I woke up this morning at seven, stepped into the shower, and sleepily pushed the button that turns on the hot water heater.
Or so I thought.
Suddenly the bathroom erupted into chaos. Sirens blared, an automated computer voice started shouting instructions at me through the vent over the bathtub and I screamed in terror.
Apparently the button located near the hot water heater wasn’t outlined in pink because it symbolized ‘heat’, but because it was the emergency call button. I’d just unwittingly notified the doorman, the receptionist and possibly the police, that I was having a heart attack in the bathtub.
Niiice
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, But Reannon, how could you have not known that was the kanji for ‘call’?
I know. I know. It’s so obviously a picture of a one-legged man holding a baby and hopping away from an erupting volcano. I mean, clearly. I don’t know how I ever misinterpreted that to be anything other than ‘call for help.’
The only thing I can in say my defense was that I was still half asleep, which is also really the only logical explanation for what happened next.
I could hear the intercom buzzing so I grabbed a towel and dashed towards the front door and was confronted with a flashing, beeping, vibrating intercom system with no less than 10 buttons, all of which were labeled in kanji.
Damn.
I did what I normally do in these types of situations and I panicked. I punched every button, pausing for a second after each one to shout: ‘moshi moshi!’ into the microphone.
I like to think that if I’d been more awake or less frantic I would have stopped before hitting the bright orange button baring this symbol:
It’s a man with an afro standing next to a tee pee…and they’re both on fire!
But as it happened, I wasn’t and so I didn’t.
Yes, I set off the fire alarm.
Cue an intense moment of cursing as I stood in my bath towel and noted the sprinkler system and the sea of fancy electronic equipment below it. A flat screen TV, a Mac laptop, a DVD player and a playstation. And none of them belonged to me because this wasn’t my apartment. I’d been entrusted with the responsibility of safe-guarding my friend’s bazillion dollar Roppongi mansion with explicit instructions to ‘not set the place on fire’…and I was about to do quite the opposite; drown it in a flood of water.
“Moshi, moshi! I yelled into the intercom. “It was a mistake!”
Damn. I forgot the Japanese word for mistake. “Misutaiku!” I yelled, pronouncing the English word with a Japanese accent.
“Chotto Matte (Just a moment),” came the reply. And then the line went dead. And two minutes later, there was a knock on the door.
I only had enough time to quickly rearrange my towel back into place before I watched in horror as the front door clicked open and in walked a police officer.
Talk about embarrassing. Not only do I have to be ‘that idiot gajin who can’t read’ but I have to be caught wearing nothing but a towel with sopping wet hair and ugly mascara tracks running down my cheeks.
Funnily enough, this has happened to me twice before. I once hit the emergency call button while looking for the ‘flush’ button in a subway station bathroom and I hit it another time while looking for the ‘open’ button to release the automatic door in a restaurant bathroom. I blame those experiences for why I’m now ueber paranoid about using public toilets.
After both incidences, I swore that I’d never make that same mistake again…and I went home that night, looked up the kanji characters in my textbook and committed them to memory.
Or…so I thought.
Related posts:
ohhgosh!
this story was too much. You had me rolling. (I hope you don’t mind a few empathetic giggles directed towards you…)
Your interpretation of the characters killed me. So true.
You poor thing. I’m glad you, and the apartment, are alright.
Oh my god, I didn’t even know that was an option in public toilets. Once I couldn’t find the flush on a restaurant toilet and pushed every button on the toilet and all four walls. That could have been a disaster.
Doing it when all of the buttons are in Japanese is understandable… but one time when I was 19 I was visiting a friend’s sister in the hospital after she had a baby. I used the bathroom in her room and pushed a mystery button on the wall (WHY!?!?) and it turned out to be the emergency call and the nurse came running into the room a few minutes later.
You’ll look back and laugh at these situations. Good story!
See, the fire symbol in the second one should have been in the hot water in the first situation….I think.
I’m a little shaky on that.
Hilarious..I think a little pee came out!
Glad ya’ll had a good laugh at my expense! No, seriously…It was meant to be funny.
Have you guys had any similar embarassing ‘stranger in a strange land’ experiences? I seem to be a magnet for that sort of thing.
@Lisa…those emergency buttons are everywhere here! There’s TWO in my shower, one in my bathroom and one on the intercom…Plus they’re in every public restroom here. The Japanese are VERY into safety. ; )
OMG! Guess I'd better keep up with the kanji study then! Thanks for sharing.
oooo i have pressed the toilet button too! worse though i pretended that i had no idea who pressed it and was washing my hands by the time the police ran in!
so OBVIOUSLY me! The only gaijin in there!
Oh dear!
xxx
Rather amusing piece
Haha that is probably the funniest thing I’ve read lately. I would never last in Japan, those characters are just too difficult for me to understand. I’d be setting off fire alarms all the time o.O