizza. It's the same anywhere, open the door, take the pizza and hand over money. Except when the delivery guy doesn't hand over the pizza and won't take your money. How confusing. He keeps talking, but of course I don't understand. He doesn't walk away. Just stands there with a pizza. So I called the store. It turns out they sent the wrong pizza. So why send the guy with the pizza?

Also, is it sad that as soon as I asked for someone who spoke English and that person got on the phone they said that they'd sent the wrong pizza and a new one would be delivered within 30 minutes, without even asking for my name? None of the other foreigners in the neighbourhood order pizza I guess. I really should learn how to say my phone number and order in Japanese but I'm afraid that if I did learn those things by rote the person on the other end would expect me to to actually understand Japanese. So although I feel badly about speaking English it save any misperceptions about my command of Japanese.

No comments: