Today I'm here with Kelly from the channel Strawberry Mochi!

And we're gonna talk about mistakes that we've made in Japan.

Yep.

There are a lot.

Yeah.

Pretty embarrassing ones, too, so...

So Rachel, why don't you start?

OKAY

I guess one of th biggest mistakes-

I don't even know if you would call it a mistake,

just kind of like a really embarrassing thing.

Japan has really advanced toilets,

and all of them are completely different.

So I've seen like ten different ways to flush toilets here in Japan.

And sometimes they're not exactly intuitive.

So many buttons!

There's one particular type of toilet that I could not figure out how to flush.

I looked at all of the buttons. There was no handle.

I was in a big mall bathroom and I was so embarrassed, I was like "I don't want to leave the stall!!"

But I was like "Okay, all right, I need to go out"

and I ran out of the bathroom and got Jun and told him

"JUN GO TO THE BOY'S BATHROOM AND TELL ME WHERE THE FLUSH IS I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE FLUSH IS"

And I had to wait for him to go in the stall in the boy's bathroom and come out

and he said "Oh it's this button right here."

I was like "OKAY!!!"

And I had to run back in and hope no one walked into my stall after me

because they would've been like "AUGH that foreign girl didn't flush the toilet!"

But what it is is, it was one of those with the wall panel on it.

Oh yeah.

And there are flush buttons that are flat on top of the panel.

Okay yeah, I've seen those before.

They're the ones that say 小さい or 大きい for little flush or big flush.

You can't know unless you know kanji for "flush"

and even then it's just a flat button on TOP of a panel.

Not even on the outside of the panel that's easy to see.

Because they ran out of room for buttons so they had to put flush on the top.

I was so confused. I was so embarrassed.

Okay so I have a toilet story, too.

It was during my internship time

and we were on a bus tour and we stopped.

We went into the bathroom. This bathroom was really cool because it showed you

what was open and what wasn't open.

Yeah! I know exactly which bathroom you're talking about.

I love that one. Those are really cool.

And then I couldn't find the flush button like you.

And so I just pressed a random button because I wanted to get out of the stall

and so I pressed a button and the emergency alarm went off.

And it was REALLY LOUD, this alarm/

I just walked out really casually.

I kind of looked at my friend like "I don't know what happened."

"That's crazy. Is there a fire or something?"

And then I told my friend on the bus what happened.

"That was me. It was the alarm button."

I don't know what they do with that.

I guess as an emergency button if you fall or slip or are old or something?

Like you can't go to the bathroom? I don't know.

I'm sure like 99% of that button getting pressed is accidents or little kids or something.

It could be little kids.

There's like no... maybe there was a warning sign on it and I just couldn't read it.

Yeah. I'm sure most people press it on accident.

Probably the foreign people do.

They should always have English.

All right, this just happened last December.

So this is why it's extra embarrassing for me,

because I've been coming to Japan for 5.5 years. I know better!

But when you go through the subway booths,

you have to either have a card where you can pay for your toll,

or you can get tickets.

And when you get a ticket you put it into the machine and then pick it up

and then when you leave at the station you're getting off at,

you put it into the machine again so it can calculate the whole route that you went.

And twice in a row, I don't know why, I forgot to pick it up.

It happened to me, too.

What happens is it'll stick up for a minute, and if you don't pick it up it'll get sucked back into the machine.

Really?!

Yeah, it goes into a little box. I had no idea!

The second time I caught it and was like "AW NO!!"

And I got the train station staff and he went over and opened up the machine

and took it out of the box for me and gave me my ticket.

But the first time I didn't notice until I was already halfway to my next destination on the train.

And I opened up my wallet and was like... O△O

I forgot to get my ticket!!

I was like NOOOOOOOO

Because I knew what was going to happen was

I would have to go talk to the train staff

and I knew they were going to be like, "It's a dumb foreigner trying to cheat the system!"

"Trying to pretend like they don't know anything to get around here for free!"

I was like "Ahhhh they're going to think so poorly of me!! T△T

I didn't do it on purpose!"

And I got to the train station staff and I was like, "I forgot my ticket!"

He said "Okay, I'll call the station."

I was like "You don't trust me... :(" They called the station?

Oh yeah, I guess because you paid for it.

When I did it I told them I forgot my ticket and I had to pay for it again.

Oh no!

I don't know, maybe I was really nice.

Yeah, he called for me and I waited for a couple minutes

and he said "Yeah, they got the ticket. You're good to go."

I was like, "Okay, well at least he doesn't think I was a foreigner trying to cheat the system."

Now he just thinks I'm a stupid gaijin who forgot my ticket.

Oh god.

Okay so when you go to a restaurant in Japan you always have to

tell the waitress how many people you have.

And I think the natural way to say it is 二人です。

Or 一人です。

Or something like that.

But they always ask like２名様ですか？

And I'm like "Uhhhh はい、２名様です。"

Which is kind of weird because you're basically saying you're above her.

