A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Back from the Izakaya

Last Friday, my friend Eiko came to Tokigawa to go to aerobics class with me. After aerobics class, we were hungry, and all the eateries in Tokigawa would be closed in 15 minutes. Plus, Eiko would have had to wait a little too long for the train that would carry her away from Tokgiawa. So, we decided to head into the nearby town of Ogawa to eat at an izakaya (kind of like the Japanese version of a diner) that I’ve loved since arriving in Japan (the family who runs it loves foreigners!). Ogawa also had more favorable train access for Eiko. Everyone wins!

So, we drove over to Ogawa, and I bypassed a few of the small parking lots closer to the izakaya that I normally park in, because it’s late, and the parking lots are technically for nearby businesses (even though the businesses had been closed for hours by this point), so I’m a little worried that those fences around the parking lots are hiding some sort of gate that will be shut on me while we’re eating, trapping the car. Instead, I drive about a block away to the parking lot of Ogawa’s town hall, where my friend who lives in Ogawa had told me just a few weeks before it’s always okay to park. We parked the car, hit the izakaya, had the inner workings of the Japanese baseball league playoffs explained to us by the owner’s son, and laughed at the owner’s jokes about American baseball league playoff games being played between his two favorite teams, the New York Yankees and Charlie’s Angels. About an hour later, we call it an evening, shook hands with the owner, and headed back to the car…..

When we returned to the parking lot, my car was the only car left in the lot, and chains had been roped between all the small posts flanking either side of all the entrances and exits to the parking lot. The chains had been locked with padlocks. THIS was a problem…

After a few seconds of surveying the scene and standing dumbfounded, we walked the perimeter of the parking lot, looking for exit possibilities. And trust me, I considered EVERY possibility. Unfortunately, the chains didn’t sag enough to lift up high enough to drive the car under. The curbs running along the road between where the chained posts blocked the driveways were too high to drive over. There was a bit of a sidewalk space between the posts and the street curbs, which I thought I might be able to fit the car through….I’d have to run over orange and white plastic posts that were fitted into the ground and set a few inches away from the chained posts on the sidewalk-side of the entrance, but at that point, I wasn’t too concerned about that. I checked the bendability of the plastic posts before preparing to run them over, and they were quite flexible, so I figured this plan would be brilliant. And it would have worked too, if the stupid trees that were planted on the street curbs near the chained posts weren’t there. We saw a police car drive by, and seeing as how downtown Ogawa barely exists, figured they’d drive by again very soon, so we waited on the corner for them to come by again. They did, and while they were sitting at a red light across the street, I tried to wave them down. When their light turned green, they turned in the opposite direction of where we were standing, drove away, and didn’t come back. Lovely, helpful police (I told this story to a Japanese friend the next day, and he said they were probably scared of us because we were foreigners…to say Japanese police in rural areas are not assertive is probably an understatement!).

At that point, there was nothing else to do. The car was stuck for the night. Knowing my luck, I was also concerned that it would be impounded by the time I got back to it the next day, if I could even get to it the next day. Since I can’t read kanji, I had no idea if the lot was closed for the weekend or what. The other problem was that my last means of public transportation back to my town had left half an hour earlier. My friend who lives in Ogawa wasn’t home. Eiko was kind enough to offer to let me stay at her apartment for the evening, since we still had the option of taking the train from Ogawa back towards where she lives. The funny thing about that was that she lives in Higashi-matsuyama, a city about a further 20 minutes away from Ogawa. My house was in Tokigawa, but I couldn’t get there because my car was locked up in Ogawa, so I had to spend the night in Higashi-matsuyama, which I could access by train. I think it took a good 45-minutes from the point when it was decided I would go to Higashi-matsuyama for me to stop spontaneously laughing over the logistics of the situation. As we walked the 2 blocks from the padlocked parking lot to the train station to head towards Eiko’s, we walked past the 2 smaller lots I’d bypassed earlier in the evening, and yes, you guessed it….they were still open.

Of course, just to add to the ridiculousness of it all, when we arrived at the train station, the electronic signs said our next train left from track 4. So we went up and down the stairs from the entrance/track 2 area to track 4. As soon as we reached track 4, the signs changed and said our next train was leaving from track 2, which is where we had just been. So, we went back up and down the stairs from track 4 to track 2, got on the train that had already been sitting there when we entered the station, and sat…..and sat……and sat. For some reason there was no departure time posted for the train we were on, which NEVER happens, and it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere quickly. I think it was another 20-30 minutes before the train actually left, and we had no idea why we weren’t going anywhere, because they never made any announcements. More fodder for my spontaneous chuckles.

The next morning, I headed back to Ogawa, hoping to rescue the car. As the train pulled into Ogawa and neared the train station, which was near the lot where I’d had to abandon the car for the night, I caught a quick glimpse of the lot….and the chains were still up. With a continually sinking feeling, I walked the 2 blocks from the train station to the town hall lot, hoping the entire way I’d simply seen a mirage. Upon arrival at the parking lot corner, it was confirmed. The chains were still up and the car was still trapped. After about 2 minutes of wondering exactly what I could do from there on out, and who exactly the parking lot belonged to, I was finally able to discern that the lot belonged to the red building behind me. It wasn’t clear that the building was open, so I wasn’t holding my breath. But then, a lady who had been standing outside the doors to the building reading something entered, and that gave me my first hope in 11 hours. I walked into the building, and there was a reception area and 3 people working it. One was on the phone, however, the other was in the back looking busy, and the third was helping the lady that went in just before me, so I had to wait., which left me to imagining having to take the train or bus back to Tokigawa from Ogawa, which would be a long trek, and all I wanted to do was get home and take a shower.

I was finally able to approach a pleasant-looking older woman at the desk, and I tried to explain as clearly as possible in my horrible Japanese that I’d made a mistake last night and parked on the wrong side of the parking lot. Yeah, that’s right, the wrong side. Here’s the kicker…there are two sides to this evil little parking lot, although when the chains are down, it just looks like one big lot. The right side of the lot is open 24/7 (apparently). The left side is open only 9am-9:30pm. Of course, I parked on the left side. Had I parked on the right side, I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now! She and the worker in the back, who, now that I was explaining the situation was paying attention to me, apparently understood what I was trying to tell them, and just kind of smiled at me and asked me to wait….because the guy who was still on the phone obviously needed to be involved in the situation too. Once he was finally off the phone, the nice older lady explained to him the situation, and he smiled knowingly, got up, and came around to the older lady’s side of the desk area and proceeded (I think) to tell me what I already knew, that the side of the lot I had parked on was only open for a certain amount of time each day, was not available for overnight parking, was closed at night because of “bad men” who would used that lot if it were open, and something about the police. I’m sure he was trying to give me a lecture of some sort about what an idiot I had been, but it was lost on me, and I just kept smiling and apologizing, bowing, and looking like a humble, innocent foreigner who just didn’t get ‘the Japanese way’ (you’d be surprised how far that can get you).

He took me out to the lot with a set of keys with the promise to set my car free. On the way to the lot he asked me the usual questions, where I was from, what I was doing in Japan, where I lived in Japan, etc. I think it helped when I said I was a teacher in the rural neighboring town and that I didn’t come into Ogawa often to use the parking lots. He even gave me his business card and said if I had any other difficulties in Ogawa, I should feel free to contact him. I have to admit, that was a nice way to end the whole debacle!

I think in the end they were just relieved that I wasn’t one of those “bad men” using the parking lot illegally (of course that begs the question of how to keep “bad men” out of the right side of the parking lot that is always open…).

My life cracks me up.