the random oracle

I rented a bike in Nara (奈良) because I wanted to see some sites that were spread kind of far apart, and since I didn’t want to deal with waiting for a bus again after waiting way too long for buses in Kyoto, I tried riding a bike in Nara.  It was a very affordable decision because it only cost ¥500 for the day, roughly $5.

After seeing Yakushi-ji (药师寺) which is about 4km away from the train station in the opposite direction of all the other sites in the city, I went back to the center of town and stopped to get some food at a quickie-mart.  When I walked back out I reached in my pocket for the bike lock key and realized that it wasn’t there.  A tinge of anxiety struck me, but I figured I’d just gone inside the quickie mart and back out so it couldn’t have gone that far.

I retraced my steps and looked to see if it had fallen anywhere, but it hadn’t.  I asked the clerk if she’d seen a key lying around, but she hadn’t.  Twenty minutes later anxiety had turned to panic and I was emptying my pockets and bag looking for the key.

I tried remembering everything that I’d done between locking the bike and leaving the quickie-mart, and the only thing that could possibly explain this was that I’d tossed some things in the garbage before going inside the quickie mart.  So I opened the garbage can and fumbled through the (gross) things inside, but again nothing turned up.

At this point I started doubting whether or not I’d actually locked the bike at all.  Maybe I’d forgotten to lock it, and some asshole had come along and locked it, then taken the key?  But why would they do that instead of just taking the bike itself?  Then I realized that Japan had a penchant for “Candid Camera”-like shows and I wondered maybe I was the victim of a prank?  I looked around for any suspicious people or vans recording me, but couldn’t find any.

At this point I gave up and wheeled the bike back to the rental place.  Luckily I hadn’t gone very far so it only took about 15 minutes to get back, but all along the way I kept looking to see if anyone was taking pictures or recording me, so much was I convinced that this must be the fault of some Ashton Kutcher wannabe.

I finally got back to the rental place without catching anyone suspicious, and when I tried to explain to the rental guy that I’d lost the key, he couldn’t understand me.  He kept on speaking to me in Japanese like I could understand and I kept on responding in English as if he could understand, but it was hopeless.  Then he started writing Kanji but the characters he wrote I didn’t really recognize.  In retrospect he was obviously asking me whether I’d lost the keys (he wrote “纷失” and “锭”, which isn’t really in common usage in Chinese anymore but that I assume must mean “key”), but at the time I didn’t know what he was writing.  Finally we both walked over to the tourist information desk inside the train station and had the lady there translate for us.  He even gave me another bike so I could keep sightseeing, since I’d only covered one site before losing the key.  Still, I had to pay ¥2000 to replace the lock on the bike since he didn’t have a copy of the key.

I spent the rest of the day looking over my shoulder to see if the Candid Camera crew would hop out of the bushes.  Maybe they’d even pay me something for making me look like a fool?  But alas I was not so lucky.  Guess if it walks like a fool and loses keys like a fool, it must really be a fool.