A couple of years ago, I was an art director at a local creative agency; branding, digital campaigns, websites, the usual. One of our bigger accounts was a well-known travel site (let’s call them Big Travel Co.), and my point of contact was their country marketing manager.

One afternoon, my phone lights up.

Client: “I looked at the mock-ups, and the colors are all wrong. Especially our core brand color, the [main brand color] is completely off!”

Me: “Got it. Could you send me the mock-up you’re looking at so I can check?”

I’d built that mock-up myself. I was certain I pulled the exact RGB/hex values straight from their brand guidelines. Still, I open the file, sample the swatches, compare against the guidelines, and even cross-check their website and recent campaigns. Perfect match.

I call her back.

Me: “I double-checked. These are precisely your brand colors; same values as the guidelines, same as your site.”

Client: “No, they’re wrong. I’m looking at them right now. They look… off. Like, washed out.”

Washed out? A terrible suspicion starts to form.

Me: “Could you check your monitor settings?”

Client: “I don’t know how to do that.”

We spiral into a long, circular debate about color, where I (patiently) troubleshoot and she (confidently) implies I don’t know my job. My creative director drifts in and out of the conversation like a concerned weather pattern. Eventually, we agreed to meet in person.

A couple of days later, she arrives at our office, sets down an ancient, battle-scarred ThinkPad, and opens the file.

Client: “See? The colors are all wrong!”

I glance at the screen. It looks like the 1990s called and asked for its VGA palette back.

Me: “Your display is limited to a very narrow color range. That’s why everything looks washed out. On a modern monitor, the [main brand color] renders exactly as specified. Here—look at it on my screen.”

She peers at my monitor. The <main brand color> is bright, brand-correct, and blissfully not-sad.

Client: “…I see.”

We delivered the full campaign shortly after. Feedback was minimal.

When brand colors are “wrong,” sometimes it’s not the branding. It’s the time machine you’re viewing them on.

I had just moved to Tokyo during my studies at the university, and I soon realized that taking the metro every day was going to take a large toll on my limited student finances. So, I decided to purchase a cheap bicycle and use it for my daily commute. I went to the cheapest shop I was aware of (the one whose name reminds me of a Spanish literature hero) and bought the bicycle-shaped object that they had in stock.

Important thing to notice is that I am 1.95 meters tall (6 feet 4 inches), and for sure that thing I bought wasn’t made for my size: I soon realized that I looked (and felt) like the Japanese version of Krusty the Clown when riding his miniature bicycle, my knees hitting the bar every time.

I decided to stop at a bike mechanic near my place and try my luck with a higher post. Of course, not speaking any Japanese, I could only mimic my question to the old man who welcomed me:

– Point at my body
– point at the bike post
– sit on the bike
– point at the knee, hitting the bar
– moving my hands from the current length of the post to something longer

There is a stereotype of Japanese customer service being super friendly, but the old man could not help but burst in laughter, and with his hands gesturing something which I interpreted as, “Young man, I can do some stuff, but I am not equipped for miracles yet!”

He gave me a taller post and kept the old one, without asking for any money. As long as I lived there, every time I passed in front of his shop, I always waved at him for his amusement.

My mother hosts large and elaborate dinners with friends and family every week or so. At the end of one such dinner, my aunt asked for the recipe for one such dish.

Mother: “Here you are. Make sure you follow this recipe exactly, with no substitutions.”

Aunt: “Oh, but I don’t like—”

Mother: “No substitutions.”

Aunt: “But I don’t have—”

Mother: “—I said no substitutions.”

Aunt: “But what if—”

Mother: “—You’re not listening. No substitutions.”

Aunt: “But if I—”

Mother: “—Listen to what I’m saying: No substitutions.”

Aunt: “But—”

Mother: *Slowly, like she’s addressing a child.* “—If you make substitutions, it’s not going to taste the same. If you want it to taste like this, follow the recipe exactly, with no substitutions.”

A few days later, my mom gets a call and puts it on speakerphone.

Aunt: “So, I followed your recipe, and it didn’t—”

Mother: “—What did you substitute?”

Aunt: *Click.*

CONTENT WARNING: Vomit

I’m the author of this story, and I’ve been teaching English in Japan for several years now.

Since I’m a freelancer, I’m responsible for filing my own taxes every February. In Japan, there are two ways you can do this: you can go to a specific place and fill out the forms by hand, or you can do it online, print out the forms, and mail them.

Sadly, the online tax payment website is very much NOT user-friendly. In fact, it’s a lot like one of the old Sierra adventure games, where you can accidentally and royally screw yourself by doing the wrong thing and not realize it until much later, at which point you have to go back and repeat the whole process.

My Japanese husband’s and my attempts at online filing always end the same way:

Me: *After two to three hours and much shortening of tempers.* “So… wanna go to [City] and file there?”

