Something's Not Quite Right...

Life in Japan isn't all that different from life in America, especially when living on a U.S. Military base. In my day to day life, I still communicate in English, use debit cards and American currency, go to work and talk with American children going to school and learning English, Math, Science, etc. My husband and I live in a very Americanized apartment building, with little identifying it as a Japanese built apartment complex. We cook on American appliances and do our laundry in full-sized American dryers. We sleep on our American furniture that we shipped over here when we moved. If you wanted to, you could forget for a few hours or even a few days that you didn't actually live in the states.

Until you want to go somewhere other than the BX or Commissary of course, and have to exchange some of that American money for yen. Or drive to work and get in the car on the right side instead of the left, and then drive on the left side of the road. Oh, and recognize the Japanese road signs. And if you drive off base, you leave a lot of that American safe bubble behind. Quite a few Japanese do speak English and there are a lot of places that cater to American business right outside the gate, but things are different.

I thought I'd try to share a little more detail about what's different over here. Everyone can guess the obvious language barriers and quick math needed to convert American money to yen and back again, but there are obviously a lot of little things that add up to make the overseas experience unique.

Today I'm going to show you how that unique experience plays out on my computer!

If I have deleted my browsing history or stumble upon a new site, it will often identify my location (Japan) and guestimate who I am and what I speak/read from there. So I stumble upon a lot of sites in Japanese.

Even familiar ones...



Like Google..





(I have to click a "Google in English" option, and then the computer remembers my preference until I delete my history and have to do it again.)


I also experience it when I decide to do some online window shopping. Like at American Eagle...



Who very nicely identifies my location and uses my local currency of yen. (Again, there's an option to change your location, which takes some guessing since everything's written in Japanese, and it will save your preference.)


Blogger never communicates with me in English unless I'm signed in...



Most of the time I can't even figure out what it's asking or telling me because its default communication seems to be Japanese, which I cannot understand. Even when I'm logged in I still get some Japanese, which confuses and frustrates me!


Facebook is my favorite...mainly the sponsored ads section. Sometimes I get ads written in English but focused in Japan. I see one pretty frequently about hiring a personal trainer in Tokyo. Sometimes they're in Japanese and I'm lost.







So my internet experience is often finding Japanese writing and prices in yen and then searching for something that looks like it will change everything back to English. It provides a little entertainment or frustration depending on my mood and reason for being on the internet.

Luckily, this little quirk doesn't really affect my life much. Because the internet is so huge now, almost every site has the option to change languages and even currencies. Most stores are willing to ship to APO addresses, and stores like Amazon offer the same shipping costs and ship consistently quickly all the way over here.

I should provide more detail about shopping in another post, but obviously shopping is limited to the BX and Japanese stores. Online shopping has become a favorite of mine, and Amazon is particularly dangerous because it does ship so quickly and at an affordable cost. And it stocks nearly everything a person could ever want. And I find a lot of things I want, need, or never knew I needed until Amazon helped me find them. But I'll save my love for Amazon for another post too.