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I went to draw money out from my bank today for the first time on my own in Japan. This also coincided with the first time they didn`t have an option to have the instructions in English. This took me back a bit as they have an English option on everything for the hapless foreigner. When you buy train tickets there is an English button. When you go the fare adjusting machine there are English instructions. I had managed to withdraw money from the only bank in Japan that didn`t have advice for the unlucky gaijin.

I had been to this branch before with Reiko and there had been an English button in one of the four machines that we chose and it was easy. Today I queued for two minutes and went to the machine and was immediately startled to note the button had mysterioulsy vanished. I pressed buttons that were larger than the others and could mean “English” in Japanese which admittedly is a slightly pointless prospect yet with no luck. I pressed other buttons and was immediately guided to a page that could only be the “Please type your PIN page” yet in Japanese. After randomly trying a few other buttons that had either the same or similar results and not wanting to inadvertently send my savings to an account in India I decided to go to the back of the queue and wait again for another machine to become free which would have English instructions.

So I waited for about five minutes. I got to the front of the queue again and for a horrifying moment it looked like the woman on the machine I had just tried would finish first reducing this to a third attempt or failure but in the nick of time a new machine presented itself and I tried again.

Zanen! I had chosen the only other machine in Japan without English instructions. I tried some random buttons hoping to see some script I would recognise but in vain. I turned around for the bloke whose sole job seems to be saying “Irasshaimase” and “Arigatogozaimashita” (Welcome and thank you) when customers enter and leave

What did you do today dear?
I said Welcome and Thank you 874 times today.
Ooh that`s five short of the record.
Yes must try harder tomorrow.

but he had gone off to chat up one of the ageing female bank tellers and so I finally gave up and left without my money.

Bill Bryson in his excellent book Neither here nor there says that he likes foreign travel as:

I can`t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can`t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can`t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

Later on he is in a station in Belgrade in Yugoslavia wanting to leave but all the signs are in Cyrillic he says, “The idea of being innocent and free in a foreign land didn`t seem so appealing…. I was as helpless as an infant.” This is how I felt today. Without a native to help me with banking, finding a cheap and delicious restaurant or where to go to get the best deals on clothes, local sights etc. I am myself as helpless as an infant. A very frightening prospect.