fishing?

may2005

john bought us both fishing poles and tackle. he bought them unused and second hand from a sayonara sale - a gaichin couple that were moving home. a few weeks ago we decided to go fishing and had a classic john & natalie adventure. . . .
we got a very late start to the day, but never the less found a fishing park on the map and headed out. so, in this cosmopolitan southern city you could say that it might be a little odd to see people on the city subway with fishing poles. people were staring at us more than usual, which is a lot - eveyone wearing suits and skirts and john and i in grubby fishing clothes with poles and backpacks. hah. anyway, when we got to our stop we realized that we didn't know how to ride the bus yet, so we got a cab instead. we showed him the map and he laughed. we asked how much and he said about \2500. yes, that's right, about $25.00. a little steep, but we had made it that far so we figured we might as well. as you might imagine, a \2500 cab ride is no short distance. we realized about 15min into the ride along the coast that we weren't going to be able to catch a cab back out in the middle of nowhere. we wrote down the cabbie's number but realized we don't speak japanese so describing where we were was going to be difficult. typical j&n planning. oh well. the drive was so long that the driver turned off his meter at \2500 about five minutes before we got to the fishing park. he was chuckling when he pulled over and opened the doors.
we were on the edge of a two lane country road. mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. the fishing park consisted of a shop with long docks stretching out behind it into the ocean. on one side of the fishing park there was a sightseeing park with no fishing signs posted everywhere and the other side was steep and rocky coastline. so we walk into the shop as the driver pulls away with a grin on his face, shaking his head. as we walk to the counter, the clerk says no. huh? no. the park is closing for the day. sweet. there we are, in the middle of nowhere with our backpacks and poles and no car, no bicycle and no fishing. why you can't just fish next to the park, or anywhere else is beyond us but we don't want to break the law and get deported so we just stand on the side of the road and laugh.
a little old guy with a cooler full of fish comes out of the shop and sees us and chuckles. he motions for us to come over to him and we see that there is a bus stop. yay. we wait with him and board the bus to go back to the city. the bus ride is long and it finally stops in a little town. uh oh. the little old guy with the fish motions for us to follow him, so with lack of a better option we do. then we remember we don't know how to pay. there is some sort of ticket system that we don't quite understand. john tried to pay the driver, but apparently you can only use correct change and we don't have that. all we have is a \5000 note and so finally the driver shoos us off the bus without paying. follow the old guy. he motions for us to get on the bus behind the one we just got off (which is waiting in a growing line of buses because of the stupid gaijin couple that can't pay for their ride. oh wait, that's us. . . )
back on the bus. we know that we can't pay when we get off. we don't know where we're going. the little old guy is smiling and waving goodbye from the stop and we're hoping that he hasn't played some cruel joke on us. we're waving and still laughing of course because we're idiots.
luckily the bus was headed back to the city and to the subway station. we go through the same scenario with this bus driver and finally get shooed off again. and yes, there is another line of busses growing behind us. so now atleast we know how to get a free ride - just a little humiliation.
we took the subway home with lots more staring and walked to the harbor just four blocks from our appartment. it was dark by this time and so we got food at a convenience store and fished on the sea wall in the dark. we didn't catch anything.