foreign perks

this past weekend, 4 country bumpkins headed to the big city! aka nico, tracey, keith and i made for fukuoka, the biggest city on kyushu.

it's a lovely city. you might recall that i went last year in november for the sumo tournament! this was my first legit trip back, and it was bomb.

the shopping in fook makes miyazaki look like a third world country. i honestly think there are thousands of stores in the city, it's ridiculous and heavenly. i ended up buying a scarf for the outfit i'm wearing to matt's brother's wedding in october, and was also on the hunt for a purse.

i meandered into a rather expensive store that had beautiful, buttery leather purses. the lady working there was really sweet and chattered away at me in soft japanese, while i pretended to understand. then, when i finally decided on a purse (with the help of tracey), here's how our interaction went down.

me: gimmeh DAT ONE.
lady: mm...okay!
me: yeah, yeah...wrap it up and plastic and junk
lady: oh! anything you want.

she did it REAL quick.
then i was all, "GIMME DAT GAI-JIN DIZZCOUNT."

she looked real scared. she wanted to see my pazzport. i was all, "I DONT HAVE IT. AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT...WE'RE GONNA HAVE TROUBLE." she bowed and was like, "sorry!" and she gave me the purse....FO FREE.


SUCH JOKES! what actually happened was that i was very polite and bowed a lot and i think she liked that, so when it was time to pai, she asked if i had my passport. i didn't, but i showed her my foreign registration card, and she gave me a tidy little discount for no reason other than being a foreigner. cheers, bebe!

oh yeah, and a lady at the post office similarly loves me because i'm a big fat clown, and she gave me candy on monday. FO. FREE.

perkily,
riri