On Pins and Needles
...written on 2000-11-03, @ 20:31:30
Fri November 3, 2000
On my way to the grocery store, before I got to the little street fair, I stopped at this little sewing shop across the street from my apartment.
I have had my eye on this store for a while and I was excited that it was my day off and it was open. Just as I was walking up to it, the woman was putting up curtains in the windows. I thought she was trying to block out the afternoon sun that was streaming in, but when I tried to cross the threshold, she said something to me that didn't sound like the usual "Ittarasshai!" (come on in). I asked, "open" (in English-dumb!)? She said in Japanese that she didn't understand. So I pulled out my little bitty dictionary and found the word "open" and showed her. She said something else. I was trying to say I wanted to look around. I found that word, but instead of getting the "browsing" gist, she asked me what I was looking for.
Some of you who know me may remember that while I was in Athens I really got into arts and crafts and really enjoyed putting collages and mixed media pieces together. I just wanted to see if I there were any materials of interest in her shop.
By then I had worked my way through the door way and was able to look around. Lots of buttons, bolts of fabric, etc., not really the kind of thing I'm wanting right now, but after all this effort I hated to just leave, so I looked up the word "thread". I told her I needed black thread, which she got for me and then I told her . . . I needed a needle.
If I had been worried about the effort up to that point, it was just about to triple. She clucked and walked from drawer to drawer. I saw her pull out many packs of needles of all sizes. I heard her say "takusan" which means many. She wrote down the number one with a kanji character after it and then the number 25 with the same kanji character after it. I was sure she meant that needles came 25 to a pack and she didn't want to break a pack and she didn't think I should have to buy 25. I thought, hey, what could 25 needles cost? And I thought I'd just buy a pack, and help us both out of this predicament until she said that the needles were $2 EACH!!
Then her husband rode up on his bicycle and joined in on the clucking and searching. They tried to show me a "cheaper" needle that was the length of one digit of my index finger that had the tiniest thread hole I've ever seen. I told them I couldn't work with that one and then the woman found a pack of needle samples that a salesman no doubt had left with her. They had me point out a needle I could work with and then they gave it to me. This was "service" they said, which meant that the needle was free.
As I left with the needle and thread, we were all apologizing for not speaking the other's language. I hope that learning Japanese will enrich my encounters and not take away any of the magic of interacting with the people.