• ASK FOR ID
• Sun. Aug, 22^nd 2010

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Just a little note in English to mention that since I have been taking Japanese lessons for now more than 2 months, I thought it would be time to use it and therefore write down a few things here more often. I believe that once a week is reasonable (at least, until the rugby season starts again) but you never know...

Actually, this post is not only to mention about my improvements in Japanese (if any) but also to relate a funny story that happened this week while my boss was in town for a few days. Coming from the US, his bank advised him not to sign his credit card but, instead, to write 'ask for id' so that whoever would take his card for payment would actually check the owner's ID (on which the actual signature is available). It kind of makes sense to me and can be seen as an additional way of avoiding credit card fraud. So, I would assume that this would work everywhere... but in Japan. I have spent too long here to know that would create problems. And it -of course- did. We had to talk to the poor (at least the unlucky one to have us in front of her) JR girl to make her understand that she could check the ID rather than the signature on the back of the card. That went on and on for 10 minutes. At some point, I thought we would have to talk to a manager or something... But not. I am glad that there was a Japanese with us because explaining and arguing in Japanese for that would have been a challenge beyond my 4.5 hours a week at MLC...
Well, this is not funny as such and would not surprise whoever has spent a few months in Japan. The funny part actually came for the absurdity of the rest of the trip where my boss systematically signed all his credit card ticket with 'ASK FOR ID' so that the clerk in front of him could actually match the signature at the back of the credit card and the one one the paper...
Since, we are calling my boss ID-san, as I guess this would be his last name, based on his signature in Japan...