It's the little victories...

The past few weeks, they have been building a house directly in front of my parking spot. My parking spot is included in our rent and is located about a ten minute walk from our house. The big work trucks have been on-and-off blocking my parking spot for weeks. Sometimes, if I see the trucks blocking my spot, I take the road up to the house and squeeze in the best I can in our driveway in front of John's car.

Today though, the road to our house was closed for repairs and the large truck was once again blocking my spot. This has only happened once before (road being closed AND parking spot block, double whammy) and I usually sit behind the truck with my blinker on and wait for someone to notice me, assess the situation and then move their truck.

Today I really had to go to the bathroom, so I didn't have time for all that nonsense. As I sat there with my blinker on, I though....wait...I know how to say "mine" and "parking" and "excuse me." So I hurried out of my car (the guy in the truck had been watching me for a few moments trying to decide what I wanted to do). I said in my most quiet Japanese voice, "Sumi massen, watashi no parking." and then indicated with my hands for them to move forward, then I followed it with a bow and "arigato."

The truck driver quickly nodded and looked rather surprised that all that had come out of my mouth. He may have been surprised by my sunglasses. To the Japanese, sunglasses are like the American ski masks....favored by criminals....although I know they didn't think I was going to rob them, in the US you don't particularly want to talk to someone in a ski mask, it's like that here but with sunglasses.

Of course, afterwards I started analyzing my words....basically, what I said was, "Excuse me, my parking" "Thank you." Now that I think about it, I could've said "Kore wa watashi no parking desu." which is a grammatically better sentence and translates to "this is my parking." But, at least I had the courage to use what I know. At least the driver understood. It's a small start to better expressing myself in Japanese. Also, I have my college class to thank for giving me confidence in my words! :)