You know here one taco is like 600 yen... are you kidding me?
i thought it was pretty hard making the bed
the sheets are different right yeah yeah it's very different yeah
Hey guys and girls on Ask Japanese it's your bloody fashion reporter CathyCat and today
we're gonna go hit the streets of Tokyo and ask foreigners who are actually living in Japan here
what their big fail was in Japan their absolute struggle
something where they were like "oh no why did i do that?"
those moments we're gonna pick up for you and if you stick to
the end of the video i'm gonna tell you one of the struggles I had when I came
first and I could have avoided if i'd known about this and hopefully that will help you guys out too
so let's first go and ask Foreigners in Japan
Okay i'm from Mexico and I have been living here for eight years - eight years
even after eight years what do you struggle with in Japan - oh my okay uh finding Mexican food
It's really hard for me also to find like all the ingredients if I want to cook
in my house they don't sell anything - isn't it also really expensive to find the ingredients
it is yes also the restaurants are real expensive because it's crazy for example
in Mexico if you want to eat for example three tacos you're gonna pay like 100 yen
you know here one taco is like 600 yen are you kidding me - would you recommend them to other
Mexicans who come to Japan and to Tokyo where should they go?
no just give up okay yeah just give up and eat Japanese food I mean it's delicious so
just eat Japanese food is really good you can eat also Italian it's also really good
yeah just you know yeah give up
that's that's better and faster believe me i've been there I know - good point
Okay where are you guys from - i'm from America - UK
coming here to Japan how long have you guys been here?
um i've been here for three and a half years
and the same but we haven't been in Tokyo - yeah we moved to I moved to Tokyo like oh September
and I moved the previous year we were in Hiroshima before - yeah yeah we met in Hiroshima
in your three years in Japan what struggles have you had so far? - Before the pandemic
I mean I think general day-to-day life is easy enough but I think like kind of
bureaucracy sort of stuff is difficult and like yeah that sort of thing um and
with the pandemic for me like being so far away from home and also you know having to like
isolate and not being able to meet people that was kind of a difficult time for me yeah
it's hard to think because it's like "what's a Japan struggle and what's just like a general life struggle" right
because a lot of us come here like in our 20s or 30s so isn't it natural to have some issues along the way anyway? - it is
totally just trying to pick something up but maybe in the future other people won't get it wrong so something like
where it is culture specific for example "didn't bring uh cash to a place that only accepts something"
I mean daily struggle is like we were talking earlier like no soap in the like the park bathrooms like this
whole kind of like during the pandemic no soap anywhere and life struggle you know like trash trash cans anywhere no
it doesn't ruin my life, you get used to it I guess but those like small things tiny a tiny daily struggle I guess
I guess soap is a big one especially during the pandemic i'm like why
yeah right - anything else you can think of any kind of little struggles
you had that you're like "that might happen to someone so don't do it"
oh I know like post offices like not being open in the evenings or weekends and you're stuck at work
Banks too and like just if you ever want to like sign up for something it's like a huge process
like that kind of thing like trying to get a point card or something and downloading special apps and like I went
to Disneysea and you have to get this like special application and like that kind of thing
is annoying yeah - I mean just getting the phone contract takes like half a day right? yeah
I literally just got this phone and it took me like two whole days I had to go like cancel my original number or contract
and then I had to wait like 24 hours for that to happen and I had to go back again and it yeah it took like a whole weekend
yeah yeah yeah - like things are organized but they're like organized at a cost
like yeah right - day-to-day life is really you know pretty easy about like once you I guess live here
and have to do certain things like it's it's pretty stressful yeah somethings yeah
all right yeah that was perfect answers by the way
okay where are you from - England - Germany - England - Taiwan
whoa what brings you to Japan?
um we're foreign students we're on an exchange program
how long are you here for? about five months - when did you get here?
about like five days ago - five days ago? all of you?? uh yeah
oh my gosh so you bright and fresh here in Japan?
aren't you lucky you made it in? how hard what is was it for you guys to get in here?
