Gaijin Gripes: Say the Price. Aloud. In words. Please.

    Japanese customer service is among the best in the world but the longer I live here, the more I get used to it. This might be why encounters I have now that would have seemed like nothing at all in my home country frustrate me highly here.

    My current issue is talking, specifically about prices and specifically at the check out counter. Several times in the last six months, I have come up to the counter at a large mall or tourist destination and had the staff member type a number wordlessly into a calculator then they show me, still silent, as if I were not entitled to hear them speak.

    I am not saying that they need to know English because they don't. Yes, the Olympics are coming and yes that means a lot of people with little to no Japanese will be in the country even up here in Tohoku, but that doesn't pay for conversational English classes or create a huge push for menial workers to commit their private lives to studying languages they have no interest in. I am fine with them speaking Japanese. They should. We are in Japan.

    But they should still speak.

    If my Japanese husband were making the purchase, the people would at least say the price aloud. That's all I am asking for.

This is how I feel when a calculator is wordlessly laid upon the counter in front of me. It doesn't matter how much you smile, staff member. Your silence tells me I am not a person.

    As someone who has been shopping in Japan for over a decade, I know my Japanese numbers, at least as high as any price I'm capable of paying. If I didn't, hearing the numbers would still tell me that the ringing up of my purchases had been completed and reaffirm what those words sound like in Japanese. This is how people learn languages in the real world. You hear a word or phrase enough and it sinks in. I am not saying they shouldn't use the calculators to show the prices as some people need that information displayed that way, but present it with the words, giving us the same courtesy of speech other customers get.

    Denying the foreign customer even so much effort as a "ni-sen-en" spoken price is denying them a chance to learn and reaffirming an assumption that all us non-Japanese folks are only here as tourists and we will all just go home someday, so there's no point in engaging.

    The joke is on you, silent clerks. My name is already on a tombstone here. I'm staying.

    There are some people who have difficulty with speech, but none of the situations I encountered recently were such. All of my silent cashiers were speech-capable young adults who chose not to talk to me, one even as I was asking her counterpart to put my purchases in an eco bag in Japanese. When prompted, they all spoke perfect, unhindered Japanese, but why did they need to be prompted?

    I've started responding to the silent calculator by saying bango to itte kudasai. Please say the number. Or kotoba tsukatte kudasai. Please use words. In every instance thus far, the staff member blinks at me and then does as I asked in a confused tone, as if it were some quiz in a school they didn't remember signing up for or going to, but they do say it. I doubt they really get why it's so offensive to me and I don't usually have the time and energy to sit around and explain, but at least asking them to say it is better than letting it go unchecked and letting them continue to believe that foreign customers are just walking bags of money.  I'm trying to at least give the cashiers the chance to learn better, even though it's that same chance they aren't interested in giving us.

    I am living and dying here, after all.

    And I want this place to be more foreign friendly, not because foreigners are better by any means but because I don't want all the Olympics-enthused tourists going home thinking the area I live in, the area my husband and daughter are from, is the armpit of Japan. It's bad enough all the Tokyo-to-Kyoto tourists treat Tohoku like a plague-ridden death trap. We could at least be nice to the ones who wander up this far.

    So please, shop staff of northern Japan, should you happen to read this, say the words. Even if the customer is foreign. Even if they are speaking a foreign language loudly at their children or companions. Even if you are absolutely sure they don't know six words of your language.

    Say the words. Help us learn. Treat us like people.

    We want to give you the money.

    Just use the words and tell us how much, even if you show us the number, too.