SUNDAY'S ADVENTURE!!!!

Today was the day I promised myself I would venture out alone in Tokyo. I got up early, found a church about a 5 minute walk away ( it was St. Ignatius Church- Ignatius was my father's given birth name!!!!) and found myself in a beautiful church surrounded by lovely smiling, singing Japanese people. After church, I walked back to the hotel and asked the bell captain to call a cab. My destination was the Tokyo National Museum. I wanted to see the block prints we had studied in class. My first inkling that something was wrong was when the taxi driver seemed hard of hearing when the bell captain told him where I wanted to go. My second inkling that there was a problem was when the driver dropped my off in front of large building, drove away, and I realized that he had deposited me at the Japanese National Theater!!!!!!!! No problem, I thought, the people from Fulbright said that when we were lost, we should just stand there and look helpless. I think I did that particularly well!!!!. No one stopped. I looked through the clear windows of the theater lobby and decided that it might be better if I went inside, surely someone there could help me. This was inkling number three. I had borrowed an umbrella from the hotel ( yes, Holly, after all your research, I forgot my umbrella!!) and you could not enter the building with an umbrella. In front of most of the buildings in Japan, they have these little umbrella holders (see picture), and I needed 100 yen. I did not have 100 yen, so I could not get into the theater lobby!!! At this point I was getting desperate and then I spotted a cab. I frantically waved him over and hopped in. He looked at me with a smile and it was then that I realized I had no way to communicate with him. So I started talking loudly, saying things like "art!", "pictures!" and he kept shaking his head. Finally, I remembered that I had a Tokyo tour book in my back pack and I took it out and showed him the picture of the building. He nodded and we were on our way. A few minutes later, I heard the beginning of a song, it kept getting louder and I realized that the cab driver's cell phone was going off. It was playing the "James Bond" theme! I said, "James Bond!" to the cab driver and he smiled and said in a pretty good English accent, "My name in Bond, James Bond". That seemed to strike both of us as funny, and I finally had hope that I was not going to be lost forever. A few minutes later we pulled up in front of the Tokyo National Museum. I told him he was my James Bond because he saved the day, I paid my fare and went into the museum. The museum was amazing!!