5.22.2005

The Birthday Present

J's birthday isn't until June 13th but I just had to take advantage of the sale at the local shopping center. Our credit card is issued through this chain of stores and they give us a 5% discount in addition to the special Spring Sale prices. I found an adult bicycle for 7,999 yen and went ahead and bought it. It was the last one in stock, so I felt lucky.

The actual purchase took a while as there were forms to fill out for registering the bike with the police (so it will be returned to us if it's found in some obscure place) and the clerk had to complete a thorough pre-sale inspection. We talked while he made various adjustments and filled the tires a little more and I told him how it was a present for my daughter who would be very pleased to have her first new bicycle. He took my credit card and went to another clerk at the cash register. When he returned, giving me my receipt and card, he told me that he had marked the bike down by 499 yen to an even 7,500 yen because it was a present and that he'd like to throw in some 200 yen reflective name stickers for the birthday girl. I arranged to pick up the bike the next morning, as I was on my own bike and couldn't push the new one home with my groceries too.

Now I had to figure out how to hide the bike until J's birthday. Our building has free bicycle parking outside, behind the building, and 2,000 yen per year parking in the basement parking lot. Our old bikes are all out behind the building but I paid for half a year to get a slot downstairs for the still new bike. I left the girls home with S when I took L to his kindergarten bus stop on Saturday morning and walked to the store near the station after sending L off. I rode the bike home (gently) and into the new slot downstairs. The tires have been wiped clean, the key and manual hidden in S's study so now I just have to keep my mouth shut until the middle of next month. We'll wait to put the name on until after J's birthday so she won't accidentally find the bike downstairs among 40 or 50 other bikes.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kathy,
I'm sure your daughter will have a blast on her birthday with a brandnew bike and her name added. The seller sounds very nice. =))
Big hugs
Anne