Wow, long day it was. After leaving my bike near the station yesterday, it was towed by the city. So eventually I find out that they have a place where they impound bicycles, and it costs about $30 USD to get them back. A few hours of taking the wrong bus and going back to the original station and getting on the right bus later, I get to this huge lot with a tall gate, and hundreds of bikes glistening in the sunlight, all neatly placed in rows. As I walked through the main opening, a worker greeted me and asked if I was the one from the phone conversation this morning. He and the other workers were very friendly and retrieved my bike for me and after filling out a form and putting my money in a vending machine, I was out of there in five minutes with my bike, which was just as I left it. If your bike ever gets towed in Japan, I would recommend doing as I did, if for nothing more than to have this experience.
So now that I had my bike back, I was in an area I had never been to before, and without any map of any kind. I did manage to investigate the area that morning using google maps, but that only does so much in the urban maze that is Tokyo.
Anyways, I started heading in what I thought was the right direction and soon lost orientation from the mental image of a google map. While being utterly lost and asking for directions, I met some interesting people in a little town called Kamakura. And no, this was not the historically famous Kamakura where Minamoto Yoritomo established the first shogunate, it was a small town on the outskirts of Tokyo that used the exact same Kanji. This was interesting because the day before, I was actually in the other Kamakura. I had parked my bike near the station in order to leave for Kamakura, and thus it was towed because I didn't notice the no parking sign which was hidden behind the many bikes that were parked there. Oh well, it turned out to be a great experience and I'm glad I went to get my bike.
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