A Brief Walk Down Hassamity

Day #90
Funds: $3600ish
Location:

"Kyoto Cheapest Hostel", on this street in the middle of the page.
Michael's back aches and his legs hurt.

Ahhhh this place is nuts! Love it. The day of my last blog I spent in a deep state of mind in which all my thoughts were slow and heavy and time passed sort of quickly relatively to my perspective. I wasn't stoned, I was just kind of sitting in a MacDonald's with a dictionary and a random Death Note manga, translating pretty much word by word for hours. Dunno what good it did me if any, but it was actually kind of fun and somehow extremely relaxing. The reason for this was, the Maccas was close to where my bus was gonna leave from and I didn't wanna be lugging my luggage around for the whole day. Fukuoka's a lovely place, filled with lots of friendly people (much like the entire rest of Japan it would seem ... ) and it is a crying shame I didn't get the chance to see Miki again. I'm going to call her before I leave and lecture her profusely about sending more regular emails and stuff. The overnight bus was absolutely fine, it was recommended to me by another backpacker who said it was uncomfortable, but I was asleep in half an hour. At 6am I walked a k or so from the Bus Station to the main Hiroshima Station, and searched the South Exit for a "Futaba Book Store", where Shannon and I agreed to meet. Couldn't really find it. Wandered around a bit more, and upon giving up, found it immediately on the North Side. "Hmmm" I thought. "I wonder if this is going to confuse Shannon." Then I went in, bought the #1 GTO, and sat down in front trying to read it for a few hours. It occured to me as I read that Shannon and I had neglected to pick a very specific TIME to meet, even though the place had very specifically been "South Exit Futaba Book Store". This would be problematic as my phone doesn't work in Japan, foreigners can't buy SIMs, in fact I'm not sure they have SIM cards at all anyway. Shannon is on International Roaming but I can't figure out how to make pay phones call those (think you need a special prepaid card of sorts). So I had no way of contacting her and checking where she was. Occasionally I would leave my post for 20-30 minutes (I figured that if she did show up she might wait for that amount of time assuming I'd gone for food or something) to go scout for information. I learned that there were 2 North Side exits from the Shinkansen (bullet train) she'd rock up on, both of which would see her walking straight past the Futaba book shop, causing no problems. But there was one South Side exit, and if she left from there this place was big enough that she might never stumble across our meeting point. Boy was I glad that I'd already told her the address of the hostel I intended on staying at. So anyway on one of my trips I wandered around to the South gate and fumbled through a little chat with the lady who checked tickets. I described Shannon to her as "this white chick with black hair who is this tall and is probably wearing black" and she said she hadn't seen her. I then attempted to explain to her that if she did see this friend of mine, she had to make her go through the other exit by any means necessary. Satisfied with the arrangement of this blockade, I waited at the bookstore for a further hour before going to the information booth and having them make an Engrish announcement calling Shannon Berr (Bell) informing her that Michaer Kerry was waiting for her to come to the Information Booz. When this had no effect, I figured it was safe to assume she hadn't arrived yet. To make sure, I also called the hostel to see if she'd somehow slipped past my elaborate net but she hadn't checked in there yet either. And so I waited some more. Oh and also I called my good friend Aoi's mobile to ask her to call Shannon's mobile and see where she was, but of course Shannon's phone was out of battery at the time so that didn't work either.

I like to think that I'm the resourceful type ...

And so I waited some more. I considered trying to strike up a conversation with the girls working at the bakery opposite the bookshop in order to alleviate the awkwardness stemming from my sitting in front of them doing nothing for hours, but remembered how bad my Japanese is and decided that might just make things worse. Finally, I decided there was nothing to be done but to book into the hostel, hop online and send her a message that way in the hopes she would get that. Once on the tram we passed 2 stops before I saw her in the street dragging her suitcase. So of course I jumped off and ran, forgetting to pay, thus enraging my first Japanese Public Transport Guy. He didn't buy my gibberish apology, but grumpily accepted my money.

Turns out there WAS a Futaba Book store on the South Side as well. Shannon had been there for several hours and probably has a similar story to tell, only without all the brilliant scheming.

And that's my story. This of course was several days ago and a shitload has happened since then. There will be more updates in the near future. For now I have to let others sleep. Just know that at this point I'm actually not in Hiroshima anymore.

(Bottom-left = Fukuoka. Top-right = Hiroshima)

(Black letters: Far left = Hiroshima. Red circle = Kyoto, straight down on the left = Osaka straight down on the right = Nara, where Aoi lives!!!)