Transcript ↓

2 weeks have passed since my job began. This week I started catching phone calls as a customer service representative. How do you think it was? To be honest, it was really really terrible. As you can imagine, it is very difficult for not native speakers to understand what people say especially over the phone. At this moment, I strongly felt how much we usually depend on facial expressions and mouth movements to understand what people say in English.

Additionally, the most difficult part of communicating over the phone is to spell out the clients’ name correctly. Although traditionally we can make sure it by saying like, A for apple, B for Bravo, C for Charlie…, you know what? It is useful only when we are able to catch really similar words. It doesn’t work when we couldn’t hear at all ,even 1 alphabet. For example, basically I have to open my clients’ file during the phone call. but the customer is like “Hi my name is XX, I have an appointment XXX…”  whenever I happened to dive into this stuation, I’m always like oh my god what did she say… and my brain stops working immediately. In this case my boss comes to my desk because he is monitoring my phonecalls and he knows I’m struggling with grabbing the name. So he always helps me type it down and open clients’ files and goes back to his desk. I always say thank you in my mind and I totally couldn’t understand why he can realize the name so quickly and accurately.

Anyways, I love my new job so far. It is because all my coworkers are nice to me even though I am really green, like a baby. Literally I couldn’t do anything. I’m excited to learn new things a lot and I am being showered with new words.

Today is episode 1 of a series of useful vocabularies that I learned in the job in order to work in customer service.

The first one is that the word “last-minute” is new to me. It means the latest possible opportunity for doing something. We use this word as follows: Luckily, there is a last- minute cancellation and you can book today. You can also use like “we are in time for the event at the last-minute” on a daily basis. It is very useful, isn’t it?

The other one is the word “by any chance”, It's a nice phrase to add to a question to make it polite–it's almost like saying possibly in a way.

You can use “by any chance” when you are asking questions in order to find out whether something that you think might be true is actually true. For example, you can say. “do you have any availability on Tuesday instead of Friday by any chance?” like that. It is very very useful to make it comfortable to ask something. Good to know.

How was today’s episode? You can also send me the request for the content by any chance.

教科書はいつも本当のことを教えてくれない

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Today I’m here to let you know that I managed to survive the first week of my new job working in the customer care department in the office.

I’m terribly exhausted but really relieved that I seem to be able to work next week.

So I’m going to wrap up my first week quickly, mainly let me introduce how to ask something unknown naturally that I learned in my workplace.

Here are the things our textbook taught us. If there is something unclear and you want to ask someone for something politely, “ Could I ask you something?”or “Could you do me a favour?” I have believed it so far in my entire life.

However, I felt it is kind of weird since I used this sentence on my first day several times,

it is because NO ONE uses this sentence in their daily conversation! I’m the only one person who says Can I ask you something? Here’s the thing. In the real world, there are several ways to ask people for something.

The first one is you can say  “ Quick question.”  For example, Excuse me, Tom, Quick question. The other one is “ Do you have a second?”  The last one is “When you have time.”  These are much easier and more casual. It really depends on the situation whether it’s appropriate or not, however, it’s very interesting because we aren’t taught by textbooks. I’m glad if you try to say it this way.

By the way, my first day was terrible. I couldn’t understand what native people say at all, specifically, I feel I was only able to hear 20% of the total. Nevertheless, I managed to cover 30% with the business acumen I gained while working in Japan. If I am not familiar with this kind of system, I couldn’t finish my first day without a sad notification.

Anyway, good job for me! Let’s do our best this week together!

持ちこたえろ！自分

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Let me present my goal for November at the beginning of the month as usual. The theme for November is incredibly simple. I would say just "Never give up on keeping up every day". This month will be the hardest month ever, and that's all that matters. What’s important is that If there is something unclear or incomprehensible in my work, do whatever it takes to solve, review, and learn. I have to learn without worrying about shame. On the other hand, I don't have any other things to care about except the job. This month, I will allow myself to watch as much Japanese comedy as I want. Otherwise, I can’t keep working hard for eight hours every day. I will learn properly. That's all. Be simple.

If possible, I just want to run at least on sunny days because it is really rare to enjoy the sunlight when we are in Raincouver. Even though most people tend to dislike winter in Vancouver because of much rain. However, on days when it's not raining, it is very very beautiful that you would not be able to believe it. Just have fun with the shorter and fewer sun. This is just an excuse and I might not be able to upload my podcast 2 times a week because of my mental. If the time I feel overworked is coming, let me think about it.

But I still want to keep my episode updated, I am always grateful for you to listen to my podcast.

Today's episode is a bit shorter than most but I hope you all will join me in setting goals for November.

日本語で言うパリピは英語だとパーティアニマルになるらしい。人ですらなくなるのか

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Most Japanese people would think Halloween is just a Costume Contest for Party animals. That meant no one actually “celebrates” Halloween. I really agree with that opinion. For me, every year the day is just the usual end of the month. That meant just being very busy. I always didn’t want to go outside on this day, just in order to avoid congestion, typically while living in Tokyo.

Speaking of Halloween, now I’m really surprised because most Canadians seem to take care of Halloween seriously. I mean, they started to decorate their house in the middle of October and we can see large pumpkins for sale in large quantities in grocery stores. I was like, they are really celebrating this event, they and their children are most likely to say “trick or treat” on the day seriously. That’s interesting.

At the same time, I wondered what exactly Halloween is. I don’t know why they want to scare me in such a typical way. Therefore, I asked my friend Google and let me introduce you to Halloween today. I attached the link to the references in the explanation.　https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TR35esdMA

https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween

According to Google, Halloween was started by The Celt who lived 2 000 years ago in an area which is now known as Ireland, Scotland, the UK, and parts of Northern Europe. They celebrated their new year on November 1st the day which marked the end of summer and the beginning of the dark cold winter. I finally realized the origin of Halloween is like 冬至(Touji) in Japan, it is about 20days later, though. It is very interesting because we also eat Kabocha, which is similar to Pumpkin.

Back to the stories, The Celt believed that the night before the new year the ghost would come to the world of the living and the boundaries between the two worlds would blur. Hence to protect themselves they celebrated the festival on October 31st, modernly known as Halloween. Surprisingly enough, it is also similar to お盆(Obon) in Japan. You know what? We Japanese do almost the same thing every summer even though we don’t pretend to be dead.

By the way, here is one of the most interesting things about Halloween. Speaking of the other aspect of Halloween, One-quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween. What a big industry in the states!  I found It is like Valentine's day in Japan.

Anyways, I found out that the story about Halloween has several similarities to Japanese customs. It is as if the world has become together.

Happy Halloween!

説明の中で思い出せなかった「現在形」ですが、present tenseといいます！

うれしかよ