The Menkyo Center, cont.

But first...

The picture to the right is a little out-of-focus. Sorry about that. I'll try to get a clearer shot and replace it. It's just that it's a little hard to get, since it's in a toilet stall. Actually, it's in a lot of toilet stalls. Add to that difficulty the need for privacy when taking photos in a toilet. Imagine hearing the click of a camera shutter coming from a public restroom. There's someone out there thinking, "What in the world is he taking pictures of, anyway?"

If you haven't figured it out yet, it's instructions for using the toilet. Many toilets in Japan are so high-tech that they need to paste the instructions on the wall to make sure the toilet is used correctly. Even then, it can be really confusing.

I don't know what I think is the funniest. The company name, Toto? I am NOT in Kansas anymore. Press to wash bottom? You even get to choose the water pressure. Powerful deodorizer? Yeah, that's it. Especially the powerful part.

This sign can be found in public restrooms everywhere. This particular sign is in the restroom at a 7-11. Pretty fancy for a convenience store, huh? A lot of homes have these toilets, too, AND the instruction signs on the walls. When I lived here before, I was in an older residence and there was an older sign on the toilet wall with instructions - stick figures and all - on how to use a regular western toilet. At one point, the sit-down toilet was new enough to Japan that instructions were considered necessary.

The Japanese have since overtaken us on toilet technology. I remember my friend Doug Bowen telling me about going to a tech convention in the 90s when these new devices were being introduced. The slogan touting the innovations was, "Because your ass wants to feel clean, too."

I was with my friend, Hisami, at her mother's apartment for dinner the other night. During the course of the evening, I needed to use the facilities. When I was leaving the toilet area, I pressed the light switch on the wall, thinking, of course, to politely turn off the light. It didn't turn off, so I pressed it again. I then became aware of a beeping in the other room and realized that the light didn't go off because I was pressing an emergency button cleverly camouflaged to look like a light switch. Oh, yeah. That was embarrassing. At least it was only sounding in the apartment and not dialing the Japanese equivalent of 911.

I got off easy. Hisami told me about another non-Japanese friend who was staying at the apartment. He did the same thing I did except that it was in the middle of the night and the alarm, which has been recently replaced, at that time was more like a klaxon. That made me feel better because I had at least been spared that.

Remember the Menkyo Center?

So, as I said, the only books available to use for study for the scooter license were of very little help, other than for identifying road signs, Yoh-san checked several places online and by phone and it appeared that there was no book in English to help study for the gentsuki test. I had heard that the Menkyo Center Bookstore had one, but they didn’t on the day we were there.

Yoh-san, who has been endlessly helpful, as you may have noticed (as has Mitsuru-san), finally came up with a booklet issued by a private driving school. It arrived in the mail on Thursday - $20 more into the pot.

He brought the book by my office and was immediately apologetic. He said he wasn’t sure that the English in the book was very good and didn’t know if it would help me that much. Oh, says I, it can’t be that bad. I’m sure there’s a lot of useful information in it. Even if the English is a bit off, I’ll be able to figure out what is meant.

How many times can I be wrong, anyway?

Here are some examples of the test questions in the book. These are exactly as they are in the text, with no exaggeration.

Q25. The parking and stopping in the place where a parking and stopping is prohibited makes prospect at the road bad in addition to making traffic nearby be crowed and causes the rushing-out accident.

True or False?

Actually, using the correctly hyphenated ‘rushing-out’ as an adjective is something that many English speakers would not do correctly. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me understand what the hell they were talking about.

Q24. Saying calling slightly only, it left the car as it started an engine.

Excuse me? Even if I had two chances on a True-False quiz here, that’s still going to come up wrong.

Q45. In the place where there is this Pavement Markings (+ picture of road sign), it isn’t possible to stop.

Oh, it’s possible, all right. It’s just not legal. Does that make it true or false?

Q9. The width of the road that traffic control isn’t done makes not hinder the moving of the car which comes from the the left side at the intersection at the similar road.

Oh, come on. I’m not even going to try for that one.

I could go on for 26 pages, just like the book, but I won’t.

It was like Mad Libs for Drivers, minus the grammar.

At the end, there was a section on road signs and you’d think that that would be helpful, at least, but they seem to have gotten tired at that point and just explained the road signs in Japanese.

Yoh-san was a bit embarrassed by it all and called the company to complain. They offered to refund my money, but I’m holding on to the book so that I can prove that it exists. It’s going to be a great conversation piece.

While talking to the book publishers, Yoh-san found out that the translation was done by a software program. He asked them if they had had other complaints. No, they said. This was the first time it had come up.

That boggles the mind. Someone at sometime MUST have complained about the book or the software program. I think Yoh-san asked them the wrong question. He should have asked how many of the books they had sold. The only thing I can figure is that this the only book the program has been used for and I’m the only person who bought a copy.

Obviously, that book wasn’t going to help and the books in English that I did have were for cars, not scooters. I studied what I could - some information on road signs, a motorcycle question here and there - and did a bit of online research. What I found was that no English speakers in Japan who had tried for their driver’s license knew exactly what was going on, either, even after they had passed.

There were several reasons for this. One is that there are different requirements for drivers from different countries, as I mentioned before, although the reasons for this depend on who’s doing the talking. If there’s an opinion online, there’s always someone around to say you’re wrong. Part of the confusion was that the different prefectures in Japan, similar to states in the U.S., or maybe a better comparison is like counties in a state, seem to have different rules.

The results are that, from online discussion, you either can just exchange your license for a Japanese license or you absolutely can’t, you can take an easy 10-question quiz or you have to take an impossible 50-question quiz and you definitely do or don’t have to take a physical driving test. It’s either so easy that only an idiot would fail (thanks very much) or so difficult that you should expect to take it three or four times. All of this information is given in the semi-literate written language which we have come to expect from online contributors, which only adds another level of confusion to the process.

I’d better not get started on THAT topic. Maybe another time.

One thought, though... The worst thing about reading the postings on English problems in Japan is that many, many of the English speakers here are English teachers and they still can’t manage to put together a clear thought or a coherent sentence or are not even able to spell, or at least use a spell-checker.. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I’ve made a couple of errors here or there in this blog, but I’m not talking about occasional errors, I’m talking about not knowing that they ARE errors.

Okay, later on that and more to come on the Menkyo Center next time.