Machine convenience

One thing I am sure is true of living in any country where you are not a native speaker of the language, but one that has affected me personally in Japan, is the convenience barrier: It’s really, really difficult to perform simple tasks such as paying bills and reserving seats when you can’t read, write, or speak the language. Varied processes are implemented to increase the convenience of such tasks but the interesting thing is that, in my experience, the more convenient a process becomes for a native speaker, the more difficult it is for someone who doesn’t speak the language.

Speaking as someone who was functionally illiterate when they came to this country, it’s amazing how much you rely on people, rather than machines, to augment any gaps in your understanding. You can fight with the machine in the corner (the one with instructions written entirely in kanji, tiny letters, and baffling, non-logical interface) for thirty minutes, or you can go to the counter and say, “help!” and some kindly clerk will spend ten minutes walking you through the twenty screens of buttons you have to press. You begin to think of elaborate schemes in order to avoid having to use a machine to do anything; it’s so much easier to look up the root verb for what you want to do in the dictionary, and then find someone to pester:

“Good afternoon sir, how may I help you?”
“Send!”
“What would you like to send sir?”
“Send!”
“Oh? Ok then. How would you like to send it. EMS or Airmail?”
“Send! Please!”

The trick is finding the exact blend of politeness, friendliness and utter incompetence that allows the clerk to make all your decisions for you, without either party feeling bad about the transaction.

As your command of the language increases, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to organise things. You realize that the steps that were such a hindrance before suddenly begin to work for you. There’s a magical moment when you sit back and go, “hey, shit, that kinda makes sense now. I can see why they made me print out that form there and take to here and then why I have to have it stamped here and then taken back to there so I can pay for it.” Well, maybe not, but at least you’re able to work out which forms you need to print and where to take them. Even if you don’t subscribe to the bullshit, you can make it work for you.

Case in point. I received an email on Wednesday morning that informed me that I needed to be in Tokyo by the following Thursday evening to attend an interview. I fired up my browser and 15 minutes later and I had flights to and from Tokyo, a hotel, and print-outs of the times and platforms of all the trains I’d need to take to get to my destination. That lunch break, I wandered down to the nearest convenience store and plugged my reservation number into the kiosk there. It gave me a slip of paper to give to the clerk as I paid for my lunch. He added the price of the airfare to my rice ball and juice, and that was that. When was the last time the local corner store in Australia allowed you to purchase airline tickets at the same time as your coffee chill?

Posted in Mwah on Friday May 19, 2006.