Map Quest or Indiana Nighthawk and the Net Cafe of Doom

The job I will soon be starting requires a lot of travel. I figured if I was going to try to find my way to work each day, puzzling my way around the chicken scratches on street signs and subway stations, I best start small. Even though the streets around me all have romanized translations, the map given to me by the rep only shows the Kanji. I suppose this is a good idea as it forces new recruits to try to decode the text to get where they are going. There was an internet cafe marked on my map and I would make this my quest of the day. After a meal of a scrumptious pastry filled with apples and cheese washed down by a warm, but pricey, cup of java, I set out to find this cafe map in hand, undaunted by my inability to read it. Columbus had no map after the "edge of the world" and he found America. No map was needed by Cabot when he founded the Cape Breton trail named after him. I was sure I could find this cafe there within the intricately stitched grid that made up the Nagoya streetscape. I had a map, I had a keen sense of direction and I had confidence that I would succeed. And succeed I did! Succeed in getting myself hopelessly and completely lost. I don't quite know where I made the wrong choice, maybe it was that left turn at Albuquerque, but the map began a useless piece of paper about 45 minutes into my search. Because I could not read the Kanji I turned the symbols into things I could remember. This one was a stick of dynamite and this one was a house. This symbol looked like an alien and another resembled a church. Really, the Kanji text all looks like canned children's pasta to me. You know, where youscoop something up onto your spoon that is supposed to be a hippopotamus but actually bears no resemblance to the creature at all? You put these symbols in a bowl and add some pasta sauce and you have Kanjoodles!

My transforming Kanji into recognizable objects did not help me find the Internet cafe I managed one street very well as I walked up and down it at least a dozen signs looking for the street sign on the map. I passed a restaurant that floated the smell of curry towards me. The place had English text on the menu displayed in the window, lots of pictures and meals for under Y500. I noted this place for supper. Using the time a tested ini-meni-mini-mo method of navigation, I turned left sure that the cafe would be around this corner. Nope.



I found a wonderful park with a grove of bamboo shoots but it was closed off and I did not explore it further what with a motor-cop already having circled me twice.

I also found this small Japanese toy sitting on a small Japanese chair. I used such landmarks as I tried to keep track of where I had just come from so I could return but somewhere I lost my way and had absolutely no clue as to where I was. Sadly, I abandoned my quest for the cafeand now turned my sights on finding my way back to the training dormitories figuring that if I could find them it would be a secondary victory.

I turned my gaze upward to see if I recognized any billboards. I did not. A train went by on the nearing tracks above and I thought, when in doubt, follow the tracks. They eventually have to bring you to a station and I knew I could find my way back from the Hongo stop I'd departed from the day before. Soon I found the dirty canal I had passed a few times and I knew I was going in the right direction. At least I thought I was. I managed to lose sight of the subway tracks a few times and found myself in empty dead ends home to only pigeons and garbage. There was nobody to ask for directions. This explorer was on his own.

I found the tracks once again and decided to choose the direction that the next train that passed was traveling in. This proved to be a good and bad idea simultaneously. I indeed found a station but it was not Hongo but a stop called Kamiyashiro. The subway map showed me I had gone the wrong direction. Yet, this stop had a few shopping centers in it and I wandered into a book/music/video store to peruse the shelves. Some of the Japanese video box covers were a lot better then the ones I had previously seen. Again, Anime took up at least two shelves with a section devoted to adult titles. These are called haiti, cartoon porn, basically. I don't know if I will ever get out of my head the image of a blue cartoon cat-like woman with large breasts sucking on a very phallic looking lollypop while flashing me the peace sign with her fingers, tongue curled and white goop dripping from her whiskers.

Walking in the other direction I found my way back to Hongo station and, driven by the thoughts of curry, I made a beeline towards a much-needed meal. The clerk was a friendly man and I used my entire Japanese repertoire with him telling him I did not know Japanese, thanking him and saying goodbye. Red, you would love this place. Pork curry for only four bucks! The menu provided English instructions on how to order and I just pointed to what I wanted as the smiling waiter/chef took my order. This was spicy stuff, stuff Todd would not need to add hot sauce to, and I wolfed it down hungrily using the water ice water provided to cool my burning taste buds. All in all, I thought as I ate, I did not see the day to be a total failure. Sure, I did not find the Internet caf・but I did have the know how to use things like the train tracks and creek to find my way around and I was able to find my way back to my apartment. Navigating my way around Japan is not going to be easy but as the Boss (Springsteen, not Tommy Lee Jones) once wrote: "Better off is the search". I thought of the all the beautiful houses I passed today, the well pruned trees and the gardens, the bamboo grove and the colorful arrangements of clothes draped over balcony railings and could not agree with the statement more.