Tag Archives: only in japan

great customer service, anyone?

Posted on by

I think anybody would readily agree with me that nothing beats Japan’s excellent customer service. Want proof? Here’s one:

From the southern-west part of Japan, Okasan went on a business trip to Yamanashi prefecture. Thoughtful as she is, aside from her Inden-ya present to me, she bought us shiro (white) wine. Yamanashi sits in a basin and because of its location, the prefecture has been famous for its sweet grapes. And ergo, the winery.

After her Yamanashi trip, she then went to Tokyo as she also got invited to a special film showing. Cinema staff then took care of her wine bottle. But alas, after the movie, everyone found out that for some reason, her bottle of wine got broken.

Can you imagine what a cinema staff would do had it happened in your country?

Anyways, what the cinema staff did was they got the address of the recipients of wine (us!) and they promised to deliver the wine to us. That was Monday.

Friday, I received the package. Of course i’m happy, there’s another delivery! Another gift/mail to open! Yey! 🙂

It was a box specially designed for bottle deliveries.

The wine was inside one of the smaller boxes whilst a letter was on the other small box. As Hubby put it, the letter contained their deepest apologies as well as explanation of the contents of the package.

So here’s the wine, safely wrapped with big-bubbled bubble wrap.

And yes, cinema people replaced the broken wine with a wine they bought straight from Yamanashi. Not replaced with just any wine that can be bought in a neighboring mall in Tokyo.

Oh, they didn’t stop from there. Because it was a special film showing, some brochures about the movie were being handed out. Okasan’s copy got wet as well. So cinema staff promised to send a new one along with the wine.

But they didn’t just send a new brochure. They sent one that had a sign by the lead actor Daiichi Yasuo.

Simply amazing customer service. Can anybody else top this?

Inspires me really. To go the extra mile.

Oh by way, The movie is entitled “Love Tomato” or “Koisuro Tomato” in Japanese. It was filmed in the Philippines and has a Filipino title of “Kumain Ka Na Ba?” (Have you eaten yet?).

It stars the beautiful Alice Dixon. She’s 43, can you imagine??

 

Here’s one scene of the movie. Sorry it’s blurred. Photo taken from the brochure print.

Okasan gave us a copy of the movie. The print may be weeping (yes, blame it on the wine) but it is workable, probably. Weekend is for movies so Hubby and I definitely have this movie in our lineup. Over a bottle of wine, most probably.

 

furniture leg socks

Posted on by

When our dining set was delivered to us, Watanabe-san put some thin brown cardboard on the bottom of each table and chair leg so as to protect the wooden floor from any scratches when we move the furnitures during usage. Alas though, it appears it wasn’t enough.

So I finally bought our furnitures some socks. I wanted the brown-pink pattern, consistent with our house motif, but the packs the shop has for the pretty brown-pink pattern weren’t enough to cover all our dining chairs’ legs. Hence, I opted for this one.

I tagged this as “only in Japan” since it was in Japan that I saw these first, some 7 years ago I think. I do believe though, that these socks are already available in Manila.

 

down the chute

Posted on by

I think a lot of people would agree with me when I say that when it comes to packaging, food presentation, food decoration et al, the Japanese is the leader of the pack. The amount of detail they exert on every packaging is nothing short of amazing. Me and my friends usually say sometimes (when for the nth time we were amazed with the packaging), “the Japanese really think of everything!”. And even for simple household stuff, the packaging can be quite a pleasant surprise sometimes.

Take for one the common salt. I still wasn’t able to buy us a cute (yes, it has to be cute) containers for the kitchen and yet I have to buy salt already. No worries, the salt already comes in a good packaging, that’s good enough for display.

Pull the tab. It says “akekuchi” meaning, opening point.

Pry open using a fingernail.

And voila! Salt can now go out the chute. So handy.

Dandy.

cooking Vitamin E-enriched rice

Posted on by

In my previous 4-year intermittent stint here in Japan, I really did make sure to maximize my stay here as much as possible; opting to explore new places and trying out new stuff rather than save and hibernate in my apartment. However, being an illiterate with the Japanese language still made me unable to truly live the Japanese way of life.

Until now. Lived with Atsushi for almost six days only and he taught me quite a lot about normal Japanese way of life already. Including making your rice Vitamin E enriched. Being a bride-to-be, Vitamin C and E are like magic words hence Hubbie certainly had my attention when he was explaining this certain packet to me.

Apparently, you can have your rice Vitamin E-enriched by dropping a globule or two of Vitamin E into your uncooked rice just before shutting close your rice cooker.

Vitamin E globules!

A close up.

I can only hope that having a globule or two everyday can have some visible effects in a month’s time, enough to help prep us up for our wedding. 😛