Vindication

So I’m at a cross-roads (don’t worry this isn’t a metaphor), ahead is the well lit main road that leads you home and to the right is an alley badly lit by the occasional light from apartments above. Toshiyuki is with me. He is a random guy who struck up conversation with me, two of my fellow gaijins and the little Japanese woman we met at the festival dance practice.

Her name is Miko and she works in the prefectural (county) office and has been asked (ordered) like us gaijin’s to perform at next week’s Shan-Shan festival (think dancing and spinning umbrella’s covered in bells). After practice we asked Miko to join us for dinner which we had in a very nice subo shop where the little old lady in charge couldn’t do enough for us and it was here that we met Toshiyuki.

Being illiterate is hard but its not as bad as it could be when you’re in a country whose restaurants put plastic displays of the food in their windows. Toshiyuki followed us outside to help us pick our dinner and then struck up conversation. After dinner we all exchanged email addresses before hopping on our respective bikes and heading towards home. Toshiyuki and I had the same road home and so it was that I found myself at the cross-roads facing a choice.

Should I follow Toshiyuki, an acquaintance of about half an hour, down the dark alley so he could show me where his apartment building is?

Of course I did, I’m me, but I do know that it wouldn’t be the recommended course of action at home. But I’m not at home, I’m in Japan and the great thing about this place is that it vindicates all those arguments I had with people about not having to take a taxi home … it’s safe. So safe that when one clueless Jet guy asked some Yakuza guys (real Yakuza - all tattoos and missing fingers) where to put his empty beer cans they politely took them from him and located the correct bin.

And we don’t even have Yakuza…