I wrote an article for the Japan Times which was published on Monday. The article was about taking a very old and wrinkled plastic bag to a Japanese supermarket. I asked the cashier not to give me a new plastic bag, but just to put everything in my old one. Unfortunately, she seemed unwilling to put a customer’s goods into such an old and wrinkled bag. So she put everything into a clean plastic bag, even though I had asked her not to. And she put some paper wrapping around a jar I had bought. And she offered to give me an ice-pack to keep my cheese chilled. Is the problem that Japan’s customer-service is just too good? You can read the article here:
ウィルのジャパンタイムズの記事（13Jan2020）
Some of the comments that people posted under the article were interesting. There was a foreigner living in a small town in Japan. He or she wrote that they spent a few weeks saying, “No plastic bag, please. I don’t need an ice-pack, thank you. I have my own chopsticks. I don’t want a plastic spoon, thanks. No, I don’t need a straw. Just add some tape and I’ll take the items as they are.”
They were getting very tired of saying this in every supermarket and convenience store they went into. But the staff soon began to recognise them. “There’s that weird hippie gaijin!” And so they stopped putting things in plastic bags, or offering extra disposable cutlery. Sometimes it is useful to stand out as a weird foreigner in a small town.
Vocabulary:
wrinkled – Of skin or a surface, slightly folded or not smooth, such as the creased face of an elderly person
disposable – easily or quickly thrown away
cutlery – items used to bring food to one’s mouth, such as forks or spoons
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