Thursday, September 02, 2004

Not sure whether you like a country? Go buy underwear!

I have chosen to find it amusing that about half of my bras have decided now is as good a time as any to die on me. Some of the bras didn't quite make it through the ordeal of the trip here. I think that maybe the airport workers who came in contact with my luggage were rather unhappy with the sheer size and weight of one of my suitcases and manhandled it just enough to crush the clasps and/or bend the underwires of too many of my bras... Really, I can't blame them. I was quite unhappy about the damn thing myself when trying to get through the airport when I arrived.

Across the street from my school there's a lingerie shop called Secret Room Tu Tu. I think that's a euphemism, much in the same way that a woman's nether region is called her, "delicate place." Of course, it's still very hard getting a straight answer out of anyone so I have yet to have that hypothesis confirmed.

Japan, like the rest of the world, operates on the metric system. I had no idea what size bra I would wear when measuring in centimeters. The kind ladies at my school wrote down phonetically how to say, "Can you measure me, please." [Saizu O Hakkate Kudasai] When they started telling me stories about their measurement experiences I asked them to tell me how to say, "Don't touch me please." [Sawara Naide Kudasai] Granted, I was told that this was rude and I shouldn't say it. They offered instead "Fuku O Kitamama De Onegaishimasu," [With clothes on, please]. As a last resort, they wrote out in Japanese something along the lines of, "I'm an American and therefore illiterate, deaf and dumb. Please help me get some bras. Please measure me, but try not to get too close. Space is very important to me. Thank you."

So I go into Secret Room Tu Tu and try to look busy while waiting on the people that were in there to leave. If I'm going to look like an asshole, which I most certainly was, I like there to be as few people in the room as possible. Once the other customers had left, I used one of the few Japanese words I think I might have mastered, that is, "Excuse me." The clerk walked towards me, although it was obvious that she didn't want to. Of course, I screwed up when asking her to measure me because I said, "O," twice. She got the gist. When she told me my size, I mimed writing it down, which she did, although she didn't want to write it on the pieces of paper I had brought with me. [In her defense, they were folded and for all she knew I had pulled them out of my underwear...]

I picked a couple bras that were in my price range [which, strangely enough, were the ones that I would've thought would be really expensive... It seems that the plain bras are more expensive than the embroidered kind.]. Thankfully, the padding--of which there was a lot--was removable and one of the bras fit. Because the shopping gods were smiling on me, it happened to be the cheapest [$19!] and came with a pair of underwear.

I'm beginning to really like this country.

3 Comments:

At 7:29 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Delicate! - Schmelicate!

Hey Jen- Saizu O Hakkate Kudasai!?! Thanks, I knew that you could!

 
At 2:30 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Delicate- Schmelicate!

Hey Jen - Saizu O Hakkate Kudasai? Thank you, I knew that you could!

 
At 12:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd like a size 34 boxer please.
do they have black silk?

 

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