It never rains...

I’ve always prided myself on my sense of direction. It’s not often I can’t find my way in an environment. Chalk it up to all that Doom when I was younger; whatever. I have of late discovered a phenomenon that is my arch-nemesis, something of which New Zealand is entirely innocent. That thing is underground travel.

On my way to the Sendai Honko branch, in the centre of the busiest area in Sendai, I am above ground for perhaps four minutes of the twenty that it takes to get there. The passages of the subway twist and jink and move in odd ways; calculating direction is impossible short of gluing a compass to my face.

Going home the other night, I thought I’d be clever and visit the supermarket on the way, getting off the subway a stop early and saving myself a lot of time. So when I arrived on the street and found that it bore no resemblance to anything with which I was familiar, it was almost inevitable that I decided to set off in the wrong direction. I could have cut to the chase and just climbed back on board the train, but no, I, navigation snob extraordinaire, was not to be defeated so easily.

My defeat was, indeed, not easy. It took twenty rain-soaked minutes. At which point I decided somewhat belatedly that the losses needing to be cut were significant, and made my way back to the subway.

Getting lost in the rain isn’t entirely a bad thing, though, if you are equipped for it. That day at Honko, I planned to walk back to Sendai Station and save myself 200 yen. I set off down Sun Mall in, again, the wrong direction, but it didn’t matter so much because getting lost during the day is much more interesting than doing so at night. In the end I found myself on Jozenji-dori, a magnificent tree-lined avenue in the Kotodai-koen district. From here there were many little streets down which I could find my way back, but I chose this one:

You can see the edge of my umbrella at the top of the picture – it was this little thing that made all the difference between “pleasant walk in the rain” and “misery incarnate.”

Interesting side note: no-one here wears raincoats. Maybe a clear plastic slicker, but not an actual coat. Here, the umbrella is the rain-defence of choice. Even when riding a bicycle. Rainy days can be perilous for a tall person like me; inevitably the entire citizenry brandishes an umbrella, the pointy edges of which jostle unpredictably round at eye height. It’s a subtle hint: “avoid facial trauma, foolish gai-jin! Use an umbrella like the rest of us!”

They sent me to Ishinomaki not long ago, which is a smallish city about an hour’s bus ride north-east of Sendai. The bus drops you off right outside the mall where the school is; the train station, however, which you use to get home, is a twenty minute walk away. And of course it was raining.

It wasn’t heavy rain, just that drifting mist that nevertheless soaks you in no time. I took my jacket off so a minimum of clothing got wet. With time running short, Rie (one of the staff – pronounced “ree-ay”) made me ride her bicycle to the station so I wouldn’t miss the train. It was just a couple of minutes, but riding down a dark street in the rain was the highlight of the day.

A note on bicycles that I didn’t mention in my earlier post: Japanese bicycles are imbued with a pragmatism that is completely absent from from the New Zealand bicycling environment. Every single bike has chain- and mud-guards. In New Zealand, having those things makes you an old woman. In Japan it makes you not wet or dirty. It’s an interesting nod toward practicality in a country otherwise obsessed with saving face; I guess it’s a bit much to hope for from our macho culture.

At least rainy season’s over.