I think they want to put you above because you're the customer.

It's polite speech.

So basically when you say ２名様です back to them

it's like "YES I am superior! I am here, the royalty."

It kind of makes you sound high up there.

You're adding -sama to the end of your own name.

Yeah, -sama is like god.

So it's like you're better than everybody.

I mean maybe it's not that intense but

that's what we think when we learn Japanese,

-sama is kind of like god.

I kind of realized that recently that I was saying this.

So... whooops!

I kind of have a language thing, too.

And this is a huge problem for me.

I have this problem where I absorb the way people talk when they talk to me

and I start repeating it back to them.

So like if people have common phrases that they say

then without even thinking I'll start saying those phrases.

Sometimes even if people have a unique laugh

sometimes I just mimic them without realizing it

and it's a horrible thing that I really try not to do

but it just happens to me all the time.

And the problem is when I'm talking to Japanese people who are speaking English

and they're speaking with a Japanese accent

then I start repeating English words back to them with a Japanese accent

which makes me sound SO INCREDIBLY RACIST.

Wait can you give us an example?

So they'll say like "Harro!"

And I'll be like "Harro!! :D"

back to them.

"Harro!"

I'm not supposed to say it like that!!!!

I totally know what you mean. "Harro!"

Yeah and not just words but like poor grammar.

Like if they say something incorrectly with very stereotypical Japanese English grammar,

If you were stereotyping Japanese people in a racist way

that's exactly how I'm accidentally talking to people.

"Harro!"

That's the most embarrassing thing that I do.

Have you ever talked to your family and you're like "Unn. Unn."

Oh yeah!

"Eeeh"

Just like making these noises.

And your family's like "What are you doing?"

That's a mistake. I do that all the time, yeah.

Or like bowing in America. "Hai" and bowing.

I bow all the time. "Sumimasen! Sumimasen!"

I did that a few times when I was in Korea.

I know I'm not supposed to speak English but I don't know any Korean at all so

I just accidentally speak in Japanese there.

I guess one more mistake that you could probably relate to is just getting on the wrong train.

Not the wrong train, it's just going the opposite way.

Right.

And you realize it like 3 stops later and you're like "Ughh crap!"

So that's a big mistake. Omg yeah.

I have the worst story.

This happened like a month and a half or maybe two months ago.

I was going to meet someone at Ichinomiya station.

And going there, I didn't know that Meitetsu has a line that splits into two tracks.

I didn't even know. You're scaring me. You're going to give me train nightmares.

From Nagoya it goes north and then it splits and goes into a circle.

And they both reach Gifu station.

I know that Ichinomiya is between Nagoya and Gifu station.

So I was on the train up to Gifu station.

So I'm sitting on the train for 40 minutes.

I have no idea what any of the stops are because I'm not used to riding Meitetsu.

And I'm like, "Why haven't they gotten to Ichinomiya yet?"

And then all of a sudden I hear like

"The next station is Inuyama."

I'm like, "HOW AM I AT INUYAMA?!?!?!"

"WHAT HAPPENED?! I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AT INUYAMA!"

That's like on the other side of the prefecture.

Yeah, it's far.

So I get off there and I have to take the train all the way back to Nagoya station.

And I'm really upset now

because I'm already an hour and a half late because it was like a 40 minute ride up there.

When I got back to Nagoya I was like, "All right, I'm going to be super careful."

I'm going to pick out the one that goes toward Gifu

and I'm going to read all of the stops that it stops at on the screen

and make sure it stops at Ichinomiya.

So I do that, I pick out the correct train

and this train for sure stops at Ichinomiya.

Lucky me there's one coming in like one minute!

And as soon as I get on I look around and I'm like...

These look like kind of fancy seats.

This is like the train you take from Nagoya airport.

I think these might be reserved seats.

You might have to pay extra for these.

So I'm like, okay, I'll just go to the front of the train and sit in some of the non-reserved seats.

Because the trains from Nagoya airport, they have reserved seats

and then they have non-reserved seats at the front.

So I walk all the way to the front of the train

and there ARE NO NON-RESERVED SEATS.

The entire train is reserved!

I had NO IDEA there are entirely reserved Meitetsu trains just running around Nagoya.

I had no idea that was a thing. I had no idea about that, either.

I finally get to the front and then there's the ticket guy

and he's getting ready to walk through the train and get everyone's reserved seat tickets.

And I just start crying.

Because I'm almost two hours late at this point

I'm on the wrong train and now I have to pay extra for this reserved seat.

Absolutely everything went wrong. Did he make you pay?

Yeah, he was like "You have to pay me 360 yen."

The worst part of this is I'm crying because I'm so stressed out

and not just about everything that's happening, but I don't like getting in trouble.

I'm on the wrong train and I don't have the ticket. I feel like I'm going to get in trouble.

So I was scared, too, and so I'm crying.

And he just starts smiling and laughing while I'm paying.

I'm like, how are you laughing?! Do you not see the despair that I'm in right now?!