After breakfast and a call to JCR to try and sort out some phone problems I walked down to a Lawson’s convenience store to try a buy a couple of tickets from the Loppi machine. There is one of these Loppi machines in every Lawsons and you can use them to pay for thing like Internet purchases, advanced DVD sales, concert tickets and a lot of other stuff. I am guessing that this is an alternative to using online credit cards as otherwise I don’t see the point. Anyway there is absolutely no English which makes using Loppi more fun especially since a mistake costs you real money. I was armed with Internet how-to instructions but the clever people at Lawson’s had changed all of the screens so my instructions were useless. I flailed around for bit and found a path through the menus that led me to what I hoped was an attempt to buy a correct ticket. I got all the way to entering in 1 adult but could not get the past this screen. There was  an error message (I assume) that I just could read. I admitted defeat and asked a clerk for help. Her English was about as good as my Japanese but she managed to convey that the message meant that the tickets for the time that I had chosen were sold out. I tried a few more dates and times and finally came up with a combo that let me get further to where I tried to pay. Why the machine lets you choose a sold out date in the first place is a bit of a mystery to me. You have to keep trying until you find a date with tickets still available. Why not show only the dates which still have tickets available?  Anyway the machine would not accept my VISA card (no surprise there) and the only other method was to enter my name and  print a out a coupon which I would then take to the cash register and pay for in return for a ticket.  No good. I entered my name in katakana but there was no way to move to the next step. I asked the clerk for further help but she could not get any further than I had. She then called someone else over who entered my name in hiragana which allowed me to proceed. He then entered a whole bunch of long numbers on a few more pages that whizzed by and I ended up with a coupon. I have no idea what he did. Entered a store number or something? I paid for the coupon and received a printed ticket and a page of cryptic instructions on which I can read the words Ghibli Museum so it looks like I bought the right ticket. I’ll try again tomorrow with my enhanced skill set and see if I can book a live house or two.