A lesson learnt

I have now learnt a valuable lesson in communication. If you start a talking to someone in good sounding, grammatically correct Japanese they will automatically assume that you can speak fluent Japanese and will start talking back at insane speeds and complicated grammar.

I went into AU to get some information on prepaid and contract phones. I started off by stating that I'm a foreigner living here in japan for a year and that I am an exchange student at Ritsumeikan university and I am interested in buying a phone and that I had some simple questions about contracts and a specific phone. Furthermore I wanted some information written in English if they had any.

All i got from the guy was a long speech about how living in japan for 1 year was not a good option for a contract phone since it would be cheaper with a 2 year contract and then I lost track of what the salesman was saying. He carried on talking about the phones specific technology (I could pick that word out of the bombardment of Japanese thrown at me) but didn't understand anything else. I was then given information written in Japanese and he said thank you and goodbye. I still don't know if he was expecting a response from me but all i could say was that unfortunately I'm not here for 2 years so i have to think about it.

So unless you want to become like this guy on the left and go insane due to the frustration of not understanding people's explanations the lesson is this:

If you are on an intermediate level of Japanese and when speaking Japanese to a Japanese person ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS start off by saying "my Japanese is not good and please speak slowly to me and use easy words that I might understand". That, or ask 英語が話せますか。 Do you speak English?

Good luck everyone!

My good friend John has also learned a lesson this week, but it relates to kanji. Check it out here.