The Misadventures of Roger and the Unlucky

The festival at Yonezawa after sunset

Sunset at Yonezawa

On Monday I had to search high and low to find an apartment complex in Furukawa. My company made a mistake and gave me a car that has an inspection sticker that is going to expire before my year is up, so I had to find a car that is parked at an apartment complex in Furukawa to switch my car with. This sounds simple, but I had no directions, the apartments are spread out, the streets aren't named, and all the offices were closed because of the holidays. The first incident happened when we were pulling into McDonalds for breakfast and my tire busted. I had to quickly change it so we could get started with our day because we were also trying to make it to Yonezawa, a city that is three hours away, in order to see a Samurai battle at a festival where another English teacher lives that was in training with us. After changing the tire and eating, I located the apartment complex somehow with the help of Will, Nicole, and Tyler. The new car that I got is a tiny, gold, Nissan March that has no CD player but runs well. I named him Roger. I left my old car behind and we set off for our long drive to Yonezawa. Five hours later, we arrived in Yonezawa and we had missed the Samurai battle. Traffic was a nightmare due to the Golden Week holiday, but driving through the countryside was picturesque. At one point it was up to 27 degrees C!

Although we missed the Samurai battle, the festival was still lively and there were beautiful cherry trees and shrines and temples and copious amounts of festival food for sale. We met up with Justine and her friends who were also English teachers who have been in Japan for much longer than us. They seemed really well adjusted and had a much better mastery of the language than us. We ended up spending the evening in the park and spending the night in Yonezawa. Spending time around other English speakers was such a relief that it almost made the drive up worth it.
The next morning, however, I woke up to realize that I had misplaced my camera and all the pictures I had taken of the festival were lost, as was my camera. We made it back home by about 7pm on Tuesday and it was nice to relax.