I don’t mean to be the priviledged foreigner in a foreign country, but one of the most unexpected things I now certainly believe I took for granted was the keyboard. Yes. The keyboard.
Now, you may be wondering, is this really a big deal? In the grand scheme of things, no, not really, but as a small daily life thing, I’m still slowly becoming used to navigating a Japanese-English keyboard. How often do I use a Japanese keyboard? Well, I’m at school 5/7 days a week, and ever since I returned my pocket wifi (because I now have good internet at home), I use the computer at school to browse and make activities. Before, I was using my iPad connected to my pocket. Why can’t I still use it? Because there’s no way to connect to the school wifi without a LAN cable, and it’s really only for school computers and devices anyway.
In general, typing words and sentences works just fine because the QWERTY layout has been preserved. Sure the spacebar is a little smaller, so I only have to be careful about landing my thumb there. What really gets me, are the non-letter characters. Some are in completely different places than what I’m used to, and others may or may require the shift key. I’m still hardwired to press whereever from what I’m used to, and sometimes it just doesn’t come out right, and I have to go back to scanning the keyboard for the correct key. Then I go home to my regular laptop keyboard and get tripped up there too.
Did I really expect it to be the same? Well, no, because I am in a different country entirely and I am somewhat familiar with international keyboards being just slightly different after using a some odd 5-6 on my phone for different languages. But it’s just so deceiving when it looks the same, but the small details are not.
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