12 Days and Counting

Sadly, on the 8th December at 19.00hrs I will be sitting on a plane leaving London and heading towards Tokyo. I say sadly because if it was happening tomorrow it would be 'happily'. God doesn't time drag when you would rather be somewhere else!

Before I go though I think it is probably appropriate to explain myself a little more. After all, I am a Londoner, a native born and bred, so such delight in a foreign land is almost treason, surely? I love London, I was born here, I have lived here on and off for most of my life but I just don't like what it has become and what England is heading towards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I am a fifty-three year old man and we all know that once you pass that fiftieth birthday you suddenly turn into an old git. One moment I am off down the clubs dancing with my trendy pony tail, the next day I wake up and I have a comb over! Well, well, well, and now he just moans about the good old days.

Then there is the position that we are going to see all too often in our forthcoming election, the racist position: "London has been spoilt by immigrants.". Well if anyone thinks that's where I am coming from then they are going to feel the rough edge of my tongue. London hasn't been spoilt by immigrants, England has been ruined by desperately poor political leadership, corporate greed and the devastation of a disasterously administered benefits system that seeks to maintain a philosophy of idleness inextricably linked to social irresponsibility.

Empire in decline, the classic model and with global warming we have every chance of becoming the 21st century equivalent of Greece 100 years ago. Hey but then I am just an old whinger!

So here, to lighten the mood, is why I feel justified in my opinions. The highly esteemed and most honourable Takayama bought a coat at John Lewis two weeks ago. She paid in cash because of a crippling aversion to using credit cards and risking paying anything close to a bank charge (you should hear her going on about how her income tax should show deduct her share of the bank bailout we are all paying!) and then left the store with her goods.

She was then approached by a security guard because the alarms had gone off as she left. The security guard approached her and asked to look in her bag and on seeing the coat and the receipt for same that Takayama was waving in his face let her go on her way.

Now you may not understand this but for a Japanese person to be stopped in the street like a common criminal, especially when they have payed cash, is a dreadfully shameful position to be in. In Japan, any association with criminality is quite simply social death. If you have a society run on the principle that everyone knows their position, everyone is respectful of the laws not just of the legal system but also of complex social etiquette then any transgression immediately makes you socially unacceptable.

So Takayama has been falsely accused of shoplifting just by virtue of being stopped and checked, that is the Japanese mentality, and then comes home. When she gets home she tries her new coat on. What does she find; the security tag has not been removed by the shop assistant. That clearly is why the alarm went off. Takayama gets on the phone looking for customer service.

She is told to bring the coat in and the tag will be removed. Obviously there was an attempt to suggest that she removes it herself but she sternly resisted such a ridiculous suggestion as any mistake on her part damaging her new coat would leave her poorly placed in terms of compensation.

So, Takayama, on a Sunday, gets on the tube, returns to John Lewis in central London and gets the tag removed from her coat. She says that she needs to be compensated and they offer her £5 off. This is of course less than the tube fare that she has had to pay to come into town. This is also taking absolutely no account of the fact that she has to waste nearly two hours on a Sunday returning to a store so that they can correct their error.

Takayama fights for her position, a magnificent sight when she is in full flow.

They eventually, after a struggle offer £10 off. She accepts because she can't be bothered to fight for anything more, the effort is simply not worth the couple of quid she is likely to wrench from their guilty hands. Takayama returns home.

Now I started by saying that I can't wait to get to Tokyo and said that I would explain why. So here it is.

Jack: "So they didn't offer you any compensation for your time and being messed around because of their mistake."

Takayama: "No, it was a real struggle just to get my tube fair back and the price of a cup of coffee."

Jack: (provocatively) "Bet this wouldn't happen in Tokyo!"

Takayama: "Funnily enough the same sort of thing did happen to me a few years back in Japan."

Jack: "What happened?"

Takayama: "They told me to go to the post office, send the garment back using collect to their account. Then a week later I received the garment back by post together with a complimentary set of toiletries as an apology."

You see, as I have said before, the difference is that in Japan the customer is God. Without the customer nobody earns a living. In England, the shareholder is God and the customer is just an animal that is farmed for profit.

You know it's true.

More stories from Japan coming soon.