Another brilliant plan gone awry

I'm an idiot.

Although this is well-established, here's another case for the file...

C&D's house, where I went for New Year's Eve, is WAYYYY down in the southern bit of Sendai, one stop from the end of the line on the subway. In any other city, on a night of revelry, it would have made sense to have taken said subway, right?

Well, this is Japan, and the Western rules of logic Do Not Apply.

See, New Year's Eve is a holiday here, so the subway operates on the Limited Holiday Schedule. Which means that the last train is at 11:49 PM. I kid you not. You'd think that on a holiday famous for Waiting for Midnight, they'd have one last train. Even if it was at like 12:15... I'd sprint for that.

But no, New Year's Eve is clearly a Holiday, therefore the Limited Holiday Schedule is in effect. Not some kind of special holiday schedule. That would be Breaking Tradition, and as we all know, Breaking Tradition is Very Bad. It causes things like, oh I don't know... hairy palms? Goiters? The Emancipation of Oppressed Minorities?

Anyway, here's where I get bold and stupid. I decide I will bike it down to C&D's house... Yeah, it's a 45 minute ride, it's below freezing, and I'll have to ride BACK, but it will give me the freedom to return home whenever I please.

So, on New Year's Eve, I stepped outside... and the first flakes of snow were already falling. Undeterred, in my stubborn-ass way, I started to ride. I'm not 10 minutes from my house when it is clear that this isn't a dusting. It's already starting to accumulate and gust.

But, like I said, I'm a stubborn-ass, so I ride on.

I do make it to C&D's house, sweaty as a teen on his first date and looking just as bad. The party is fun, a good time had by all, but by the time it lets out, the snow is a few inches deep and has grown itself a lovely covering of ice.

D is kind enough to drive home the three of us stranded by the weather and the Limited Holiday Schedule.

That meant that my poor bike spent the first day and a half of the New Year sitting in front of a Family Mart, covered in snow. I figured I had a free pass to leave it there unmolested on the 1st, as everyone was too hung-over to remember where they had left their pants, let alone for cops to impound abandoned vehicles. But by mid-day today I was getting antsy that my bike was being carted off to Where Bad Bikes Go To Be Punished.

So, I hopped on the subway, thankfully no longer on its Limited Holiday Schedule and now full of its normal Saturday contingent of vacant-faced women riding to The Mall (and here, the use of capital letters is neither for emphasis or irony... it really is called The Mall), and rode down too fetch my bike.

There it was, blown over by the high winds, but otherwise just where I left it.

Now all I had to do was ride back the 45-minutes of frequently uphill, and now icy, sidewalks and roads to get back to Sendai proper.

Now that I think about it, I should have pulled "An American" and brought my bike on the subway.

"What's that, officer? What do you mean I can't bring my bike on the train?"

But then they probably would have hauled my bike off to Where Bad Bikes Go To Be Punished and I would have wasted my subway fare, so it's probably best that I cycled back...