Hello, my name is Karen. Where is your toilet?

"Sna-ko fli-to?" my teenage son read very slowly.
"Sna-ko fli-to?" I repeated. "Sna-ko fli-to?" This is going to be harder than I thought.
My son and I stared back at the DVD cover. What is this movie?
Clue #1: Samuel L. Jackson
Clue #2: airplane
And, now Clue #3: "Snako flighto. Snako flighto!" my son yelled as he translated. "It says Snake Flight. Snake Flight! This is the movie Snakes on a Plane!"
"You're right! Of course! Great job!" I said as I gave him a fist pump. "The good news is that now we know we are in the action category. The bad news: we can't rent this movie for family night. Look! There's Matthew McConaughey. Can you try to translate this one?"

After a year in Tokyo and some language skills under our belt, we decided to join our neighborhood video store. With a Japanese DVD player (which we now have), logic skills to figure out the plugs, remote control and buttons (which my husband has) and the correctly formatted DVD (which this store has), we can rent American movies.

But first, we have to figure out the movies.

"What do you think?" I said to my son as I held up a DVD with Matt Damon on the cover. "Do you think this is Bourne Ultimatum? Bourne Supremacy? Bourne Identity? Maybe it's The Departed?"

Thanks to my son's katakana and hiragana translating and Samuel L. Jackson, Matt Damon and Bruce Willis, we discovered the action aisle. From DVD covers of Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey, we determined the comedy corner. And, DVDs of Kiefer Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland, we figured out the TV series collection. (And, after a few seconds of attentive investigating, I did find out that the "Hot! Hot! Hot!" section referred to the newest releases and not, well, not some other genre that would make me blush. The movie Devil wears Prada did have me momentarily worried, but the new National Treasure assured me that my deduction was correct. Thank you, Nicolas Cage!).

"C'mon,Mom," my son said, "stop stalling. It's time to become members. The clerk is staring at us."
"You ask how to join," I whispered back. "You know that you have the best pronunciation in the family. The only phrase I can say well is "Watashi wa Karen des. Toilet wa doko desu ka? ('My name is Karen. Where is the toilet?')"

I'm not really sure how we did it, but somehow we got a membership card, successfully rented movies from a local store, successfully watched the movies in English, and learned the location of the nearest toilet.
A very successful mission, indeed.
Take that Jason Bourne!