I feel like my writing spree is starting to dry up. That scares me because there’s still so much to write about and process and it’s becoming so common place in my mind that I don’t think it bares mentioning and that’s a bad thing. After talking to mum and dad last night for almost two hours I realized that there’s still so much to say but it’s so hard to explain it.
Mum was asking me about where I park my bike and if there’s bike parking and I tried to explain it but you kind of have to see it to understand what the heck I’m talking about. See there’s this main road, cars drive on it, then there’s these huge sidewalks, but they aren’t just for pedestrians. On one side of the road it’s a whole lot of little shops and on the other side it’s apartment buildings and a park. So there’s space to walk but most people also ride their bikes on the sidewalk (much safer than the streets unless it’s late at night in which case I like to ride down the middle of the road because then you don’t have to worry about little old ladies who are like 95 walking right in front of you and cutting you off every time you try and pass them...not that I’m bitter or anything). Then on the space between the parallel parking on the road and the "foot" traffic space on the sidewalks are lined every bike in all of Japan (or so it seems). On the park side of the road are these awnings that people park under and on the shops side of the street it’s every man for himself as the whole area is under cover and also has little trees to contend with. This is all just the one street by one of the schools that I work at. It’s the closest school and so it’s the only one that I park my bike at. I haven’t tried to ride my bike to another school. I may not even attempt. Most of the schools I work at are a good 15 to 20 minutes by train, which is a considerable distance. That and there’s no street names, so getting lost is a very frequent reality. In fact, when I’m going somewhere and I don’t get lost then I’m usually totally stunned and am convinced that I’m in the wrong place because I couldn’t possibly have gotten to my destination without getting lost. That’s my round about way of saying, I’m afraid to ride my bike to another school.
I’m starting to pick up more Japanese. I was rather proud of myself tonight. I was at the train station tonight and saw a blind woman in front of me. She was having difficulty finding the train door so I wanted to help her, the train conductor came and helped her on. Then at the station where I transfer trains she had gotten off in front of me with the help of another lady who was going the other direction so the lady left her at the bottom of the staircase that the blind lady wanted (you can’t just take any stair case, there’s specific ones depending on where you want to go...long story). I followed along behind her just to be sure that when she got to the top she wouldn’t be lost. She stopped at the top and "looked" around. So I took her by the elbow and said "Doko" which means where. She rattled off a station name that I hadn’t heard before. Thankfully there was another man behind us. He had followed me because he saw that I was helping the woman and that I had just dropped my train pass. It’s a 5000 yen train pass, and not that used so it probably still has just under 40 bucks worth of credit on it. I would have been hooped without it. So he returned it to me and then I said, "Doko" again to the lady, she said the name of the station, he said, "Koko" and pointed to another flight of stairs, going back down to another platform, I led her to the stairs and put her hand against the wall and said, "Koko". She was all thankful and I continued to find my own platform. Now, why am I so proud of this you ask. Well, I had just remembered recently learning "Doko e ikimasu ka" in High School. That’s ‘where are you going?’ So doko is where. Ah, I thought to myself, I can use this. Then as I’ve been playing games with people the last few weeks I noticed that they said ‘koko’ when putting their place markers on the game board. At first I thought it meant ‘the start’. But then kids started asking me ‘koko, koko’ (in an incessant fashion) with games or crayons in their hands standing next to the shelves. Oohhhh! I yet again thought to myself, ‘koko’ means ‘here’! I can use this too. So that’s why I was proud of myself tonight. One, for helping a blind lady, and two for figuring out a Japanese word all on my own based on context and then using it correctly, and three for using my very slim bit of Japanese (including thank you and where) to communicate with two people at the same time. Ah, how fabulous am I!!
