Last weekend the weather was awesome; perfect for "hanami" (cherry blossom viewing), which we did some on Sunday. All bets were off yesterday and today because it was all rain, all the time.
Oregonians (you saw that right, it means, "people from the state of Oregon," which incidentally, is pronounced "Or-ih-gun," NOT "Or-ih-gone"...but all you in Chicago already know this...) seem to pride themselves on not using umbrellas. Why bother? If a person were inclined to break one out with every rain shower, perhaps having said umbrella surgically attached to the top of that person's skull would be more convenient. What I'm trying to say, while utterly digressing from my original point, is that it rains a lot in Oregon.
But it actually rains quite a fair amount here in the "Land of the Rising SUN" as well. And going without an umbrella is not as feasible. Any distance to be traveled in Tokyo is definitely further than that from the American house door to the waiting vehicle, which will almost certainly be parked right out there, if one resides in an American house.
So, how to push a stroller and hold an umbrella? A friend kindly gave me a demonstration yesterday, with the caveat that the handle of the chosen parasol had better be long! Thus crushing my dreams of making it with a 400 yen job grabbed from a convenience store.
Maybe the rain that's been soaking my uncool, hooded head for the last two days has rendered me suddenly unable to cope with public transport. For lo, yesterday I smoothly hopped on the wrong bus. And this is as I'm supposedly rushing Koji back to the room for a nap. ARGH... said mishap was somewhat redeemed by the fact that I ended up right next to the DVD rental shop, where I was conveniently able to pick up that last episode of "24" I had been dying to see...but I digress again.
This incident probably wouldn't be noteworthy, except it happened again tonight! The subway conductor very clearly announced that those who wanted to go the direction I was headed better get off here and change to the train conveniently waiting on the other side of the platform. So I sat in a stupor, fiddling with my iPod instead. Then, the disaster unfolding for the second time in two days started to dawn on me. I had just enough time to stand up and watch the doors close in my face from that alert, standing position.
Ah well, I'm home now, and I'm not so bothered by my second botch because today, some "ojisan" (middle aged to old man) helped me carry the stroller. Granted, this likely wouldn't have happened if I hadn't cruised up to the bottom of a small flight of stairs and then shouted, "Koji, why aren't there any elevators around here?!". Maybe the rain spared a couple of my brain cells after all?
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