Japan 2014 post 6

October seventh
This morning Yatchan asked if I would like to bike to Musashi Uruwa with him, then come back home by myself. I was wanting to go for a bike ride anyways, so I agreed. Getting there was fine, since I was with Yatchan, and he pointed out several landmarks and gave me instructions on how to get back home. Fairly soon on my way back, I must have taken a wrong turn, and within not very long I was lost. Not too badly though, and I thought that I could find my way back on track. After bicycling around for a while, I eventually found one of the landmarks he had pointed out to me. But I couldn’t remember how to get home from there, just that we had passed by it. I biked for a while in a what I believed was the right direction home, but after a while I must’ve gone too far in the direction I was going, or maybe I wasn’t even going in the right direction, and it didn’t feel right. I ended up biking around for a while, and I again saw something I was familiar with, but couldn’t get home from there. Eventually I had to ask someone (in Japanese) for directions to McDonalds. There’s a McDonalds close to our house, and I was sure I could fond my way home from there. I was aware that there were lots of McDonalds around, but I thought I was close enough to home that she would direct me to the right one. Instead, she gave me me directions and a map to get to Jusco, where there is a McDonalds, but not the one I needed. That’s when I started to get worried, because I thought that Jusco was much farther from home than it actually was. I followed her directions for a while, until I decided that Jusco was pretty much the opposite direction to where I needed to go.
After a while, I found what I thought would save me, the highway. It’s not a highway like we think of, it goes right through the city, or rather over the city, it’s kind of like a huge overpass. I knew that the super market was right beside the highway, and I knew how to get home from there. I followed it for a while (looking back on it I may have been following it the wrong direction), either way, things didn’t look right. I was starting to get a bit scared, so I stopped a man on the street and asked him for directions to where our house is. I couldn’t understand his Japanese perfectly, and he didn’t have paper for a map, so I couldn’t really follow his instructions. After trying to follow them, I asked another where Rogers (the super market) was, and he gave me directions and a map to get there. Unfortunately Japanese roads aren’t arranged into a perfect grid, and they wind and change a lot. So the map, though probably accurate, was too hard to follow. By now it was almost the time that I said I would be back by, though Catherine said she would wait another hour before she started looking, but I was really lost, and gave up on trying to get home myself. I got directions to the nearest seven eleven, and thankfully had enough money to call Catherine. She wasn’t mad, and gave me directions to somewhere we could meet. I was so relived when I saw her and Atsushi biking towards me. The funny part is that I wasn’t very far from home at all! I just couldn’t recognize the way there. The seven eleven that I had called from (and been past once before that) was maybe a five minute bike ride from home.
After that I was pretty wiped, so I rested for a while, then went for a jog to the shrine. Just to the shrine though I didn’t want to get lost again! I also saw Hayate, so I said hello to him, and he showed me a snake that he had caught (or so I assume). It was pretty neat.
I did some studying while Ayako was babysitting Atsushi while Catherine was teaching a class. Then the three of us met Ayana on the way home from school. After that I went to the Shukaijo with Catherine and studied Japanese some more. I got to see and reconnect with Sioko, one of Catherine’s friends who had become my friend too. I also bought what I thought was apple juice from a vending machine. It was unusually sweet and think though, and when I asked Catherine about it she said it was only ten percent apple juice. It was mostly Calpis, a thick, sweet drink that was to be thinned to be drinkable (or so they say).
We had a salad of mine, an amazing chickpea on rice dish, and bread with butter, cheese, and meat on it for supper. Needless to say it was delectable.
All in all, even with getting lost in the morning, it was a good day.
Christopher