Faux Pas

This morning I made a little faux pas.

I owed a buddy 7000 yen (about $70), so I showed him that I had his money and put it on his desk just before he got there. (I'm not sure why I didn't just hand him the money. Maybe he had his hands full.)

As soon as I put the money on the table, it occurred to me that I was supposed to put the money in an envelope first. That's how money is handed from one person to another here.

Oops.

To make things worse, he even handed the money back to me and said, "Could you please put it in an envelope? I don't have my wallet."

Ugh.

I promptly found an envelope and gave him his money. I apologized to him and told him that the money-in-an-envelope concept is a Japanese thing. He kind of giggled a bit and also said he was sorry and that it wasn't that big of a deal, that he simply didn't have his wallet.

Live and learn.