About a month ago, I woke up in the
middle of the night to the sound of a gunshot. I groggily rolled
over in bed knowing that in the morning I was going to have to change
a harp string. What I didn't know was that it was going to be THE
most expensive string I have ever had to replace.
It all seemed easy enough. After all,
I have a complete set of harp strings. But then, two weeks later, in
the middle of the night, the same string snapped again. This time I
was in trouble. I had used my last replacement. After searching the
Internet, I found several options.
- Order a string from the states and pay a ridiculous international shipping fee
- Order a string from Japan and pay by credit card – thus incurring ridiculous international exchange fees
- Order a string from Japan and use C.O.D. (cash on delivery). However, there was an additional 305円charge
- Order a string from Japan and brave ATM direct payment known as furikomi (which, as a side note, sounds a lot like “old trash” in Japanese)
Of
course, the last option sounded the cheapest. So what if it required
advanced Japanese skills that I technically don't have! I figured
with a little bit of patience I could do it.
So,
with my order form in hand containing a bunch of crazy numbers, I
headed to the bank. Slowly, I worked out each screen on the ATM...
VERY slowly.... Every time I took too long, the ATM would time-out
and I had to start from the very beginning. Finally, I made it to
the second-to-last screen. “WARNING” it said in big Japanese
characters and then bunch of indiscernible jumble. Now, the
reasonable thing would have been to take a picture and send it to one
of my many kind Japanese friends to ask for a translation. But,
nooooooooo, I was stubborn. I wanted to do it myself!
I
randomly pressed one of the buttons. I was told to insert 997円
into the machine. As
it was the exact amount of my order, I didn't hesitate. After
receiving my receipt, I happily went home congratulating myself of my
new success.
However,
on the promised delivery date, instead of receiving my harp string, I
received a new email from the company. All I could decipher was that
they weren't delivering my order. Now having lost confidence in my
Japanese skills, I showed the email to my vice-principal. “You
have to pay another 420円,”
he said, “to cover the shipping and handling costs.” “But I
already paid the shipping costs,” I protested as I showed him my
receipt. “That's strange” he replied and was just about to call
the company to question when he noticed something.... Remember that
WARNING button? I had no idea that furikomi had
a transfer fee! So, now I had to pay the transfer fee. But, I also
had to pay the transfer fee for the transfer fee. My string was
getting more and more expensive.
Several
days later it finally arrived in the mail. As I started to restring
Harp-chan, something didn't seem right. Upon inspection, I realized
that the string was the wrong octave. Come to find out, the Japanese
system for classifying strings is different than the American system.
Soooo, I was back at square one (or should I say string #23, which
just happened to be twice as expensive as string #16).
Tomorrow my new string is supposed to arrive in the mail. I hope its
the right one since I have a concert on Sunday (and I have already
paid six times as much as I should have!) But, one thing is for
certain, I won't be ignoring the warning signs the next time I am
awaken by a “gunshot” ;-)
