Yokohama and irrashaimase

I'm still doing stuff most weekends.

Yokohama

Last weekend was the farewell party and all-night karaoke. After that, I didn't feel like doing much the next day, so I went to Yokohama.

I don't know why, but every time I go to Yokohama station on a weekend, I'm shocked by the number of people there. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. I mean, like, waiting in long lines to exit a building, walking in human 'lanes' of traffic, and in general, seeing the kind of crowds that you might see at the end of Sky Show when everyone gets up to go home. And it's just an ordinary Sunday in Yokohama.

These kind of crowds are not that rare in Tokyo, but because I consider Yokohama like my 'home' station, and I think of Yokohama as a smaller, less bustling place, it still surprises me. Generally I don't mind crowds, but if I'm in a grumpy mood, I sometimes get the urge to headbutt the person in front of me.)

Yokohama station is a major hub station - lots of different train lines stop there - so it's naturally busy, and it's also surrounded by a dense network of department stores, in all directions, including underground. I have wandered their mazes many a time, but I still don't have it quite straight in my head which department store has which food hall, for example. (Of course, the food halls are the only parts I am interested in, hahaha.)

Before, I described pachinko parlours as the 'seventh circle of hell', but I found a close contender for sheer awfulness - the Vivre building in Yokohama. (This is the building that has an 'all-you-can-eat' dessert buffet. ^_^) I went there for the Starbucks, and unfortunately had to use the bathroom. It's full of 'gyaaru' (girls with over-treated hair, pancake makeup, fishnet stockings, short shorts... in other words, scary girls). These gyaaru are sales assistants, shrieking out the specials.

A lot of stores hire people to stand outside and shout out the specials, or shout 'irrasshaimase!' (welcome!) to people*, but I can't convey the cacophany in Vivre. All of the ladies had very powerful voices, and some were using the aid of megaphones. I think there may have also been some unpleasant background music, but I can't remember. Since I hate clothes shopping anyway, I couldn't imagine anything worse than actually going into one of those and having to endure that kind of aural assault while sorting through hot pink 80s-style off-the-shoulder tops.

*(Almost all store clerks will say 'irrashaimase' when they see you. Of course, I expect it. If I'm in a store, and a clerk sees me, and they *don't* say 'irrashaimase', I kind of think 'oh, they're ignoring me'. However, in some cases, the 'irrashaimase' doesn't sound remotely friendly, and makes me want to leave the store quickly. If I didn't know what it meant, I might think they were telling me to GET OUT OF OUR STORE!!

A lot of girls have a very nasal 'irrasshaimase' going, and some gung-ho guys, like the electronics store or fruit seller guys, will absolutely bellow it in quite a scary manner. The best is in big 100 yen shops where everyone's 'irrasshaimase' sounds like an 'I hate my job and all my customers'.

One of my students works in retail, and she says she says it's one of the worst things about the job, being told to say 'irrashaimase' to everyone who walks past. In some stores you'll even see/hear sales assistants just randomly calling out 'irrashaimase' as they walk around doing their job - in this case, they're not even looking at you, and they say it at regular intervals just to cover themselves in case someone does walk past.

In Australia, the equivalent is 'hi, how are you?', so 'irrasshaimase' has the benefit/disadvantage (depending on your POV) of acknowledging a customer while not requiring a response.)

As usual I'm going off on rambling tangents... I decided to try to walk home from Yokohama to my house. The previous week I had tried to walk to my house from my second-nearest train station, and ended up 6km in the wrong direction, in Shin-Yokohama. This was a pretty poor effort. This time I made it without getting lost at ALL. It took me about an hour to walk home from Yokohama. ^_^