Husband: “Yeah, okay.”

The tax place (not a permanent tax office; just a place that springs into being in February for people to pay their taxes) is one of those ‘take a number and wait’ systems, and the people on the desk call those numbers in batches of ten. It gets very crowded very FAST. For context, we arrive at 8:50 and we’re told that our batch won’t be called until 15:30. 

Luckily, the tax place is in a huge mall, so there are things we can do and ways to kill time; we can go eat some food, take in a movie, things like that, and get back to the tax place at around 15:00.

We’re finally called at 15:45 and allowed into the tax place proper. The tax process usually takes about one or two hours, much of which is spent queuing up to be told which queue we need to go to next.

At last, we get there. The whole process is basically, “Fill in this form at Place A, then queue up for Place B to fill in the next batch.”

At this point, I’m feeling a little lightheaded, which I chalk up to weird blood sugar levels and not a great deal of food. I’m on meds for the aforementioned blood sugar, which completely zap my appetite, and I’m used to the symptoms. They’re not pleasant, but I figure that I can put up with them until I can get into the car.

About ninety minutes later, [Husband] and I are queuing up yet again, and I suddenly realize that no, I can’t put up with the symptoms. In fact, I’m about to pass out (I’m pretty familiar with those symptoms, too).

My first instinct is to bend over and stick my head between my knees, but we’re packed too close together for me to do that without knocking everyone in front of me over like so many Japanese dominoes. Instead, I clutch my husband’s arm and dip my head as far as I can in the hopes that it’ll make the pretty brown fireworks stop popping in front of my eyes. Nope. In fact, they get worse.

Husband: “[My Name]? Are you okay?”

Me: *In somewhat incoherent Japanese.* “No… It’s no good… no good… have to sit down. Have to sit down.”

Except the tax place has no chairs at all. We’re roped off into our respective queues and do all transactions and form-filling standing up, with the only break being the occasional shuffle forward.

[Husband] immediately bundles me under the rope separating the lines and over to a volunteer.

Husband: “Excuse me, my wife is unwell. Is there a chair she can use?”

From the astonished/confused look of the volunteer, you’d have thought he’d asked for a camel ride.

Volunteer: “Um… well… we, uh, we don’t have… that is, there might be one over here.”

She escorts us to a slightly more open area that has what looks like a private workspace that’s shut off from the rest of the tax place by office partitions. About four feet away from this space, with no warning at all, I throw up. Excessively. Right in front of everybody. And when I say no warning, I MEAN no warning; I’m as surprised as everyone else!

I am also mortified. I want the hard, blue-carpeted and now rather stained floor to open up and swallow me on the spot. I get my chair; I sit down while [Volunteer] bustles off and returns with a huge wad of tissues. I take one and try to clean myself up, but my hand is shaking so violently that I can’t. I hear voices saying they should call an ambulance, and manage to come back to Earth just long enough to say that no, it’s not necessary, just let me rest. Someone thoughtfully brings a few more office partitions to screen me from view.

At this point, a very surprised-looking tax official pokes his head around the already existing partitions, no doubt wondering why a foreign woman has suddenly broken out of the queue, rushed over to his makeshift office, and puked outside it. [Husband] explains the situation, and [Tax Official] nods.

Tax Official: “Okay. Come with me.”

[Husband] takes me on his arm; I’m no longer dizzy or nauseous by this point, but I feel very weak, and we follow [Tax Official] into the office. There are two desks inside, and [Husband] and I sit down in front of one of them.

[Tax Official] produces the forms we need and helps me fill them out. The entire process, which usually takes up to two hours, is finished in fifteen minutes. When [Husband] and I emerge, the floor is also spotless.

We go back to the car and I assure my worried husband for the nth time that yes, I’m fine now and it was probably just my meds. We sit in the car for a few minutes.

Husband: “Wow. Fifteen minutes.”

Me: “Yeah. I couldn’t believe how quickly he got it done.”

Husband: “Mm-hmm.”

Pause.

Husband: *Jokingly.* “It’s a pity you didn’t throw up two hours earlier, then we could have skipped the queue.”

The worst part is that I have to go back there this year as well. Part of me wonders if they’ll remember me!

I’m an American on vacation in Tokyo.

I’m at a stall in a mall that offers free samples. The lady attending the stall hands me a small sample on a toothpick, but I’m in the middle of eating something else.

I keep chewing, but before I can swallow, a young Japanese woman in a business suit appears out of the seething masses of shoppers and uses her mouth to bite my sample off of the toothpick.

She poses like a J-Pop star, says “yoink” then vanishes.

I turn to the woman running the stall, and in my most hangdog voice, I say:

Me: “She stole my sample.”

The lady running the stall laughed so hard she couldn’t stand up behind the counter and kept having to crouch to catch her breath, stand back up, look at me, and then started laughing again.