Rainy Odyssey

   I went down to the city yesterday morning to meet the new ALT, who's replacing me; she's new to Japan and doesn't know Japanese, so I wanted to do a few things to help her out -- things that our company had never bothered to do for me. I guess you could say that I felt obligated to help her since I'd never been helped and it sucked, despite me knowing some Japanese.

   The first thing we did was walk to the bike shop nearby, but unfortunately all of the bikes there were beyond her budget. After that, we went to the grocery store, which also conveniently had a 100-yen shop; she'd been doing all of her shopping at a different grocery store, which is easily twice as far away.

   After we wrapped up all of the basic shopping, we rode my bike out to the recycle shop near the junior high school; it let me kill two or three birds with one stone -- I showed her the way to the elementary school, the way to the junior high school, and the way to the recycle shop. And she got a bike. And a microwave, and a washing machine.

   I took her out to her third school and we tried to get her a cell phone, but it wasn't working out because she's really fixated on one company, but that company has a two-year contract minimum, but her visa's only for one year. And she let slip that she may only stay for six months.

   That kind of pissed me off. I would love to be back at those schools, in that area, and my replacement is thinking about leaving everyone in the lurch after only six months? I tried to calmly, politely point out that it would really, really inconvenience everyone... and that you shouldn't spend money coming here and then sign contracts if you're not going to stay for the term of the contract.

   Sigh.

   We went to my English lesson together, then to the local mall to try to find other cell phone stores (no go), and then back to her apartment, my old apartment. It was raining and was way too early for my bus, so I hung out there for a bit. I drew her some maps and talked about the schools/classes with her, then left.

   Of course, the bus schedule I had was apparently wrong and I missed the last bus. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling someone with a car, but it was almost nine at night. Then I thought about getting a taxi... but it would be horrendously expensive and my bike wouldn't fit in the trunk.

   So I did the only thing left: I biked home.

   An hour and a half in cold, pouring rain, up a mountain with no sidewalks or shoulders and three-foot drops into rice fields at the edge of most roads... It wasn't pleasant.

   Fortunately, my cell phone has a GPS and navigation assistant, so I was able to find my way up safely after a few false starts. I was worried that it wouldn't last -- my cell phone isn't waterproof, just water resistant, and the GPS was draining the battery pretty badly.

   Obviously I made it back.