Losing my Home in Kanazawa

I may have mentioned it elsewhere, but once you have travelled around a fair bit you start to develop a sense for summing up the feeling and atmosphere of a town pretty soon after arrival. You notice things like the lower quality toilet paper in the convenience store which means this town is a little tight. The girl who doesn’t return your friendly smile – this town is cold, perhaps towards foreigners. No free parking places near the city – stingy! (A good selection of “hangaku” half-price bento dinners always leaves a good impression).

Kanazawa, Ishikawa-ken about half way up the west coast of Japan, had a good feel to the place from the outset. Well, apart from the difficulty I had finding a park close to the city that is. After a 90 minute walk from my car to the central site-seeing area I was taken aback by the friendliness of, well, everyone.

Having spent a week in the shithole that is Toyama I was really surprised with how friendly everyone was. It reached the point where I was walking down the main shopping mall area, with all these girls checking me out and giggling, thinking to myself, “Ladies, I’m not a piece of meat you know. I have a personality too.”
I had arranged to have dinner with a girl that worked at the castle in the middle of town, so we headed off for yakitori (skewered chicked).

(By the way, if you can handle the Japanese – I struggled at times – they have excellent and free tours. And admission to the castle is only 300 yen. Tell them the Aussie guy who loved the tour sent you – I think I left an impression).

Dinner went well, and I wanted to suggest a place to go and relax for a bit. However, she lived with her parents, and my car was parked an hour-and-a-half walk away. Well, why not give it a shot:

“Do you want to come back and see my van?”

“Un, ok!”

“But it’s far.”

“That’s ok.”

“No, really far. An hour-and-a-half walk.”

“Ii yo!”

We were walking and walking and walking, and although I didn’t recognise the road I was sure we were heading in the right direction.

Until about two hours into the walk back when suddenly I could see the ocean. Nice, but I wasn’t parked near the ocean.

Turns out we had been walking completely the opposite direction.

I apologised and she said it was ok, that she enjoyed walking and talking with me, but she had to work next day so she had better go. We were outside a hotel so we got them to call her a taxi and she left.

I asked the hotel front desk staff if he had a map of the area that I could have a quick look at. When he saw where I wanted to go he was blown away – I was about four hours away by foot – and so he tried to persuade me to take a taxi.

He consulted with one of the girls working there, and next thing there are three girls and this one guy all trying to help me work out the best route and giving me moral support (ok, the guy was helping me with directions. The girls were giving my heart some much-needed moral support).

I finally left (they gave me some chocolates from the hotel restaurant, “for energy” and a photocopy of the map) and started the long long long walk back.

About 50 minutes after I had left the hotel I was completely and utterly fucked. I had been walking and sight-seeing all day. It was late, and the alcohol I had drunk at the yakitori place was wearing off, to be replaced by a lazy hangover. The thought of the remaining three hours walk didn’t help things either. It had started to rain lightly. I wanted to cry.

Suddenly a car pulled up next to me.

“Excuse me, are you the person who was at the hotel looking for directions?”

It was one of the girls from the lobby! She had finished work and rushed to find me. I couldn’t believe it!

I got in the car and told her how happy I was to see her. She was literally in tears, crying, saying she was worried she would never see me again! I had no idea what she saw in this smelly, unshaven gaijin.

Well, I had ample opportunity to find out on our date I arranged for the next night. But that’s another story.