F Bills

(I like how I posted about how busy I am and have since been blogging every day). This week has been a frustrating/panic inducing week over here regarding everyday Japan life...ie paying utility bills. I already vented to some of you about my cell phone issue, and don't really feel like explaining the long story, but just know it ended in me being EXTREMELY frustrated and having to run to the bathroom at work to force my tears to go up and back into my eyeballs rather than down my face (doing that is extremely exhausting btw). A big chunk of the frustration came from what we call "foreigner syndrome"--when something here happens/has to be a certain way and we (the foreigners) cannot comprehend why it has to happen/be a certain way with no going around it whatsoever even though it makes absolutely no sense and is completely inconvenient, yet you have to just shut up and swallow it, because that's just how it is. Ok back to my story--the other chunk came from what I will go into in a few.

OK, so after that issue happened, I came home to my apt last night and found a random receipt along with a bill/voucherish thing under my door. Of course it was in kanji, but I did see on the receipt the total was 7500 yen so I wanted to know what I had to pay NOW. So I stayed up super late trying to figure out the translation online and resulted in learning some really random kanji but still had no clue what it was for or what it even was in fact. I brought it to my manager today and she first looked at the receipt and told me it must be for this upcoming month's gas bill. Then looked at the billish voucher thing with hardly anything on it and told me it was the current bill from last month/April for gas. Then she turned to me and said "The first month is usually more expensive." And then pointed to a number on the bill-- 35447. At first I think out of denial my brain somehow changed the imaginary comma that would come after the 35 to a period and decided it was 35.447 and the end would be rounded off. But then I looked again and said (internally since I was at work surrounded by students) "350 DOLLARS FOR *^*&^&^*& GAS?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!!?!?!! WHAT!?!!!!?!???" Then I took a deep breath and asked her if it was normal and she said........not really and that she would call for me. We are super busy on Saturdays so then I had to run off and teach 3 classes. Where I spent all 3 internally panicking about this new bill situation. My coworkers told me it had to be a mistake, but after the cell phone thing I had reason to believe I would actually be expected to pay that much for a month of gas! I was worrying so much about it, I actually turned it into a warm up discussion for my 2nd more advanced class. "Who here has their own apt? Ok, do you pay utility bills? Ok, I got a gas bill for 35,000 yen, is that normal?" Most of the students nodded their heads like "yeah, duh, what do you expect?" --Restart panic mode- "Wait....so....it's normal to pay 35,000 yen a month for GAS?" Looks of doubt/confusion began. Then I decided to be smart and wrote it on the board. Looks of shock and realization then surrounded me (I think they were thinking I said 3,500 yen-reasonable). So they reassured me that was NOT normal. But did that calm down my worrying? Not really? The thoughts of "What if the last tenant never paid their bill and they make me pay it or else I won't have AC this summer??? What if there is a leak and they will make me pay it????" etc. Finally I found my manager and she told me that she made a mistake and the "35,447" was really my account number (HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF), I owe 7,500 for the past two months combined. I can hang with that.

OK, so now why I think these 2 above situations affected me so much--back home I have (as well as all of you I am sure) had frustrating bill issues/confusion. However, back home I could pick up my phone and call someone. Back home I didn't need someone to call for me or come with me to run simple errands like...mail something at the post office/translate anything for me/try to understand me/explain to me since their English isn't perfect. Back home I can stand up for myself and handle my own problems. Here, I am kind of useless/helpless when it comes to everyday situations like this and I am FORCED to rely on others. Not that I don't trust my manager-she is wonderful-but I guess it would be easier to cope with annoying things like this if I could control them a little more. I guess I had a tad of "culture shock" this week finally you could say?

Eh, at least it's the weekend. BTW- I am making "Mexican food" tomorrow for my coworkers and can I just say I have never spent so long in a supermarket hunting down ingredients/compromised ingredients to make....ground beef tacos? I am definitely going to return a creative chef, that is for sure. =)

--Oh and btw-I now have a new pet peeve about groceries here. A lot of things are all in English on the packaging (random mistranslationish quotes/brand name/etc) but what it ACTUALLY IS is ONLY in Japanese! WHY? Is it so hard to just include a bit more English??? My example of the day is seasoning bottles. The seasoning company is in English, their motto is in English, yet I have no idea what the f$%& is inside the bottle besides the obvious obvious herbs/seasonings (like...rosemary...wait that's actually it) because the name of the herb/seasoning/whatever is only in Japanese. Sigh.