對不起，一開始寫的遊記就是英文。
Yokohama Chinatown (Yokohama Chukagai) is Japan's largest chinatown, located in central Yokohama. I didn’t hear any Chinese in this China town, this is the first China town I didn’t hear nearly any Chinese, only when we asked for direction I asked “do you speak in Chinese?” Tokyo is supposed to be an international city, but “good luck” to none Japanese speakers, as most of the signs not in English..., I can read “Japanese” as a lot of writing the same as Chinese! In museum no explanation in English, you just have to guess what the photos are about yourself. On the day we went to Tokyo skyetree, I can say at least one third of the visitors were foreigner, but the entire announcement were in Japanese only. Sometimes you see the sign “caution” then Japanese only after it sure it doesn’t mean everyone every country has to use English, not at all! But as an international city I guess you should use one most used language beside your own country’s language. I heard in France is even worse, OK I will be well prepared for it for the next year’s Europe’ trip and keep in mind that not easy for foreigner to find the ATM accepting overseas card in Japan, the ATM in post office and 7-11 is fine, a lot of chain shops like Familymat or Lawson or bank, display message “sorry, card in Japan only”. In Osaka it took us a bit more than one hour to find a suitable ATM service for foreigners in the centre of Namba. One more thing made me feel irritable from the beginning was those check out staff (mainly in supermarket or other retail shops), even though they knew you are a foreigner from the right beginning ( as no response to their Japanese at all), they still talked to you in Japanese to finish the whole procedure, it lasted for a few minutes, I guess what they need to say is “ hello welcome, I have received $$$ from you, now here is your change $$$, pls go to the other counter to pack up your stuff……” I just guessed I think they don’t need to do so as whatever you said I just simply don’t understand it just wasted your energy , I think under that circumstance smile and body language is more helpful, you just don’t need to talk to me, just accept the money from me, give me change, say some simple words like “thank you” that’s it. Those procedure five or six sentence Japanese only add nervous and uncomfortable feeling to the foreigner consumer. I know it is what they have been trained to do (and it is their culture to follow up the rules strictly) but why not being more flexible, not like machine! When I was in Thailand, Thai people are very sweet, they try to communicate to your with body language and big smile, they don’t insist to talk to you in Thai only and don’t act like they don’t care whether or not you understand . But sure I would like to emphasise that most of the Japanese people are so polite and helpful, I had a lot of good experiences with Japanese during my visit there. And even in supermarket and some shops, some check up staff did stop speaking in Japanese to me and actually just smiled at me and even helped me count the coins and note as I didn’t know the currency well