it was quite hard like last time we were supposed to be here for the whole year last semester was online night
classes and then we had to prepare our visa and do all our corona tests within like two weeks so
it was a big rush big rush - so what was like your struggle when you came here what was like this
thing you struggled with the most? I mean it's just communicating like in like convenience stores and
stuff getting used to that sort of communication because it's different yeah
the trains the trains
I come from a town that like we mainly just use buses so i'm not used to finding my way around
stations it's really complex - which is like the worst station for you here in Tokyo?
probably oh which one was that one we was just that Kichijoji that place was hard oh well you
have you been to Shibuya yet? yes yeah yeah
how was that train station? I think it was okay
I mean we might get lost when we go back but for the moment it's okay
yeah yeah any other struggles you had in Japan or any kind of funny stories of like
like your other students like struggling with going like "oh they pushed the wrong button on the toilet something crazy like that?"
I haven't had that happen to me yet but it probably will happen
I thought it was pretty hard making the bed at our dorm like I didn't know where anything went so
- The seats are slightly different right yeah
yeah it's very different yeah
everyone uses cash .... i'm used to leaving my house with just my phone and relying on that the whole day
so like and they I exchanged money so I have really big notes so I go to the convenience store with like 10 000 yen
note and i'm buying just a hundred thousand like a thousand no 100 yen something and i'm like sorry
I have this huge amount of money
yeah we tend to apologize if you have like a big like bill in our hands right
but here they're like "that's fine" - yeah yeah
what is your one struggle in Japan?
reading the signs - oh gosh yes well how do you do it?
um we do a lot of google translate which helps and we just kind of figure it out but yeah that's the hardest part because
the characters are not um letters and so that's the hardest part
did you make like a mistake before with the signs? we use a lot of context clues but like
she has a food allergy and so we have to really be careful to see what that is
and then I bought an onigiri this week and it's a flavor none of the kids like
So anyway yeah - so it's hard to tell because you might get something that the kids won't like
yes yeah
allergy wise have you been safe? yeah I haven't had any problems with allergies
I just use the context clues and google translate and stuff to figure out what what all the titles say
is it okay to ask you what are you allergic to? - tree nuts
there's not really much non-allergy help and advice .... same so i'm like
oh gosh that's a bit risky sometimes
have you had any struggles in Japan yet?
when I came my my card didn't work my paying card so they I had to call my bank at home
they told me I had yeah some youth card or something like that so I had to
order a new one so it's arriving soon I think but I actually found out today that I could actually I could take out money from the atm I didn't know
so i've asked my friends to pay for me all the time and then I - two weeks - yeah for two weeks
you've been paying me for two weeks - just to find that you could have payed for yourself the whole time
"oops" - "oops" you know - and your struggles probably have to pay for him all the time?
exactly yeah that's been the biggest problem to be honest everything has been going smooth
okay uh staying wise, transportation wise, anything? super smooth honestly once you
get the pasmo card easiest thing ever yeah honestly just flip your card and go
housing situation in Japan can be very very different and there are no street names so
one of the things I would like to share with you guys is if you're going somewhere sometimes
it is really really hard to find the actual place so you will definitely need an internet
working phone with you and some internet with you if you're going places because what happened to me
when I came the first time is I was invited to like a party of a teacher of the high school I
was staying at and I went to the station and they didn't pick up the phone and it had no means of
really finding the exact location the floor and similar things like that and since there are no
street names and it's just numbers you can't even say oh it's on this street or this block because
it is generally just numbers that will help you and sometimes these numbers are not in the right
order so you can follow one two three but then you won't find four and five when you find six
seven it's very very confusing so my hint for you guys would be always make sure you have working
internet always make sure you have a second means of contacting a person if you have them on like a
social media and they can't log into their social media or something make sure you have maybe also
their line line is the app that everyone here uses to write each other so it's like whatsapp
and make sure you get sometimes even taxi drivers won't know so sometimes you won't even
know where you're going and sometimes it's really really hard to find google is your best friend
things have become a lot more easier now with the maps and routes that are going around but
generally sometimes you will still have to have a person help you out because even taxi drivers
sometimes ask me exactly where it is so with addresses and locations best hint is get your
friends to pick you up at the station that's like that will save you so much trouble if you're going
somewhere you don't know where you're going get your friends to pick you up at that station and
bring you to their home try and remember it can be very confusing okay that's it now I wish you
a great day this was CathyCat from Tokyo and I see you in the next video like for example