It all started relatively harmlessly, but annoyingly, with coming to class to late three times in a row (because I overslept). I couldn't have managed more often if I had
tried, because there were only three days of lessons in last week.
Then I couldn't find the homework for said lessons, even though I had done them the Saturday before. In one case, I couldn't even find the papers for the class. I also forgot about the test we were going to write.
Then I decided to go to the next bigger city (
Fukuoka) with a friend to get our visas for spring travels sorted out. I didn't want to stay the night, but she did, so we had a little quarrel, which she won.
Since we needed printouts and photos we set out to do that. We managed the printouts just fine, but inexplicably didn't manage to cross the street to the photo booth we wanted. It took us three tries! (We always headed off in a different direction.)
Then be got bus tickets because it was cheeper than the train. I overslept (again), but the bus was late, so we got on just fine... However, as the bus
was late and proceeded to get even later, we reached our destination with 45 minutes to spare until the consulate closed for the day. Since my friend had noticed that she had forgotten to enter my name in the hotel reservation, we were also pressured to find another convenience store to reprint it in this time.
So we got a taxi, found the closest convenience store to the consulate, printed the reservation and managed to get to the consulate 10 minutes before their closing time... At which point I noticed that my friend had misspelled my name on the flight reservation! (I had given her my details "just to make sure", as well!)
The consulate people accepted our forms and told us to send them the changed flight details via email.
Of course, different from all consulates both my friend and I had ever been to, this one had a printer and a photo booth!
We then went back to the city, found what we wanted to buy in the first shop we went into, respectively, and continued to amble about in one of the multi-storeyed shops - when suddenly, I was grabbed by an excited Japanese.
It turned out to be the boyfriend of a former tandem partner (language exchange - which happens in "tandem"), who I had met over two years ago.
He is now playing football (soccer) in Berlin
and just so happened to visit his hometown. Disregarding the fact that we had possibly exchanged a total of ten sentences before this surprise meeting and that my friend doesn't speak German, he insisted to give us an impromptu tour of the souvenir shops we had not planned to visit.
The only good thing he did was take us to a shrine (the whole visit of which took about 15 minutes), where my friend bought an
O-mamori to give to her father.
Seeing as he refused to switch over to either English or Japanese and ignored my friend as soundly as he had ignored me at the time we first met, I then had to handle him (exuberant and hopeful to get us to buy souvenirs) and her (deadly annoyed and close to combustion). Fun.
I still can't believe this meeting happened. I mean, what are the odds?! What are the odds of someone who, by all rights, should be freezing their best bits off on the other side of the world, coincidentally walking into the same department store and buying massage tools for their family on the same storey, and
look in your direction just when you leave?!
In any case, we managed to shake him after about four hours, by hastily embarking the underground, which meant we did not eat before going to our hostel.
... We then discovered that there were no restaurants close to our hostel.
The room was alright, but we shared it with four women from Taiwan, who could absolutely
not handle the temperature (around 1°C outside) and therefore decided putting the air-con on 26°C for a 15m
2 room would be a fabulous idea. I eventually managed to haggle them down to 20°C - which meant they put on extra jackets to sleep...
But since my friend and I had the top bunk bed, we still couldn't sleep, got dry noses and an awful headache. Add to that that or room mates just
wouldn't switch the light off, and you can imagine our night.
Despite falling asleep late after an exhausting day, we woke up a whole hour ahead of our plans. We gave in our keys and left the hostel. Halfway to the subway, I noticed that I had "lost" my mobile. I checked all pockets and my backpack but it wasn't there... and so we returned to the hostel, where we had to ring the bell for someone to let us in.
Of course,
just when I left the
Genkan, I shove my hand in my jacket's pocket and feel - oh, lo and behold! - my mobile. I then had to pretend-find it, which didn't work, because the woman who had let me in
watched me. It eventually amounted to me pulling the mobile from my pocket and holding it in front of her face with some desperation. Thankfully her brain produced some kind of sensible explanation for my strange antics and she congratulated me on finding my mobile. (Thank you, brain, I owe you!)
We eventually got back into the city proper, where we wanted to buy one last thing (after all, we had
time), but the shop wasn't open yet.
We decided to get breakfast. My friend didn't like hers, so I ate it, because I hate wasting food. Unfortunately it didn't agree with me and made me feel nauseous.
The store opened, we got our things, we got on the subway to go to the place the bus would depart from. Of course it was the
wrong subway, why do you even ask?
But we only noticed this after making it to the last stop. We paid what were due, went out, bought new tickets, got back in. It looked very much like we would have to buy new bus tickets as well, because the likelihood of actually catching the bus were, at this point, very, very slim.
To get us to do something else but worrying, I pointed out a fellow traveler, who was carrying the same O-mamori my friend had bought for her father - which made her realize she had thrown hers away in the hostel because she had mistaken it for garbage!
After worrying that this might bring bad luck (hah!) for several minutes we gave up and resigned ourselves to buying new bus tickets.
However! We managed to get out of the subway, the train station, cross the street and find the right floor in the building that posed as bus station after a mad dash - AND MADE IT ON THE BUS! (My friend had enough time to disembark again and buy a drink, too.)
On the way back, I noticed I had not only given the necessary paperwork to the people at the consulate, but also to one I wanted to keep.
Oh, yeah, changing the one letter in my name my friend got wrong when booking the flights will cost ₤200...
