Returning to the Ryokan

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Kristina and Aleeza were supposed to meet us at the Ryokan at something like 9:00PM.  They weren’t there by somewhere around 10:15, so we started to worry.  Nick said that he was going to go for a walk or a run, and I suggested that I go with him and we just run to the station and see if we can find them.

 

So we ran and we made it to the station with pretty much no problem, except that Nick dropped some change on the way.  We don’t know how much it was, but it could have been up to 500Y, which is a little over $5.  They weren’t at the station when we got there.  It hadn’t been 10 minutes yet, so we had some time to look around before we had to head back to meet our 20 minute deadline.  Nick went to look through the shops, and I went to look through the station.  We both met back and hadn’t found them, and because of the time, decided to head back.

 

To save time, or at least try, we figured we’d take a new route that we thought would cut down some distance.  Normally we’d been heading south, crossing west, and then going north on the road that the ryokan was on.  We decided instead to just go north right away and try to cut west later, closer to the ryokan, and it’d be quicker hopefully because we’d never have to go south and cross over our progress.

 

After running up a subway access route, down a road, west a while, through a park and near a temple, we came to a royal looking place that was blocked off, there were taxis nearby, and we sort of realized we’d reached the end of the line.  I had emailed Colette by this time to tell her we were going to be a little late because we were lost, but that we were headed back.  We asked the cab drivers if they knew were the ryokan was, or if they knew any English, but they said no.  So we were out of luck, and we just had to head back to where we had come from.

 

Nick told me to tell him about math while we were walking, which was nice of him, so I told him about the ways Euler tried to communicate with aliens (cutting down Siberia and setting all of Africa on fire).  Then I told him about Andrew Weil and his quest to solve Pascal’s Last Theorem.  He seemed to think it was mildly entertaining, which I guess is great considering that it’s math, and he told me a little bit about why Normandy succeeded, but seemed to get bored or tired from running halfway through, and gave up.

 

We made it back to the Ryokan after about 40 minutes, and Kristina and Aleeza were there waiting for us.  The internet had gone down, so they had no idea why it was taking so long.