An Adventure! Well, to me it was, anyway.

Picture it in your mind's eye: feeling crushed and defeated, hungry and economically bound, our young heroine sets her resolve on a last-chance-go-for-broke-over-exaggerated-but-I'm-glad-if-your-still-reading-this-blog dash to the nearest major city for some relief. Even as she prepares for the journey, the world still fights against her; rain, wind, and narrow passages are all that await between our adventurer and her destination. But mounted accompanied by her faithful traveling companion, even these forces of nature seem mere distractions!

Haha, I shouldn't write fan-fiction.

The real story: I was feeling a little blue the other day, so I thought, "Hey, why not go to Kichijoji to get cheered up and do some shopping?" But when I was leaving the dorm, the rain from that morning still hadn't let up, but I still decided to save myself the $4 of bus fair and go to the train station for the first time by myself. In the rain. On my bike. With CJ in the front basket. But still alone. Without a map. In Japan. With no umbrella. "A lone, lonely, loner" (copyright of Ice Age 3). I was soaked by the time I got to the train station, cold by the time I got to Kichijoji, disappointed in the kaitenzushi place there (the best one near me is in Musashi-sakai, I think), and not feeling any less blue when I arrived back at my train station.

But it ALL turned up after I went grocery shopping and then bought a calling card (so I can use my phone officially!). When I got back to the dorm, I cooked myself up a little something, chatted with the girls, chatted more with the kids downstairs, finished my homework, studied for a bit, and was feeling as right as rain (ba-dum-da!).

So our heroine learned an important lesson that day: the greatest joys are not in overcoming grand obstacles (alone, on one's bike, in the rain, in Japan), but in simple pleasures of good food and the company of friends.

The End