I Think I'm a Regular at Mister Donut

This is nothing important, it just kind of made my day. Let me quote you this excerpt from here:

"So you spend a couple of years studying Japanese in the U.S. (or Europe, or wherever) and you finally make it to Japan, ready to try out your Japanese. You walk by this cool cafe and decide to drop in for a coffee. You look up at the menu and -yes!- you can read it since most of it is in Katakana. You go ahead and order a カフェラテ　(Caffe'  Latte) and everything seems to be going smoothly. But just then the girl behind the counter asks a question. The puzzled look on your face prompts the girl to break out her English with a "for here" as she makes a downward pointing motion towards the counter. FAIL!"


This is almost exactly what happened the first time Elizabeth and I went into a Mister Donut. Why did we not think of this? We solved the problem temporarily with a simple "Koko" (here) and "Iku" (the verb for to go). Every time I said it I felt like such a gaijin (slang word for idiot foreigner). There's this one really nice girl that basically explained the entire menu to us when we went there for lunch one Monday. Today, I brought another friend into said Mister Donut and she took my order. She asked her usual lengthy, formal sentence of "for here or to go?" and I forgot if my friend wanted to stay or not, so I assume the girl saw my (albeit misdirected) confusion and asked me "koko?" I was like You remember meeeeeee!


So now I have come home and looked up the CORRECT responses for to go (mochi kaeri de) and for here (tennai de).

I hope she's there the next time we go to Mister Donut :)

~Rosie