The Third Adventure: Rice Fields and Philosophy

Long story short: I got lost.

But I suspect you want to here the long version. It is more interesting, if I do say so myself, but then again, they usually are.

    It starts with me waking up around 7:00am. I get up, get dressed, go to the bathroom, etc., and make it into the kitchen by 7:30am. My goal is to leave by 8am. I don't have class today until 10am, but it's about an hour commute, and I do have class tomorrow at 9am, so I'm giving it a trial run. Thank you disaster survival training! (AKA: being a Conover) My Okaasan is still here, but she leaves, just as I'm sitting down to apple juice and toast with cheese. There's this odd cheese, which is squeezed out of a bottle and looks a bit like mayonnaise. You spread it on your bread before you toast it (toaster oven, not toaster) and it spreads and tastes a bit like grilled cheese. Different, but yummy. After I finish eating, I brush my teeth and take pictures of the main areas of the house (see Facebook). Then I head out of the door, map in hand.

    My Okaasan adn Otoosan (oh-toh-oh-sah-n, おとおさん) drew me a map with reference points to get me from their house to the station. It worked perfectly! It had reasonable close distances, reference points (shop names, etc.), streets clearly defined, in a word: Awesome. I got to the station, and on the right-ish train. I accidentally got on an express train, which meant it didn't stop at my stop. However, I realized this soon enough that  I got off at Hirakata-shi station, which was one stop before mine. There, I asked one of the station managers which train would go to my station, Gotenyama. He pointed me in the direction of  the local trains, which stop at every stop. So, I got to the station alright.

    That was where the trouble began. See, the map that Kansai Gaidai gave me to get from Gotenyama to the school, wasn't marked with a compass rose, or very many reference points. I was swept off the train and through one of the exits in a crowd of people. Many of these people where high school students. I could tell, because they all dressed the same. Well, there was a high school marked on my map-a ways from the station, and they were walking in that general direction, so I followed some of them. Follow the locals, because they know where they're going, was my thinking. Well, someway or another, they all dispersed, and I found myself in a quiet residential area. These are quite common, though, I had to walk through one on my way from the Seminar House to the school, so I wasn't worried. Then the houses disappeared, and suddenly, I was surrounded by rice paddies.

    There were some blank spaces on the map, so I though maybe they were representing the fields, so  I kept walking. The fields ended in that direction (a few city blocks, maybe) so I turned right and kept walking. I could see some buildings that looked like civilization, so I wasn't too worried. When I got near the buildings, I saw it was a school, a middle school. There weren't any middle schools marked on my map, only a few high schools, and an elementary school. So I walked past the school, and finally found another road that took me back in the direction of the station. The rice fields disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared and I was once more surrounded by buildings. I went into the nearest conbini and asked for directions and a girl pointed me in the direction of the station. I got back there and tried another street, but I soon saw that it was headed back to the rice fields. I kept asking people, but no one could find where we were on the map; they just pointed me back towards the station, since that was the only thing they recognized. Finally, a shop owner figured out that I needed to go back to the station, and cross the tracks. I had been on the wrong side the entire time! No wonder no one could figure out the map! They weren't on it! The other side of the tracks shows about three roads, and thankfully the shop I asked at was on one of those roads.

    I could have smacked myself! I had been wandering around in the hot sun for an hour, getting nowhere, all because I was on the wrong side of the tracks. I cried again for a bit at that. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I was so freaked out and lost and frustrated that I started crying? Well, I did. My only saving grace is that I didn't give up, sit down in the road, and cry in despair. I cried in despair as I walked around, trying to find a landmark besides the station. As soon as I crossed the tracks,  I was able to find the first reference point (a conbini called the Family Mart) pretty easily. And from there I found the elementary and high school, and finally, the blessed sight of the Kansai Gaidai gate! I had finally reached my destination, an hour later than I had planned, and just in time for class.

    My class was Spoken Japanese, and it was pretty simple. We did basic introductions, went over the syllabus, and other first day of class things. We got a review packet, covering the first 8 lessons in the book, to study for a review test on Friday. We will be learning lesson 9-16 in the Genki textbooks. That's the last half of the first one and the first half of the second one. It's a very short class, only 50 minutes, because we meet everyday.

    My other class today was Ethics: East and West. It was another syllabus day, but this class only meets twice a week. It's an hour and a half long, which means we actually started learning some things. The main thing we talked about was Plato's cave. To sum up the arguement in as few words as possible: we are all sitting in the deep, dark parts of our minds, staring at a shadow of the real world. We must turn around and climb out of the cave of our illusions and face reality as it is, not how we would have it.

    As I walked home, (no mishaps this time) I was thinking about Plato's cave, and trying to figure out what I thought was reality and why I thought that. And my morning adventure came to mind. I assumed that following the students would help me get to where I was going, and I assumed that I was on the right side of the tracks. I know my mother is going to say, "You know what they say about assume. It makes and ASS out of U and ME." In this case, that holds true. Those assumptions I made were completely wrong.  However, if I had assumed the top of the map was north and that Kansai Gaidai was therefore east of the tracks (there were no directions marked on the map, so it would have been an assumption), then I would have been fine, because I would have ended up on the correct side of the tracks, headed in the right direction. Those assumptions would have gotten me where I needed to go, so they would have been good to assume right? Why didn't I assume those things? Because the directions weren't marked on the map, that was the first thing I looked for after I got off the train. And knowing my mother's saying, I wouldn't want to assume anything about the map. So, instead I used my knowledge of humans, to figure that the locals would know where they were going. And in my hometown, where there is only one high school, or even in Springfield, where there are a few, I would have been alright doing that. But in Hirakata there are more than just a few high schools.

    The part that really gets me though, is that I was so focused on not assuming one thing (the directions on the map) that I assumed an entirely different thing (I was on the correct side of the tracks). I had no basis what-so-ever for this assumption! I just decided it! And, thinking back, I don't know why! So, I leave you with these questions: Are assumptions useful? Why do we make them? What assumptions do you make without thinking?