07/03 - Helping Hands

"Hey, I speak English!"

Just want you want to hear when

two men are at your feet



Found here at Junk World

cool things, maybe even the 

droid you're looking for


Today after work Aykut and I took a quick trip to the Uniqlo that occupies the 9th and 10th floors of the Tobu department store in Ikebukuro Station. I wanted to pick up a pair of their super light dress pants for work. I found the pair I've had my eye on and went to try them on. They looked good and I really liked the colour, so I decided to go for them. None of the dress pants at Uniqlo have a proper finished bottom hem though, as they stitch them at the store for you to the correct length. Aykut had already gone through this process and had looked up some phrases to help him, so I had him do the talking. I called him over and he told the guy I wanted them "cut-o". Normally there are two options, the free service or the slightly better service which costs 300 yen (about 3 bucks Canadian). This time, however, I was not offered any options but the guy started measuring and speaking tons of Japanese. He seemed to think Aykut was fluent since he had said one sentence to him. Aykut and him were both hunched down by the bottom of my pants and were measuring together, the guy speaking strings of Japanese and Aykut telling him he didn't understand and trying to help me get the length set to where I wanted it. I thought we might have to get out a phrasebook or ask for someone who speaks English to be summoned when a kid of about 12-14 came into the fitting room area with his mom. It looked like his mom had brought him to buy him some new clothes. He noticed we were having some trouble and he said "Hey, I speak English!" His English was absolutely fantastic, right down to the pronunciation and informal vocabulary he used. The funny thing was his mom clearly didn't speak any English and didn't know exactly what was going on. His help was a huge blessing. When I took the pants to the cash registers we also suffered a bit of a miscommunication, as the staff couldn't figure out how to say 20:00 (or 8 PM) and kept saying "twenty minutes" instead. We were shocked when we thought that they could do the pants in just twenty minutes and I think our surprised faces were the only thing that made them realize they had made a mistake.  It was still only an hour or so until 8PM, but we wanted to head home so I told them I would be back the next day to pick them up.

Once I got home I went for a run. I thought I had discovered all the streets with shops on them in my area but I again discovered a new strip. It was just down from the bread factory that looms at the end of one street in our neighbourhood. The only notable shop was a very cool looking store called Junk World. The store bills itself as "A Unique Gadget Store". Through the window I saw that they had a juke box, a Guinness sign, tons of computer screens and a massive R2-D2 for sale. The place looked like it could be the setting of TLC show like Pawn Stars. If they ever want to come do a show in Japan it might be a good setting.

My second haiku references the famous line from Star Wars, "these aren't the droids you're looking for" on account of it being a famous R2-D2 scene. I think it fits nicely not just because I saw R2-D2 on my run, but also because I always end up running longer than I plan to here since I am always discovering new things, which is a bit of a Jedi mind trick on myself.