Fill 'er up...

Ahh Japan, land where the customer is king (and how I love it), and where most petrol stations are still ‘service stations’.

You roll up in your chosen wheels (we have the lovely work borrowed ‘Nissan sunny'. - reminiscent of the old Datsun 180B), wind down the window to an chorus of “iraashaimase” (I like the translate as “welcome to our shop”) and ask them to fill it  (Or in Luke’s case, flash some notes out the window). It is a nice feeling that out in the freezing night this welcome enthusiastically echoes out and someone is running (sometimes many) up to your window to see how best to serve you.

I would like to point out another interesting difference before I continue- Petrol stations don’t sell anything besides gas related products. No meat pies for the midnight booze run, or family size block of chocolate and redbull for that road trip. It’s just petrol (mind you, there are millions of Conbeni’s (convenient stores) around the place for all your snacky needs).

Anyway, they fill up your car, take your money (it is a cash based society) all the while you are sitting in your lovely heated car. Sometimes they politely ask you not to smoke (as they don’t really have the whole health and safety, so most people would light up a fag at a petrol station) they then finish and thank you (by chorus once again) and run behind your car as they escort you to the road and bow and thank you as you drive off your toasty warm vehicle…

However, Luke felt a little bit bad about being waited on, especially as fuel doesn’t cost any extra and they don’t want a tip. So we tried one of the less popular “self” stations….

Sounds easy, right? Nope, it is Japan… 

So next time we pulled up to a bowser that were all automated, which means that you need to pay for the amount of fuel you wish to purchase before the fuel will come out. Unfortunately, because it can be noisy outside, the machine where you buy the fuel from yells the instructions at you.

So there we were, standing in the blistering cold, pressing random buttons to make the fuel come out. While I do know the button for cash (or sort of) it kept asking for us a card, and no matter how long I stood there, the machine kept yelling at me for my card (and going through all the buttons on the machine just in case I was pressing the wrong on).  

 5 mins later, the machine and I were getting into a slight domestic (rather loudly) while I shouted back that I have no card and to just give me some dang petrol.

Eventually, we worked out it was asking for a ‘point’ card (Like flybuys) and finally managed to get some petrol for our thirsty beast- it was quite the saga for some fuel.

So- if I have to choose between sitting in my toasty warm car and handing cash out the window, or causing a public scene with a machine- I know what I’ll be doing in the future….