Umbrellas Lost And Found - The Hundred Yen Shop

Did you know Japan has the most umbrellas per person, of any country in the world? For every person in Japan, there are 3.3 umbrellas.

At least three of them are mine, left outside shops and restaurants…

In 2011, I had just moved to Japan and I moved into my new flat on the outskirts of Nagoya city. At the weekends I'd head to Daiso, the 100-yen shop, to buy bits and pieces for my new flat.

One day, I left my umbrella in the stand outside the 100-yen shop. It was quite a nice umbrella - a neat little folding one, and it had been a present from my brother, so I went back to the shop the next day.

My little blue umbrella wasn't in the rack, so I asked at the till.

My Japanese was quite limited then, but I knew how to say 傘を忘れました (kasa o wasuremashita, "I left my umbrella").

The shop assistant looked a bit bemused, but wanted to help me, so she asked me what the umbrella looked like.

I told her the umbrella was 小さい (chiisai, “small”). I gestured to show it was very small.

She asked me:

ああ、折りたたみですか。
Aa, oritatami desu ka?
Oh, is it "oritatami"?

I didn't know what "oritatami" meant, and I didn't have a dictionary with me (it was 2011, and I didn’t own a smartphone), so I repeated that it was small.

The shop assistant bustled about, murmuring:

"Oritatami, oritatami, oritatami..."

She went off to look somewhere else, and then came back and apologised profusely. My umbrella was gone.

I walked home. It started to rain.

At home, I pulled out my romaji dictionary. And that was the day I learned that “oritatami” means "folding", as in, a folding umbrella.

! I'll never forget that word, I thought.

I lost my little umbrella, but I gained a new word in my vocabulary. You need a lot more than 3.3 words per person, after all!