Monday, January 08, 2007
Japan Traversin' Blues
i decided to try and ride my bike to one of my private student house's and then to my school today by bicycle instead of taking the train. lemme tell you something. shit was a fucking adventure. not just the fact that round trip was around 45 miles just trying to navigate around japan is in-fucking-sane. my first mistake was to consult a map. japanese people are not taught map reading in school therefore maps here are drawn up all willy nilly. they are not drawn to scale and only about half the roads are on there. to make matters worse outside major cities roads usually don't have names. a few have numbers but the number represented on the map and the one on the actual road are rarely the same. oh yeah, and they usually aren't drawn with north at the top. neither is south, or east, or west its pretty much a random shot in the dark.
i'm excellent with directions (which is amazing considering i am big jack's heir. once in kentucky whilst in a fight he was heard to yell, "how the hell can you tell which way is north!? you have no fucking idea where you are!!" to my dad once you leave the romeo/almont/dryden triangle it is impossible to determine any direction just by instint.) anyway, i digress. the maps not being drawn to scale are the biggest hinderance. you'll go from point A to point B and it'll take five minutes. so you look on the map and point C is just as far away from point B as A and B were. therefore you'd expect that the same five minutes would elapse between B and C. noooooooo! there you are using the "L" word, LOGIC! that word has no place in this country! anybody trying to bring logic into japan has it confiscated at the airport. B and C might be eight times as far away. there's just no way to tell. whoooopeee! its like an unintended trip to the mystery spot!
and all this on top of all the typical hazards or riding in japan: weaving old ladies, slow riding high schoolers, cars flying around with drivers not paying a lick of attention, shop keepers and their hoses cleaning the FUCKING sidewalk, large debri littering the sidewalk, etc.
song of the day: waylong jennings- "there ain't no god in mexico"
i'm excellent with directions (which is amazing considering i am big jack's heir. once in kentucky whilst in a fight he was heard to yell, "how the hell can you tell which way is north!? you have no fucking idea where you are!!" to my dad once you leave the romeo/almont/dryden triangle it is impossible to determine any direction just by instint.) anyway, i digress. the maps not being drawn to scale are the biggest hinderance. you'll go from point A to point B and it'll take five minutes. so you look on the map and point C is just as far away from point B as A and B were. therefore you'd expect that the same five minutes would elapse between B and C. noooooooo! there you are using the "L" word, LOGIC! that word has no place in this country! anybody trying to bring logic into japan has it confiscated at the airport. B and C might be eight times as far away. there's just no way to tell. whoooopeee! its like an unintended trip to the mystery spot!
and all this on top of all the typical hazards or riding in japan: weaving old ladies, slow riding high schoolers, cars flying around with drivers not paying a lick of attention, shop keepers and their hoses cleaning the FUCKING sidewalk, large debri littering the sidewalk, etc.
song of the day: waylong jennings- "there ain't no god in mexico"
# posted by Unknown : 10:04 PM
