17
MANI-CUAH

Most of my stories are taxi and airport stories for a reason! When on business trips, I work A LOT. With the time difference in Asia, I ended up working all day with the customer, and then in the evenings relaying data and talking to home office. It was exhausting and on my very first trip, I didn’t get to sightsee for one minute.

So I learned my lesson and drew the line on my second trip to Japan. I went sightseeing on my own for a few hours on a weekend and explored the city. I had made the mistake of painting my nails before my trip and didn’t pack nail polish remover. After getting a taste of freedom from my time sightseeing, I decided to try to go for a manicure to remedy my rustic chipped nail polish look. It turns out you can’t just walk in for a manicure - you have to call and book. So I googled a nearby place and decided to take a shot at making a booking over the phone. In very broken Japanglish, I asked “Eigo?” (English?) and the woman replied “Just moment” and put me on hold.  I’m sure the employees were arguing over who had to talk to me and finally took me off hold and continued in Japanese in hopes I had magically mastered the language in a few minutes. I replied “Konnichiwa, appointment, manicure?” The broken English/Japanese back and forth continued until we tried to figure out the date. I asked “today?”, to which she replied “yesterday?” and so we finally settled on “tomorrow”. 

I was happy because I had another excuse for free time on the weekend, but wasn’t convinced I actually had successfully made an appointment. So tomorrow rolled around, I made my way to the spa and was pleasantly surprised that I actually had an appointment for a “mani-cuah”! Just when I was proud of myself, the manicurist brought me to a La-Z-Boy chair, reclined it and placed a blanket over me. It was the middle of summer and incredibly hot and humid, but I still got a blanket! I was worried that I had booked some other services in error since I’ve never had a manicure in a recliner. All turned out well and two manicurists actually started working on my hands! They put on a Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt and were very excited to talk to me about how good/looking he was. I think they were initially slightly afraid of me but clearly came around and wanted to practice their English skills. The best part was that I even got a new customer discount on my mani-cuah!