Stupid Gaijin...

On Tuesday night, right after updating this blog I found a strange occurrence, my internet connection had gone offline. Some of you know that I have a wireless network in my house and if you know about network routers they will continually establish the any PPPoE connection you have, in this case my VDSL service, but for some reason the router was reporting that my connection had failed. This is a semi-common occurrence in the world of cable internet, which is usually rectified by resetting the modem. So I unplugged my modem and went to sleep, did I mention it was nearly three in the morning?

The next evening I returned home to find the same occurrence. That’s odd, I thought. I plugged the DSL modem (the NTT salesman swears its optical fiber and technically not DSL, but why is it called VDSL?) directly to my system and still no dice. The system reported that my username and password where invalid.

After much search through the important internet service related papers, which are in a big pile on my kitchen table, I finally found the number for NTT. I called and spoke my awful Japanese to find out that I’m not supposed to call them for service help, but rather my provider Biglobe. After 30 minutes on hold I got an operator who didn’t speak any English. Now I know what you are thinking, only an American, or some British blokes, would think that everyone will speak English since he/she is too lazy to learn that country’s native language. I speak much better Japanese now than I did three years ago, but still not good enough for certain situations, like this. Nevertheless I could get nowhere on the phone and fighting the web site was getting monotus (there’s a law in Japan that no website written on Japanese soil can be easy to navigate or use, in any language). Finally, thanks to the help of two very nice guys (thanks Justin and Luke!) I’m now back online and Biglobe has my credit card number.

The moral of the story is three-fold. One: read your mail! The letter saying they would shut off my service if I didn’t give them a payment option was sitting on my table. I had just forgotten to have it translated. Two: Learn the fucking language of the country you are fucking living in! Three: Stay with cable internet. One company, one provider, one bill, zero hassle, zero stress and the support staff sounds cuter. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to study some kanji.

Wisdom of the Day: All salesmen are full of shit.