attempting to collect yen for a good cause

I have spent the last 5 days traveling back and forth to Takamatsu for meetings. Takamatsu is the capital of my prefecture, so it is the "big city" in my current world. The best part about spending so much time in Takamatsu, is that I feel like I have had a brief vacation...I mean every day I have been gorging on mexican, indian, italian, starbucks, and bagels....its like a bizarre version of heaven. I mean, since when would any of those food categories be considered special? Well, I have managed to eat more than my share of amazing...exotic foods...I actually feel like I have a vacation belly...its so great...well, until i remember that tomorrow is back to good old school lunch..YUMMY;)

I spent most of my Saturday afternoon doing charity work...trying to collect money for the tsunami survivors. I guess doing stuff like that is part of my contract...1/3 of my responsibilities for this job include being an ambassador for my home country and making appearance on special occassions...(I am not kidding, its there...although, not worded quite like that)...Anyhow, the govenor of our prefecture called on the foreigners to come out and help collect money....Do you have any idea how hard it is to collect money from people if you don't speak the language? I mean, I stood on a busy-ish street corner for 2 hours with 2 of my fellow foreigners and it was nearly impossible to get people to donate. We had signs written in Japanese, explaining the cause. We had a set line we would yell, asking people to donate money to the victims of this tragedy. I even managed to paste on a genuine-ish looking smile for 2 hours, despite the cold. And still I feel that the end results were almost embarrassing. Well I suppose this is one of those things that should make you feel good despite its short-comings. But I was a bit annoyed. I mean, I have done charity work in the past, collecting donations for any number of things...it has never been this hard. I suppose the language barrier was definatly the most difficult...but i think our tactics also had be examined. I mean, usally I just have smile and bat my eyelashes a little, and i can get most men over the age of 12 to donate a little money. And the smile usually even works on most women...but here in Japan...That tactic absolutely positively 98% of the time does not work. I believe it actually turns people off. In fact, frowning may have been the answer to my problems....