Well, they called me up just as they promised, and apparently there aren`t any of the scarves I wanted left in the whole of Japan, for which the nice shop assistant (I forget her name) on the end of the phone made the usual personal apology for letting me down etc... Anyway, they want me to come in and check out the one they have left to see if I want it (I may just throw them a curve ball and get some shoes instead...). Anyway, the funniest thing about the whole business was my realising that I didn`t actually know how to end a phone call politely and in a non-casual way. Most unfortunately I realised this AT THE END OF THE PHONE CALL. I thanked them all for their effort and then sort of expected them to hang up, but then realised they actually can`t hang up on me because I`m 客様 (kyakusama-literally most honourable customer) and it would be rude to, and I can`t hang up because the only think I can think of saying is something along the lines of "c u l8r" which isn`t very appropriate if you don`t know the person very well... this went on rather awkwardly for about 30 seconds...
I`d just like to point out at this moment that I do actually do other things here other than go shopping... I`m off to Kyoto with Mayuko next week for example.
Oh, and I spend 30 mins of technical Japanese class struggling through a paper on Global Warming and then in the last 3 mins found the vocabulary sheet which explained everything... Actually, on this subject, given our vocabulary sheets are all in English, isn`t that a bit unfair on the Chinese/Korean Students?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
To end a phone conversation, I usually just say my thanks, then すみません or じゃあ、失礼します or even お疲れ様です - something along those lines. It's what I seem to hear the most when my friends are on the phone.
ReplyDelete