walkabout-japan

Day 35
Full RAM and leaving Shikoku
GPS: N 33 °, 59.366 ' E 134 °, 34.964 '
Place: Komatsushima
Etmal: 21 km
Total: 774 km
It's my last day in Shikoku and therefore time to buy another map. Well prepared, I enter the gigantic bookstore and ask
the sales girl for maps of Honshu. She leads me straight
away to a stand and pulls out a map which is thick as a directory (in Germany, the sales stuff already irritated by your question would have pointed with a wagging hand at somewhere in the store). As I've really done my homework, I show her the front page of my last map and ask whether there isn't a similar summarized edition. She's so much concentrating on thinking about this, that she's nearly cross-eyed before saying no. It's a pity that I must buy this directory and detach the useful pages. But then I make a big mistake. I ask her whether they also have English books. She doesn't understand anything but however guesses that I would like to have now this huge map in English. No, they wouldn't sell it in English. I try it once more in Japanese and English: "Can I
get English books in this store?" She doesn't get it, and because she looks as if she's going to be mad, I give it up frustrated and think about "full RAM's". I am just paying for this encyclopaedia of Honshu when she suddenly appears beside me and passes to me the desired miniature edition of the
map. I ask carefully "English books?" She still doesn't understand me. On my question, how long she has been studying English at school, she explains proudly that she has had five years in English and moreover three years in
German. Well then! After all I've to take the ferry to Honshu, leaving Shikoku.


back
day before next day